“Mockingbird Lane”: Road Closed?

Getting conflicting signals on the re-boot of the “Munsters” TV show- the NBC pilot, titled “Mockingbird Lane” after the street that the family lived on, is rumored to be in trouble- as in, no go. One report said that, while the pilot was visually striking, like the previous series “Pushing Daisies” from its producer, Bryan Fuller, that it just “didn’t quite work”, and the executives were leaning towards passing on this update of the 60s series. We were debating the wisdom of doing this reboot quite a while back in our blog- scratching our heads at the choice of Jerry O’Connell as Herman, along with the idea of him not really looking much like the original Herman and/or the Frankenstein Monster, among other concerns. The idea that the show would be an hour long “dramedy”- a combination of drama and comedy- also seemed somewhat questionable to most fans. Another sidebar of the rumor mill states that the “failure” of the Johnny Depp “Dark Shadows” reboot (coincidentally, out on dvd this week!) added to the apprehension of NBC execs about another spooky semi-comedic TV reboot. Honestly, I’m not sure what one has to do with the other- even if one wasn’t a success, how could that really cause the other to fail? Sounds like typical TV executive thinking to me… But- is the Munster clan REALLY dead in the scum-covered water? Supposedly, writer/producer Fuller tweeted that the story circulating about the pilot being down for the count was NOT true (I like that he used the term “dead wrong”- “dead”- get it?), and that fans should be watching for further updates. I guess, for now, we’ll have to wait patiently to see what the truth is… On to our “Halloween Horror of the Day”- this one was brought to mind by something from another popular 60s eerie TV family- one with the name of “Addams”- it’s the deadly “Crawling Hand”! You might recall this 1963 flick, which has aired on our show in past years- in which an astronaut’s severed hand is found by a teenage boy, and –is alive and dangerous! The last contact with the astronaut showed him frantic and looking strange, and begging the authorities to press the self-destruct button for his spacecraft to prevent a catastrophe! The people in charge reluctantly do so- and his ship is blown to bits> However, some remains drift down to earth- specifically, a beach where the afore-mentioned teen finds the hand- and, for some reason, takes it home! Before long, the hand has possessed the young man’s mind, and he is morphing into a murderous being with dark circles around his eyes (no relation to a certain guy writing this blog!) with the urge to kill. Meanwhile, the all-too- active hand itself is crawling around, choking people out, crawling up walls like Spider Man (or, Spider Hand) and getting manicures like crazy (okay, I made up that last part…) This crawling hand should not be confused with the one in the Peter Lorre film “ The Beast with Five Fingers”, in which another severed hand – that of a concert pianist- is on the loose, clamping on choke holds, while Lorre tries to battle the deadly digits. Maybe we could combine both movies, and have a pair of hands…but, I digress- let’s just hand the “Crawling Hand” the title of our Halloween Horror of the Day- and be glad it wasn’t the astronaut’s foot- which would have probably just hopped around kicking people to death (notice I didn’t bring up the old joke about how, if athletes get athlete’s foot, astronauts get “Missle toe”…)