The Munsters (TV Series) Far Out Munsters (1965) User Reviews

The Episode Should Be Put Into A Time Capsule!

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 31 October 2007]

"Scooba doo and scubba dabba, life's a gas, and life's a grabba.

"Hip is hip and groove is groovy, life's a wild Fellini movie.

"When that hairy fist of silence slugs us, bugs us, puts us down, we'll all wing it; we'll all sing it, Guy Lombardo's back in town!" (Cheers and applause)

"Boy, that guy sure cuts away the tinsel," marvels a bystander, next to Herman.

These incredible words of wisdom and insight are said by the beat poet reciting in the Munster home after "The Standells" entertained with two rock numbers. The group was having a party because they had rented the Munster home for the weekend for $1,500. They were in town for a concert and were looking for a "quiet mansion" outside of town.

Lily, the unofficial head of the family since Herman is a wuss, said okay to the deal. However, after one night the Munsters couldn't hack it at the Winston Hotel (nor could the hotel personnel) so they came back home, smack in the middle of this party full of "hip" people of the early to mid '60s. This episode was filmed in 1964 and aired in '65, I believe.

"Wow," says Grandpa, "I haven't seen so many good-looking people in one place since we closed down the mausoleum back home."

The Standells were actually a rock group from the early '60s - who look pretty straight compared to the rockers who followed just a few years later in the decade - and they play themselves in this TV show. Film director Zalman King plays the nameless bearded poet.

When the wild crowd asks to hear from "The Jolly Green Giant," Herman, with someone playing the bongos, ad-libs his own poetry, which is hilarious!

"Man, that cat is deep," is the response.

All of this, and a few more things, make this episode a real time capsule on the era and a very funny episode to enjoy.

Excellent

[Greatornot · 9/10 · 7 March 2009]

Fun is the operative word for all these reviews. Yes it is fun. I think there would have been booze and weed at that funky party but I understand 60s TV. If the ep was 8 or 9 yrs later , there probably would have been. It was great to see the Munsters fitting in for a change. I think with all the partying and hoopla that took place with in the episode that there truly was a message that the hippies were non judgmental. It was a message that everyone belonged regardless of what you look like. Nice to hear Standells singing Beatles, Herman with his dumb poetry and Lily singing her melancholy, playing the harp. Herman and Grandpa crying when she was doing so was hilarious. Incidentally, I challenge anyone to come up with a sitcom , where a father in law and son in law are as close as Herman and Grandpa .

The Beatniks vs. the Hippies

[rcaliendo-424-345328 · 9/10 · 19 May 2020]

They caught it on film. They didn't know what they had, but they caught it ... that amazing inflection point in time where the 50's were in the process of morphing into the 60's. It was just a period of months in 1964/65 between writing and filming this episode when the culture and the country changed wildly. JFK was gone for about a year, the Beatles had come and turned everything popular upside down and Vietnam and Civil Rights were about to shake the country to its foundation.

But for a little black and white TV show that was simply riding the early/mid 60's TV sitcom wave of the supernatural ... monsters, witches, genies, martians, talking cars and horses and flying nuns ... a bunch of middle aged writers, likely without any understanding or interest in either cultural genre, managed to crystalize on film a very innocent, fleeting time in Americana.

Just about every show at that time had to do something acknowledging the Beatles phenomenon; even Gilligan's Island did so. Of course the writers at the time, as exemplified in the generational disparity had no idea what to make of the Beatles, who - to them - looked like freaks in mop head wigs and made noise not music.

So, the Standells were brought in to serve as America's poor man's Beatles, complete with the sharp, hip outfits and a cover version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand. But with the show having no real concept of what was or would become cool, they reached back a decade or so to Kerouac and Co. and pulled the Beats forward a few years.

In fairness to the show's creators, it was the exact in between period where the 50's were dying off and the 60's were taking off. The very month the show aired, March of 65, the first combat troops were sent into Vietnam and later that year Ken Kesey would be staging his first "acid tests" in California with the house band, the Warlocks ... soon to be renamed, the Grateful Dead.

If this show were filmed just a year later, it probably would have been filmed in color and, assuming somebody was keeping up with the times, the house probably would have been filed with tie-dyed shirts and other hippie, not beatnik symbols.

The Munsters rent out their house and then want to renege only to find the renters are throwing a party .

[holloway99 · 10/10 · 28 October 2006]

Far out Munsters is a fun episode and is one of the best of the bunch .When the Munsters decide to rent out the mansion at 1313 mockingbird lane you just don't know what to expect !The renters turn out to be a rock & roll band . The mix of rock & rollers , of that era , and The Munsters works well and makes for some interesting scenes . When The Munsters return home (after deciding not to stay at the hotel) they find the band has thrown a party . Now , you just know that The Munsters will only add life to this party . The Standells are excellent , Herman's poetry was a howler , and when Lilly performs for the crowd we lost it . Al Lewis as Grandpa is his usual superb self , with a couple of trick gags , and Eddie Munster has some funny banter. Beautiful Pat Priest was and always will be the best Marilyn . Nothing will ever be like The Munsters and Far Out Munsters is a good snippet of the essence of why they will live forever in T.V. Land .

Lily's Song

[gabrielchacon · 10/10 · 26 December 2007]

Excellent chapter, incredible!! This is one of my favorite chapter of this sitcom. It's very strange because there are lots of music and "poetry" (lol), but I'm interested specially in one of them. I really want to know, what's the name of the song that Lily sang while she was playing the harp, after Herman's poetry?? By the way, it was a wonderful performance!! The song made a deep impression on me once I heard it. Yvonne de Carlo is a great singer. I've heard her in other songs and I realized that. So, if you know the name of the song, please tell me because I've looked it for a long time. Greetings everybody and thanks in advance

Watch and enjoy a funny time-capsule !

[ronnybee2112 · 9/10 · 1 December 2020]

The Munsters rent the house to a rock band and return in time for a wild party in their house! There is a poetry reading that is not to be missed,it is straight out of the coffee house and I found it extremely funny. The band was not bad at all,although I don't know if they were really playing on the show or just posing,kinda hard to say but it was reasonably good. I liked it and found it quite entertaining. Check it out!

A REAL Stinker

[sosmgy610 · 1/10 · 30 July 2019]

I don't agree with the other reviewers on this episode. I think it was one of the worst of the series. I watched the whole thing to see if it ever got better. It didn't. The Standells come off as lousy Beetle imitators and the "beatnik" angle is just stupid. The music was lousy.

Not My Favorite Episode

[Carlos447 · 2/10 · 22 September 2022]

Now, I love the Munsters. It's one of my favorite shows. Herman is my favorite character in the show but I enjoy the whole family. That being said, this episode didn't really have much of what I enjoy from a normal Munsters episode. Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that I'm not a very big Beatles' fan (I know, blasphemy) and The Standells are pretty much the Beatles'. But it felt more like a promotion for The Standells than an actual episode. It had very few jokes and a large part of the episode was just them watching the band. I wanted the episode to end so bad, and that's not a feeling I get with other episodes of The Munsters. This is just my opinion though.