View-Master World presents all 21 scenes from the View-Master packet The Munsters (B481). This episode is from the show’s second season, entitled “The Most Beautiful Ghoul in the World” …photographed in color … and in 3-D!
Packet Cover
Booklet Cover
From the original packet cover:
The Munster family—Papa Herman, Mama Lily, Son Eddie, Niece Marilyn, and Grandpa—are as friendly and warmhearted as any folks next door anywhere. But you probably wouldn’t want them for your neighbors.
They go about their daily routines much as most people do, with the same pleasures and the same problems…but somehow the results are always a little different with the Munsters.
For instance, with an inheritance from Cousin Wolverine, who had died again, Lily opened a beauty shop and Grandpa perfected one of his inventions. When they managed to get their projects confused, as the Munsters often do, they produced—beautiful bowling balls!
Scene 1
The Postman delivered a package to the Munsters
From the 16-page booklet:
“The Most Beautiful Ghoul in the World”
When the doorbell clanged through the musty Munster mansion, it stirred the whole household; for visitors to this home were few and far between. This sad fact puzzled the Munsters no end, for they considered themselves a friendly and attractive family, (with the possible exception of niece Marilyn who had, unfortunately, suffered since birth with pink skin and golden hair). Grandpa, little Eddie, Marilyn, and Lily all came running to see the caller; but Herman, as head of the house, waved them aside and clomped to the door himself.
He was greeted by a pair of tongs holding a pad and pencil. The tongs were attached to an extension device which seemed to disappear into the jungle growth in the yard. A quavering voice from behind a bush said, “Special Delivery. Sign here, please.” Herman dutifully made his mark, and the tongs then returned with a package.
“You know,” said Herman as he returned to his family, “I think the mailman is becoming friendlier. He used to stand across the street and throw the mail over the wall.”
Scene 2
“It’s ticking,” cried Herman. “It must be a bomb!”
From the 16-page booklet:
“Golly, it’s a box from Transylvania,” Herman announced.
“Hmmm,” Lily mused. “Last time we got a box from the old country there was a body in it.”
Together the Munsters walked across the living room to the organ, where Herman held up the box for closer inspection. He heard a suspicious noise coming from inside the package.
“Lily, it’s ticking! They’ve sent us a bomb. Those bum relatives of yours are trying to blow us to smithereens! It’s dangerous! Get a fire extinguisher! Get a pail of water! On second thought…I’ll get the water.”
With that, Herman handed the package to his wife and hurried through the trap door to the basement.
Scene 3
They soaked the “bomb,” but the “tick” was the clock
From the 16-page booklet:
Concern for his family quickly overcame Herman’s fear. He rushed into the living room with a bucket of water and dunked the ticking box in the bucket. By this time, all the Munster family had gathered anxiously around Herman. Twenty minutes passed before Herman was ready to admit “It might be safe now.”
He lifted the box from the water and listened to it. “The ticking is stopped! I’ll take it over here by the light before I open it,” Herman said. As he held the box to his ear, the ticking started again.
“Would you like to know what is ticking?” Grandpa asked Herman. “It’s the clock on the wall.”
“Dumb old clock,” muttered Herman.
The Raven stuck his head from the ancient timepiece and croaked, “Hickory, dickory, dock… He can’t tell a bomb from a cuckoo clock!”
Scene 4
It was a will—the Munsters had $10,000!
From the 16-page booklet:
Rather than a bomb, the Munsters found, much to their relief, only a soggy, old, rolled-up scroll. It contained word from a lawyer advising them that their Cousin Wolverine had died again; and, this time, he had left them a fortune of ten thousand dollars. The bequest proved a source of argument. Herman wanted all the money.
“I’m not going to have you two, Herman and Grandpa repeat your past mistakes by wasting all the money on some silly invention,” Lily lectured. “I want a little business of my own…one that will make extra income for the family.”
Herman protested; but, after all, it was Lily’s cousin! Marilyn suggested a compromise…a fifty-fifty split…five thousand for Uncle Herman, five thousand for Lily. Everyone agreed this was a fine idea. “Well see who can make the best use of the money,” Marilyn chirped.
Grandpa and Herman decided to use their share to perfect Grandpa’s greatest invention…a machine to transmit electric power without wires!
“I only hope it works better than your invention to send messages through the air without wires,” Herman quipped. “That failed when all the pigeons died!”
Lily, on the other hand, was determined to enter professional life in a field for which she had a natural aptitude.
