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alt title(s): Addams Family  They're creepy and they're kooky, Mysterious and spooky... Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.
("We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.")
— Addams family motto
Series based on the ghoulish cartoons published by Charles Addams in The New Yorker magazine starting in the 1930s, broadcast on ABC from 1964 to 1966. It was one of the last network series filmed entirely in black and white, which may have been a stylistic decision given the subject matter. While not very successful in the two years of its original run, it became a cult favorite once it entered syndication.
A deliberate subversion of the ideal American Nuclear Family, the Addamses are an obscenely wealthy clan of borderline supernatural beings with a taste for the grotesque and macabre, possessing opinions and preferences that are mirror images or inversions of more conventional attitudes. Although very visibly different from virtually everyone they meet, they still perceive themselves as a "perfectly normal family"; in fact, they seem somewhat incapable of even noticing that their lifestyle varies widely from that of their neighbors. Despite their tastes and the apparent trappings of pain and horror amidst which they live, though, the Addamses are clearly not evil — they are compassionate and loving, friendly to all they meet, eager to help strangers in times of need, and tolerant to a fault. In fact, they are probably more so than most families! The end result is more delightfully eccentric and endearing than disturbing.
The family is composed of:
- Gomez Alonzo Addams, the clan patriarch (John Astin). Ostensibly a lawyer, though the family's vast independent wealth eliminates any need for him to actually work; when he does, though, he takes great pride in the cases he's lost.
- Morticia Frump Addams, his wife (Carolyn Jones). Tall, elegant, ivory-skinned and black-tressed, and always clad in a tight, slinky black dress. Morticia is calm reason to Gomez's maniacal exuberance. Popular opinion is that she is a vampire — she never actually smiles with her teeth.
- Pugsley Addams, their son (Ken Weatherwax). A young Mad Scientist in the making who once demonstrated a home-made disintegration rifle to a visiting Soviet diplomat.
- Wednesday Friday Addams, their youngest (Lisa Loring). A sweet, happy child who loves her family, her octopus, and her headless doll Marie Antoinette. She is also quite sensitive and easily disturbed by strange and upsetting things like stories of vicious knights slaying innocent dragons.
- Grandmama, Gomez's mother (Blossom Rock). More than just an old lady but not quite a witch, Grandmama takes a delight in doing a lot of the family's cooking and gladly acts as a secondary parental figure to the children.
- Uncle Fester, Morticia's uncle (Jackie Coogan). Blend a Mad Scientist and his Igor together, and filter them through Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, and you get Uncle Fester. He is rewritten as Gomez's long-lost older brother in the films, probably because they played off each other too well for most to think of them merely as in-laws.
- Lurch, their Frankensteinian butler (Ted Cassidy). A man(?) of few words but many groans, Lurch may be their all-purpose servant, but he is treated as one of the family, receiving care and devotion from everyone when he needs it.
- Thing, their... thing. (Credited as "Itself" but usually performed by Ted Cassidy; associate producer Jack Voglin performed in scenes with Lurch.) A hand in a box — many boxes, actually, as there's at least one in every room. Fetches mail, plays charades, performs mime. Clearly sentient, and like Lurch treated as a family member rather than a servant or pet. Got its very own romantic subplot in one episode.
Together they live an a crumbling Second Empire-style home which looks much like a stereotypical "haunted house" and which seems at times to be animate and sentient, with a playful attitude toward most visitors. Inside is a museum — or a Ripley's Odditorium: strange and bizarre decorations and furnishings fill the house to the brim, and invariably shock first-time visitors.
And do they have visitors. The primary theme of The Addams Family was culture clash — that of an America still in the 1950s in some ways with something profoundly and grotesquely other. All manner of ordinary folk encountered the Addamses — sometimes to their benefit, sometimes to their dismay — but never without challenging their notions of normality and reality.
A secondary theme was tolerance — as strange as they are, the Addamses are the heroes, and the viewer is encouraged to understand, empathize and identify with them regardless of their macabre ways. Once the Addamses are familiar, delight comes from anticipating the reaction of the next unsuspecting mundane to cross their path. The show was so exquisitely crafted that this appeal to tolerance was never blatant, save for one memorable episode where a Rebel Without A Cause-style biker crashes into the Addams home; he is so astounded by and grateful for their casual acceptance of his unconventional ways that he holds them up as an example of a true family to his rigid, unyielding father.
