13 Nights of Shocktober: The Addams Family (1991)

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween!

“We danced the mamushka while Nero fiddled. We danced the mamushka at Waterloo. We danced the mamushka for Jack the Ripper. And now Fester Addams, this mamushka is for you.”

The Addams Family (1991)

Around Halloween time at Vulcan Video, I and the rest of the staff typically spent a lot of our time recommending scary movies and helping customers track down horror movies (part of why I started this blog). However, it was a bit more difficult to help parents find something they could watch with their children. Kids, especially around 12 and under, want to feel like they are watching something spooky without actually being scared. One of our favorite movies to cover this problem: The Addams Family.

Of course this is not a horror movie; it is a spooky themed comedy with a macabre but fun sense of humor. I remember when I was a kid and the reruns of the 1960’s The Addams Family and The Munsters TV series would come on Nick At Night. I admit that I didn’t like The Munsters because they were monsters, but The Addams Family were just a bunch of fun weirdos. The 1991 big screen version is a big ball of kooky, spooky fun even now in 2025. It’s actually probably more fun to watch now that I’m 40 and notice jokes like when Morticia tells the unemployment agent that her major was “spells and hexes” and the unemployment agent shrugs and puts down “liberal arts.”

The performances are really what make the whole movie work. Anjelica Huston and the late great Raul Julia are perfectly cast as Morticia and Gomez Addams. Huston is great at playing Morticia as a lowkey character. She is the opposite of Raul Julia’s high energy Gomez, yet they are a perfect match. They have great chemistry and it’s nice to see how absolutely in love their characters they are. Raul Julia really stands out as Gomez. His enthusiasm is infectious for other characters and the audience. Julia had an incredible career on film and on the stage and Gomez Addams ranks among his best work. Of course Christina Ricci also stands out as the deadpan Wednesday Addams, who more than any other character has become a fixture of Halloween. 

For this movie, Gomez’s long suffering lawyer, Tully (Dan Hedaya), concocts a scheme with a conwoman for her strange adopted son, “Gordon” (Christopher Lloyd) to impersonate the long lost Fester Addams and gain access to the Addams Family vault. Of course, the odd, macabre charm of the Addams family, especially Gomez, wins Gordon over. Christopher Lloyd, forever Doc Brown of Back to the Future, does a great job portraying another distinct memorable character.

The humor is dark and macabre but it is never grim, inappropriate, or mean spirited. Nothing about the Addams family is mean spirited; they do things their own way and have no problem with others being different. The only time when they come close to being judgmental is when the family goes to Wednesday and Pugsley’s school program. Gomez is bored out of his mind watching a class perform a showtune. Wednesday’s teacher talks to Morticia  about the class “heroes” assignment and expresses concern that Wednesday picked an ancestor who was burned at the stake. Other children picked people like President George H.W. Bush and Jane Pauley. Morticia replies with, “Have you spoken to her parents?” The humor follows the simple formula of it’s-funny-because-they-do-the-opposite-of-what-you-expect. It might take a bit for young kids to catch on. I told my 6-year-olds that the Addams family are like cartoon characters that live in the real world; which makes sense because The Addams Family began as a cartoon strip by Charles Addams, which I admit I only learned about after I started working at Vulcan Video.

It feels strange to call a movie from the 1990’s a classic, especially when it’s one you watched as a kid, even more so when it is such a silly movie, but the 1991 version of The Addams Family is a classic. I am happy to report that it holds up (unlike many movies I saw as a kid in the late 80’s and early 90’s). It’s fun for grownups and a great way to introduce kids to spooky sensibilities. In short, it’s a perfect Shocktober movie. Happy Halloween!

The Addams Family is available to stream on Paramount+ and free on Kanopy. It is also probably on DVD/Blu-ray at your local library.