The Addams Family

For me this is where it all started. In the Fall of 1991 I was a sophomore in high school, a social outcast, and feeling like I didn’t really fit in. I had just gotten my driver’s license and, with that new found freedom, was looking for something to do. I chose to go to the theaters and picked a film at random that I knew nothing about, The Addams Family. As a child of the 80’s whose parents didn’t watch old television unless it was I Love Lucy, I had never even heard of The Addams Family let alone been familiar with this macabre family dynamic. Going into this film blind I discovered something fascinating: I liked this type of humor and, even more, I liked this family. You can bet that two years later I was there opening night to see the sequel and since then I have watched the series repeatedly, too. It was a seminal moment in my young adolescence that I look back on fondly. Revisiting a film nearly thirty-five years later I fully expected it to still be a fun ride but not as good as nostalgia would lead me to believe. I’m happy to say that that is mostly not the case.

1991’s The Addams Family opens with the patriarch of the family, Gomez Addams (Raul Julia), lamenting the long time absence of his brother Fester. At some undefined point in the past the two brothers quarreled over women and Fester left the family behind. Now that Gomez is settled down with a family of his own he wishes to bury the hatchet and reconnect with his brother. Enter into the picture sleazy lawyer Tully (Dan Hedaya), a man who has gotten desperately in debt to loan shark Abigail Craven (Elizabeth Wilson) and her son Gordon (Christopher Lloyd). When Tully unsuccessfully tries to embezzle money from the Addams’s riches he comes up with an alternate plan. Gordon coincidentally looks just like Fester and can pose as the lost brother and learn where the Addams fortune is kept hidden. Gordon, now Fester, does just that but the little slip up’s here and there begin to cast doubt in the family over his validity.

It’s a very simple plot not at all dissimilar to some episodes of the original series. There always seemed to be someone trying to rid the family of their wealth. Even the sequel movie, Addams Family Values went that route, although in a very different way. The story itself is hardly this film’s strong suit. But then again the same could be said about the series. The fun was in seeing the family, especially in their interactions to outsiders. The Gordon/Fester plot is mostly disposable but scenes where the family attend a school talent show, bored by the cuteness but delighted by a very bloody depiction of Shakespeare put on by their two children Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), are real highlights. 

The “normal” people reacting to the Addams’s strangeness was always present in the series. Whole episodes were dedicated to people coming into the house and spending twenty minutes being freaked out by the butler, Lurch, the disembodied hand, Thing, or some other bizarre aspect to the family. We get several characters who do just that in the 1991 movie but the main one that serves this function is Tully’s wife, Margaret (Dana Ivey). Tully has worked for the Addams Family for a while at the start of the film but apparently he has never brought his wife nor even prepped her for what to expect when she first arrives at the Addams family mansion. Later she will attend a seance intended to contact the long lost Fester where she is skeptical of the whole affair. She provides that outsider perspective on the family, startled by Thing or the intimidating looking Lurch. Later, at a party in Fester’s honor, she will meet Cousin Itt, a man completely covered in floor length hair, and will find in him a kindred spirit. By the time the sequel rolls around she will be a full fledged member of the extended family.

Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston are perfectly cast as the heads of the family. Raul Julia embodies John Aston’s Gomez of the 60’s television show and does it effortlessly with a suave sensuality reminiscent of what could only be hinted at back then. There is a maniac energy to his performance that hasn’t been replicated by any other actor in the role since. Likewise Angelica Houston takes what the late Carolyn Jones did and elevates it while also making it her own. Throughout the years since no one has even come close to this. These two are deeply in love with each other and will demonstrate it shamelessly in public.

This film’s focus is firmly on the adults in the family. That would shift in the sequel when equal focus was paid to the children, Wednesday and Pugsley. This is in large part due to the charisma of Christina Ricci who was just ten years old when filming commenced. Ricci had only appeared in a few smaller roles at this point and famously didn’t want to audition for this after spending a whole day auditioning for other things. Her mother convinced her to use this emotional deadweight in the audition and the rest is history. She was very cognizant of story beats, too, and during the table reads made a crucial suggestion that changed the entire ending of the film for the better. Even better than the behind the scenes stuff, though, is what she brought in front of them. The original Wednesday, played by Lisa Loring, was kind of just a normal kid with macabre tastes and a headless doll. Ricci builds on this, creating a character that Goth kids in the 90’s could relate to. Her Wednesday Addams became so popular that to this day it is still her most well known character. Later, when the character Wednesday got her own show on Netflix, Ricci would get cast in a major role as a nod to her turn here.

When Charles Addams introduced The Addams Family to the world in 1938 the characters were nameless, their relationships to each other not clearly defined. This has led to some changes over the years, the biggest being that of Uncle Fester himself. Fester is identified as Morticia’s maternal uncle  in the original sitcom. This was changed to make him Gomez’s brother starting in the 70’s. That relationship is maintained here. Christopher Lloyd was a fan of the late Jackie Coogan and channeled that performance when bringing Fester to life. There is a lot of makeup and a fat suit used to create this character and an actor can get lost behind all of that. But Christopher Lloyd is such a broad actor with a larger than life persona and that shines through all the makeup. This is a delightful character, unique in every way yet fits in perfectly with the rest of the family. He brings a sense of menace as Gordon but also a sense of childlike glee when playing with the kids, blowing holes in the yard with dynamite or building artificial limbs that spray fake blood all over a startled audience. He quickly settles in with the family, putting him at odds with his adoptive mother, the scenery chewing Abigail who passes herself off to the Addams as a psychologist there to monitor Fester’s return home.

For some the 1960’s television version of The Addams Family is the definitive version. For kids of my generation this was the one we latched on to. While I have seen every iteration of this family on screen, stage and even animated, when I think of The Addams Family I always envision Julia, Houston, Ricci, Workman, and Carel Struycken as Lurch. The entire cast, with the exception of Judith Malina as Grandmama returned two years later for a sequel that is equally as good as this film. Unfortunately the passing of Raul Julia shortly afterwards spelled the end of this iteration and nothing since has quite lived up to it. Even the currently running Netflix series, Wednesday, has to contend with comparisons to this version. When something is this iconic it’s hard to recreate that.

Release Date: November 22, 1991

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Workman, Judith Malina, Carel Struycken, Elizabeth Wilson, Dan Hedaya and Dana Ivey

Directed By: Barry Sonnenfeld