In short, a classic series, groundbreaking in many ways, that entertains and challenges the viewer. Among its many "firsts" was the relationship between Gomez and Morticia — one of the most singularly passionate marriages on television in that or any other era, it was perhaps the first time a married couple had been shown to be so fiercely and intensely in love with each other. In fact, it's been half-joked that the couple appear to be the only 1960s TV parents capable of having children. Interestingly, the Addamses are widely considered to be the most mentally healthy 60s Sit Com family out there, and with some good reason.
Once the program's cult status was well-established, it became the subject of several revivals, remakes and Animated Adaptations:
- The Addamses crossed over with Scooby Doo in the third episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family" in September 1972.
- An animated series that ran on NBC Saturday mornings from 1973–1975, which featured an eight-years-old Jodie Foster as Pugsley.
- A Reunion Show, Halloween With The New Addams Family, which aired on CBS in October 1977.
- The 1991 feature film starring Raul Julia as Gomez, Angelica Houston as Morticia, Christopher Lloyd as Fester, and Christina Ricci as Wednesday (who here was more of The Daria, rather than the pre-teen Perky Goth from the original series).
- A 1992–1995 animated series on ABC spawned by the success of the 1991 movie.
- Addams Family Values, 1993, the sequel to the 1991 feature film.
- Addams Family Reunion, sometimes called Addams Family 3, 1998 direct-to-video sequel with Darryl Hannah as Morticia and Tim Curry as Gomez.
- The New Addams Family on Fox Family, 1998-1999 was mostly new only in terms of title and cast; most of its episodes were recycled versions of scripts from the original series.
- Adaptation Decay: The original The New Yorker cartoon that debuted Thing (The World of Chas Addams, pg. 125) features him as the punchline. He is clearly a man in a (human-sized) box (in this case, a record player); not only is this the only way the joke can work, but the record player has two holes: one with a left hand holding the needle, the other with an entire right arm changing records. See my contributor's page for further details.
- Also, Wednesday's personality changed dramatically between the original series and The Movie.
- Whether that's decay or an improvement depends on your personal PoV, though.
- Aren't she and Pugsley a supposed to be little older in the movie? They look a lot younger in picture above, anyway. Maybe she got more sarcastic as she aged.
- Adaptation Distillation: The series refined and perfected Charles Addams' cartoon characters, though Charles Addams himself would violently disagree with this assessment, and considered the series a travesty.
- Also, the 90's Cartoon was acclaimed for adding many 90's Cartoonish zany elements, yet meshing them perfectly with the feel of the series.
- The Movie lovingly matches each character to superb actors in their prime having the time of their lives, adds fantastic scenery and special effects that ride the line between blockbuster spectacle and So Bad Its Good like Seattle Slew, then plays every trope to the hilt and polishes the entire macabre masterpiece to a mirror shine. The result is the comic gold of the series is somehow alchemically refined into a form of comic Unobtainium: "Oil, uranium, duct tape and heroin combined. It's just that good." Then they do it again with the next movie. Then Gomez suffered Actor Existence Failure when Raúl Julia succumbed to cancer. Even Tim Curry had trouble filling those shoes.
- All Musicals Are Adaptations: There apparently is going to be a Broadway musical
 based on the original comics.
- Animated Adaptation: At least three.
- Arson Murder And Admiration
- Blinding Bangs: Cousin Itt is a most extreme case.
- Brother Chuck: 1977's Halloween With The New Addams Family introduced two new children, Wednesday Jr. and Pugsley Jr., who were never heard from again afterwards.
- Catch Phrase: "You rang?" "Tish! That's French!" "I'll shoot them in the back"
- Character As Himself: "Thing as Itself"
- Closer To Earth: Morticia vs. Gomez.
- Continuity Reboot: 1998's The New Addams Family
- Crossdressing Voices: A very young Jodie Foster as Pugsley in the first animated series.
- Cross Over: With Scooby Doo in the third episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family", 1972.
- Darker And Edgier: the films paint the characters as much more evil than the TV show (although still nicer than in the original magazine cartoons), thanks to more relaxed standards on what is acceptable as humour.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite how dark, creepy and macabre the family is, the Addamses are all genuinely good people, though slightly less so (especially Wednesday) in the movies.
- Day Of The Week Name: Wednesday Friday Addams
- Dueling Shows: With The Munsters.
- Everything Sounds Sexier In French: How many times does this come up? In the French translations, it becomes Everything Sounds Sexier In Spanish.
