This week, Rob Zombie’s most standout film premiered to the world. After a career of gore-filled horror, the director has taken a walk on the goofy side with The Munsters. The film, which is streaming now on Netflix, tells the origin story of the beloved monster family that graced televisions during its heyday in the 60s. Zombie sat down with Variety to talk about the production of the film.

The Munsters gives us a prequel of sorts to the original sitcom, starting at Herman Munster’s (Jeff Daniel Phillips) creation, his meeting with Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie), the young couple falling head over heels for each other, their honeymoon in Paris, and The Count’s (Daniel Roebuck) financial downfall! The film is played off like a pilot of sorts, leading up to the family finding their iconic home on Mockingbird Lane. According to Zombie, to have the film serve as an origin story was from the very start.

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The film is a big love letter to the show, sticking to the tone, effects, and comedy of the original sitcom. Though one detail Universal pumped the brakes on was shooting the film in black and white. Zombie expressed his initial disappointment but revealed that it led him to shift his direction to “the opposite of black-and-white.” The final result is a bright, neon, and highly saturated colorful film.

“That was always my vision, even 20 years ago. To start the movie on Mockingbird Lane and assume people are totally up to speed seems weird to me.”

Zombie did manage to sneak a bit of black and white into the teaser, which featured a full recreation of the show’s opening credits. The sequence also served as an introduction to the newly cast characters for fans of the original. According to Zombie, Universal was skeptical about the teaser giving fans the wrong idea.

“Sometimes you’re dealt a certain scenario. You can walk away from it, but that doesn’t create anything. You figure out how to deal with it. Sometimes you create something you would have never created.”

The Monstrous Beginnings

     Rob Zombie/Instagram

As a child that grew up with reruns of The Munsters, Zombie had a long-running dream of directing a film starring the iconic family. During the production of his debut film, 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, Zombie spoke with the then-chairman of Universal, Stacey Snyder, on the idea of a Munsters film. But sadly a project was already in the works. A decade later, The Munsters crossed his path again.