7 scary movies featuring actors from The Addams Family

The classic sitcom was ooky and fun but these horror flicks are downright creepy.

The original Addams Family sitcom is so full of jokes that it can be enjoyed by any comedy fan just in it for the laughs. But the macabre gags also appeal to audiences who like a good scare every now and then.

While all the actors in The Addams family were funny, and mostly appeared in other comedies, they did act in a few genuinely creepy, gory and sometimes downright horrifying films. Here are seven scary movies featuring members of the Addams family.

1. House of Wax

 

A decade before her iconic portrayal of Morticia Addams, Carolyn Jones played Cathy Gray in the classic Vincent Price horror film House of Wax. Price plays a brilliant sculptor who opens a macabre wax museum with a dark secret after his first gallery is burned to the ground. Jones plays an important supporting role who helps star Phyllis Kirk find out the unsettling truth behind the new exhibit.

2. Night Life

 

In the 1989 zombie flick Night Life — not to be confused with the 1989 vampire flick Nightlife — John Astin plays a cantankerous mortician named Verlin Flanders. His nephew, Archie (played by Scott Grimes, fresh off the first two Critters movies) helps out at the mortuary. When Archie’s jock bullies are killed in a car accident, a lightning strike brings them back to life as zombies. Though it has plenty of funny moments, some intentional and some not, Night Life also has the creepiness and gore needed for any good zombie movie.

3. Poor Pretty Eddie

 

The 1975 grindhouse movie Poor Pretty Eddie, also called Redneck County or Heartbreak Motel, stars Leslie Uggams as a famous singer whose car breaks down near a rundown motel filled with the worst kinds of people, as she soon finds out. Ted Cassidy plays a towering, soft-spoken man, Keno, who works for the motel’s owners. Michael Christian, Shelley Winters and Slim Pickens round out the cast of this bonkers, creepy and outrageously violent film.

4. Human Experiments

 

Speaking of Seventies exploitation films, 1979’s Human Experiments made the “video nasty” list of banned movies in the U.K. What it lacks in gore and violence it makes up for in creepy psychological horror and bugs — lots of bugs. Jackie Coogan plays a corrupt sheriff who sentences a country singer, played by Linda Haynes, to multiple murders she didn’t commit. The titular experiments are carried out by a sadistic prison doctor who tries to break down the inmates’ real personalities and give them new ones.

5. Blood Frenzy

 

Two decades after sporting pigtails as Wednesday Addams, Lisa Loring rocked a totally Eighties 'do in the slasher movie Blood Frenzy, which more than lives up to its name. It follows Loring and five other troubled individuals who are brought to the desert by their psychiatrist. Naturally, things go horribly wrong when one patient becomes violent and begins attacking the rest. Each kill is bloodier than the last leading to a particularly gory finale.

6. She Devil

 

The 1957 film She Devil takes the era’s penchant for well-meaning but ultimately ill-fated doctors performing experimental procedures in a different direction. Instead of creating a grotesque monster, Dr. Dan Scott (Maverick’s Jack Kelly) brings a beautiful woman on her death bed (Mari Blanchard) back to life. Unfortunately, the new injection has a few side effects, including the ability to change hair color at will, invincibility and homicidal tendencies. Blossom Rock, a few years before playing the joyously violent Grandmama Addams, appears as Dr. Scott’s housekeeper.

7. The Brood

 

Felix Silla, who brought Cousin Itt to life on The Addams Family in one of his very first roles, had a long career embodying all kinds of creatures, aliens and even robots. He was an Ewok in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, put on the robot suit as Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and played one of the small but horrifying creatures in David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood. The film has all the scares, gore and twisted bodily functions that Cronenberg fans know well from later films like Videodrome and The Fly.