- Expository Theme Tune
- In a story that has to be Too Good to Be True, a group of producers & screenwriters were riding in a van one day, when at random, one of them started humming the theme tune. Another joined in, then another by whistling. Soon, the entire car was singing the theme song, and this is what convinced them to adapt the show into a movie.
- Extremely Dusty Home
- The Faceless: Cousin Itt, hidden by all that hair; in fact, Itt's hands were possibly the only part of his body ever seen, and those rarely — and even then only wearing gloves.
- The Film Of The Series: The Addams Family and Addams Family Values.
- Guttural Growler: Lurch. "You rang?"
- Happily Married: Gomez and Morticia.
- As part of the one-upmanship of the Dueling Shows, while Herman & Lily Munster were the first couple to be seen sharing the same bed, Gomez & Morticia were the first couple to have an apparent sex life.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The New Addam's family , a remake from the nineties , was an entirely Canadian production and was a lot more popular in Canada than in the U.S.
- Goth: Of course!
- Helping Hands
- Homage: On Histeria!
- Identical Grandson: John Astin as "Grandpapa Addams" on The New Addams Family.
- Identity Amnesia: Gomez
- Improbable Aiming Skills: All the Addamses go back and forth between having inhuman aiming skills (e.g. throwing knives into the hilts of the previous knife five or six times in a row (and most without looking) to having absolutely dreadful aim depending on what's funnier.
- In The Back
- Laugh Track
- Lighter And Softer: The original Addams gag cartoons depicted the family as genuinely evil, especially the character named in the TV show as Fester, who, for example, was once seen beckoning another car driver to overtake him into the path of a hidden articulated lorry. Not to mention the famous "pouring boiling oil on carol singers" image.
- Limited Wardrobe: With only a few very rare exceptions, the family always wears the same outfits.
- Loves The Sound Of Screaming
- Made For TV Movie: Halloween With The New Addams Family
- Made From Real Girl Scouts: The only Girl Scouts cookies Wednesday will buy.
- Maintain The Lie
- Muggles: Most everyone else in the series.
- Nuclear Family: Subverted.
- Once An Episode: The inevitable mention of various never-seen relatives, such as Uncle Knick-Knack. Sometimes happened more than once per episode, but who's counting?
- One Head Taller: Averted — Gomez is always depicted as being noticeably shorter than Morticia, but clearly neither of them have a problem with that.
- The Ophelia: Morticia's twin sister in the TV series. Unsurprisingly, she's named Ophelia and has long, flowing hair.
- Pale Skinned Brunette: Morticia
- Perky Goth: Gomez is a male example.
- Quirky Household
- Reactionary Fantasy: The ultimate subversion!
- Real Life Writes The Plot: Ted "Lurch" Cassidy's brief, unexpected teen idol status became the basis for an episode where Lurch's harpsichord playing earns him a similar teenybopper following.
- Recycled IN SPACE: 1973 animated series
- Recycled Script: Most of the episodes of The New Addams Family were recycled from the original series.
- Repetitive Name: Thing T. Thing
- Ret Con: Fester was changed from Morticia's uncle to Gomez's older brother in the 1973-75 animated series, back to Morticia's uncle in the 1977 Reunion Show, and back again to Gomez's brother for the movies. Grandmama started out as Gomez's mother then switched over to Morticia's starting with the first animated series and stayed put from then on.
- Also, the kids' ages became less clear in the adaptations. In the 90's cartoon and movies, Wednesday seemed older than Pugsley.
- Reunion Show
- Running Gag: The front gate, the doorbell pull, the roaring bear rug, and others.
- She Is All Grown Up: Wednesday has her "grownup" moments, wearing a miniature Morticia dress, in both the series and the second movie.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Many of the TV Family's "weird" affectations (home computing, alternative medicine, being Goth)
- Sleeping Single: Implied subversion.
- Spotlight Stealing Squad: Fester and Wednesday in the movies. Poor Pugsley barely features in the second one.
- The Other Darrin: The third movie did this to most of the actors playing the family. It's arguably considered a seperate continuity from the 90's movies.
- The Speechless: Thing
- Stock Footage: Whenever a new visitor enters the house, the same footage of its unusual furnishings is used.
- Throw It In: Ted Cassidy ad-libbed "You rang?" in the pilot, and the producers kept it — and changed Lurch from a mute to allow for it.
- Too Kinky To Torture: Everyone, but most noticeably Morticia from the movies.
- The Unintelligible: Cousin Itt
- Vanity Plate
- Waif Fu: Ophelia knows her karate.
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