“I’m going to open a beauty parlor,” she boasted.
Scene 5
They divided the money—Lily opened a beauty shop—
From the 16-page booklet:
“Madame Lily’s Beauty Shop” was soon open to the public. It was flowery and fussy, but women go for that sort of thing. Lily and Marilyn arranged a shelf full of jars and urns filled with beauty preparations handed down generation to generation in the family.
Examining one of the jars, Lily purred, “This Nile River mud did wonders for Cleopatra’s complexion…kept her “honeymoon fresh” for four different husbands!”
A Rolls Royce pulled up to a stop in front of Lily’s shop, and from the car stepped Mrs. Harkness (the richest woman in town) and her daughter, Dorothea. They headed directly for the shop door.
“My first customers!” cried Lily.
Scene 6
The wealthy Harknesses were the first customers
From the 16-page booklet:
The two women had been intrigued by the quaint appearance of the new beauty shop. Neither, however, was prepared for Lily’s dramatic entrance into the main salon. The daughter could barely squeak “Mother, what is that?”
Mrs. Harkness soothingly replied “Remember our last beautician wore a beard … but she did a marvelous job. And we must make an impression at the ball of the year.”
“You can take it from me,” Lily guaranteed Mrs. Harkness. “When we finish with you, people just won’t believe their eyes.”
Lily’s claim was a safe one. Her “Old World Look” employed many unorthodox beauty aids. How often can one find a beauty operator who uses toadstool powder and Deathbuoy soap?
Scene 7
Grandpa and Herman worked on an invention
From the 16-page booklet:
Grandpa’s basement lab was a mess of weird and wonderful contraptions. Grandpa and Herman labored long at the “power ray” machine. Wildly brushing cobwebs from his way, Grandpa ordered, “Hand me the rotating oscillators,” to his assistant. Herman dutifully handed Grandpa two eggbeaters, which the Senior Scientist attached to the machine.
“Now, hand me the spherical rectifiers, Herman.”
“You mean these two crummy bowling balls?” asked Herman as he tossed them over to Grandpa.
The bowling balls, too, became part of the device. And, at last, it was finished . . . ready for testing.
“We’ll know in a minute if it works,” Grandpa said. “If you’ll just stand over there against the wall, Herman, with this light bulb in your hand.”
Scene 8
The invention lit the bulb in Herman’s hand
From the 16-page booklet:
Herman took the bulb and raised it high over his head. Picking up a dusty book, he cradled it in his hand and struck a silly pose.
“Look, grandpa. I’m the Statue of Liberty!”
“And I’m the tower of Pisa . . . cut that out, Herman.”
Grandpa approached the machine. He threw the switch. Humming sounds echoed through the basement, sparks flew in all directions, and the bowling balls lit up. Grandpa aimed the ray right at Herman. The bulb glowed brightly!
The pair were enthusiastic as they waited the results of their Supreme Test. They had decided to turn on all the lights in the city by remote control. Once past that, the machine had to be judged a success by any standard.
“oh boy,” oh-boyed Herman. “This is a momentous event! I haven’t been so excited since Moon Maid had her baby in Dick Tracy!”
Scene 9
But it blew up street lights—and itself!
From the 16-page booklet:
Grandpa hushed Herman and turned on the power. The ray machine vibrated to a start. It hummed . . . it whirred. The eggbeaters pulsated; and, around town, the street lights exploded one by one! Finally, the main building at the power station went up in a terrific blast!
Grandpa’s machine, too, blew up . . . a total wreck. Two soot-covered Munsters survived the explosion in the basement. Herman emerged from the litter with an eggbeater stuck in his mouth!
Scene 10
Lily gave the Harknesses her “natural look”
From the 16-page booklet:
Most of the jars in the beauty shop had been used in the re-modeling job Lily and Marilyn performed on their first customers. Lily inspected their handiwork and pronounced Mrs. Harkness and Dorothea “ready” for unveiling . . . truly works of the beautician’s art. They left their individual beauty booths and took one look at each other . . . then, fainted dead-away. Small wonder! Dorothea looked as though she were the “Bride of Frankenstein” . . . her hair sticking straight out and her complexion turned to chalk. Mrs. Harkness had been transformed into the witch in “Snow White!”
To anyone else, they would have been ghastly sights; but Lily, puzzling over the fallen ladies, found that they appeared “much better now than when they came in.”
Scene 11
“If they can’t repair the damage, we’ll sue!”