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38 Comments

Snickers 35 months ago
I remember watching John Astin playing a mad doctor in " Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" not quite a horror movie but still enjoyed it.
RedSamRackham 38 months ago
* Carolyn Jones also in original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers! ♣
cperrynaples RedSamRackham 38 months ago
I said that already!
jerrydylan1 cperrynaples 38 months ago
Good for you...way to point out someone who may not of seen your post. How dare they!
iluvwesterns cperrynaples 34 months ago
So what? you sound like a 2 year old
UTZAAKE 38 months ago
2. Scott Grimes also played Archie Morris, County General Hospital's most irresponsible doctor on ER.
boobs 38 months ago
And Carolyn was such a sweet, tough lady... Miss her...
boobs 38 months ago
Lisa and Ted are so mega-cool...
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shannonb 38 months ago
Big hair...woohoo! Can't believe the time...and hair spray it took. I look at my high school pics and think 'Damn, that's some big hair!' 😎
Gingergirl1 38 months ago
Carolyn Jones also has a small role in Tobe Hooper’s 1977 grindhouse flick ‘Eaten Alive’
DethBiz Gingergirl1 38 months ago
Miss Hattie the madam. Western actor Neville Brand was just plain great as ole Judd in Eaten Alive. Robert Englund as Buck was hilarious. I think Stuart Whitman had one of the few sane roles in that movie.
Pacificsun 38 months ago
GOOD article.

Keep the Halloween Themed stuff coming!!
KJExpress 38 months ago
I remember seeing House of Wax ages ago and the Vincent Price character's recipe for success freaked me out. But then I don't do horror very well. 😱
KJExpress 38 months ago
It was a good movie. Love Vincent Price.
cperrynaples cabugi 38 months ago
Yes, and did you know Charles Bronson was also in it?
cperrynaples 38 months ago
Yes. ☺️
genette 38 months ago
This should be the theme for October Saturday Night movies on Svgoolie
BrittReid 38 months ago
The Brood is really screwed up.
cperrynaples BrittReid 38 months ago
It certainly is! I saw it on HBO 40 years ago and I go back to that Samantha Eggar scene!
LoveMETV22 cperrynaples 38 months ago
Hard to believe HBO has been around almost 50 years.
OldTVfanatic BrittReid 38 months ago
Anything David Cronenberg does is screwed up. His adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s book Naked Lunch is a prime example.
cperrynaples OldTVfanatic 38 months ago
Well, it is a pretty weird book, especially when you know what Steely Dan is [not the rock stars]...LOL!
OldTVfanatic cperrynaples 38 months ago
Oh, I’m more than aware of the Steely Dan device in the book.
WordsmithWorks 38 months ago
It's cool seeing actors who played such iconic characters in other roles, especially Ted Cassidy and Lisa Loring.
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Pacificsun 38 months ago
LOL!
Jeffrey 38 months ago
Thing was a hand (or hands) you know, we never saw it's face.
iluvwesterns 34 months ago
it was a joke. what a moron!
Peter_Falk_Fan 38 months ago
Not sweet little Wednesday Addams.
Don't forget she was once married to a porn star...LOL!
Runeshaper 38 months ago
Sounds like solid roles for all of them lol
cperrynaples 38 months ago
A few comments: [1] Jones can also be seen in the original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy. [2] 6 should not be confused with the Roseanne Barr-Meryl Streep comedy! [3] 7 reminds me of the scene where Samantha Eggar gave birth to one of the monsters! Not for the squeemish!
cperrynaples cperrynaples 38 months ago
PS Astin also played a cowboy ghost in The Frighteners which was directed by Peter Jackson!
DethBiz cperrynaples 38 months ago
Great point. Actually I think she had a bigger role in Invasion of the Body Snatchers than she did in House of Wax.
MichaelSkaggs cperrynaples 38 months ago
I can only hope Samantha Eggar one day will have a career again instead of doing crap. There was one actor who was asked why he was in a turkey of a movie and he said, "House payment."
Jeffrey cperrynaples 38 months ago
I liked John Astin better as Buddy Ryan as Harry Stone's Dad in Night Court.
Tresix Jeffrey 38 months ago
But he’s MUCH better now!
Tresix cperrynaples 38 months ago
That is a vastly underrated movie.
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