It's Halloween, and that's pretty nerve-wrecking for Gomez Addams (John Astin), as he won't be able to spend it with his family due to an important lodge meeting, and what's even more troubling is that his brother Pancho (Henry Darrow) has come by for the festivities, and he's madly in love with Gomez's wife Morticia (Carolyn Jones), and just like Gomez goes completely wild every time she talks French. Meanwhile, a gang of crooks want to rob the Addams blind on Halloween and have already installed cameras everywhere to spy them out, but when they send out their man Mikey (Vito Scotti) to pinpoint the location of the Addams' safe and he accidently runs into Uncle Fester's (Jackie Coogan) torture chamber and lion's cage, he runs away screeming. So the rest of the gang, the bossman (Parley Baer), his right-hand man disguised as Little Bo Peep (Patrick Campbell) and their two strongmen (David B. Johns, Clinton Beyerle) decide to crash the Addams Halloween party pretending to be of the Chicago line of the family. They even bring a decoy Gomez (Dean Sothern) and Morticia (Terry Miller) with them.

In the meantime, Gomez has arrived home from the lodge meeting early, driven by jealousy, and for that has been demoted at the lodge, which makes him feel emasciated. But he still tries to play good host, something not made any easier by the fact that the baddies constantly try to tie him up or lock him in an iron maiden or the sort - but escaping their captivity time and again is something Gomez thoroughly enjoys, and he thinks the villains do that to lift his spirits. And while fake Gomez and Morticia create confusion after confusion, Little Bo Peep becomes Lurch's (Ted Cassidy) date for the night and the boss searches the place - and is so freaked out by what he finds that he runs into the next cop (George Ranito Jordan) and confesses everything. And ultimately, Gomez wins back his self confidence and everything ends in the lighting of the Halloween scarecrow ...

The "new" in the title of this TV special is somewhat misleading, as with the exception of Marie Blake as Grandma Addams (being replaced by Jane Rose) the whole cast of the original TV series return in their original roles - even if there are an additional Wednesday (Jennifer Surprenant) and Pugsley (Ken Marquis) added to the mix as Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax were by then in their late teens/early 20s. And in many ways, this feels just like the series of old, actually several gags and storylines from back when seem to have been rehashed in this one - and some of the gags still work, as do John Astin and Carolyn Jones and the chemistry between them. But as a whole, this TV special doesn't do good service to the memory of the series, as it's over-long on one hand at almost 75 minutes, lacks a clear storyline, at times feels over-populated, and the rather loveless addition of colour does little for the aesthetics of the show. In all, while it's not a total mess and sometimes genuinely funny, it's on the whole not worth your while, as it doesn't hold up to the series as it was.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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