From the 16-page booklet:
Once the Harknesses had recovered from their horror-stricken fainting spells, they fled Madame Lily’s and headed, purposefully, to the office of their lawyer.
Their entry to his office created quite a stir. Lawyer Holmes, though warned by his secretary for a possible shock, jumped up on his desk in sheer terror when first he saw Mrs. Harkness and her daughter.
“Help! What in the name of Heaven is that?” Holmes yelled to his secretary in the next room.
Soon his “girl Friday” had laid his fears to rest. The attorney climbed warily down from his desk. “I get it,” he said to Mrs. Harkness. “You’re going to a masquerade party! Which one of you is St. George and which is the dragon?”
The women, in a torrent of words, explained the reason for their ghoulish appearance. Their lawyer, in turn, promised there was sufficient evidence at hand to warrant a lawsuit . . . in fact, it looked to Mr. Holmes that the culprits deserved to be in jail!
Scene 12
They lied to each other about their “successes.”
From the 16-page booklet:
That night at the Munsters’, Eddie, Marilyn, Lily, and Grandpa joined Herman at the dining table. There was very little conversation about the day’s happenings in their separate business ventures. Everyone felt too guilty to talk much.
The Munsters are not ones, though, readily to admit defeat. So it was Lily, who first volunteered that she and Marilyn had struck pay-dirt with their first two customers at the beauty shop. Marilyn bragged that their customers “were going to tell everyone in town about our work.”
Grandpa, not wishing to give his troubles away, confessed that his experiments had been “a blast!”
Little Eddie sensed that all was not on the up-and-up. All the Munsters were acting funny, he thought.
“I’d say, if you were kids, you’d been in trouble at Sunday School!”
Scene 13
Grandpa and Herman rebuilt the machine
From the 16-page booklet:
“Never quit” has always been a Munster motto! Rebuilding work on the demolished energy machine progressed in the dingy confines of the basement lab. Once it was reassembled (a refinement here . . . an improvement there), Herman and Grandpa chose a more conservative path for any future experiments. Herman, however, urged Grandpa, “Can’t we try the street lights again? That was fun-fun-fun!” Grandpa, wistfully, figured experience was a good teacher as he moved the machine controls to “On.” The eggbeaters and bowling balls oscillated as before . . . but with a softer hum. It was in perfect working order!
“Instead of foolin’ around, Herman, I’ll just ring the telephone down at Lily’s by remote control,” said Grandpa.
Herman chuckled at this original idea. “That’s neat-o! Then, we’ll call up the zoo and ask for Mr. Fox!”
Scene 14
“It works! Let’s ring the phone in Lily’s shop!”
From the 16-page booklet:
At Madame Lily’s, though, the phone didn’t ring. It was felt more than heard.
“Dorothea, do you feel odd?” asked Mrs. Harkness as she lifted a towel from her eyes.
“Yes, I do, mother . . . like a current going in my head!”
The Harknesses had been advised by their lawyer to return to the beauty shop; and Holmes had written Lily that “unless you restore my clients to their former beauty, you will be liable to prosecution under the law.”
Scene 15
The phone didn’t ring—the Harknesses became bald!
From the 16-page booklet:
The wealthy customers called for help. The eerie sensation they felt left them unnerved; and considering their previous experience, that was understandable. Lily sped to their sides. Gently removing the towels from the ladies’ faces, she found the restoration complete. Their faces were as they had been before the first treatment.
“Let’s take off the dryers,” Lily said to Marilyn, “and see how their hair came out.”
Mrs. Harkness turned to face Dorothea and SCREAMED!
Dorothea looked at her mother and SHRIEKED!
They were both completely BALD!
Scene 16
“Gentlemen—I mean, ladies, we’ll sue for $10,000!”
From the 16-page booklet:
Mrs. Harkness made straight for Lawyer Holmes’ office . . . pulling Dorothea after her. Holmes’ secretary greeted them with “You do look different than last time.”
Holmes, too, found his clients different. Distracted by the bald heads, he offered both of the “gentlemen” cigars!
Scene 17
“We damaged city property? A fine? Jail?”
From the 16-page booklet:
Meanwhile at the Munster residence, Grandpa answered the phone, well-hidden in a coffin in the hall.
“Destroying municipal property, you say,” Grandpa repeated the conversation he heard. “Thousand dollar fine? Police? Jail? Yeah, well thanks for calling, officer.”
“Did I hear the word ‘jail’,” Herman asked the older Munster. “Why, spending time behind bars could get me thrown out of the PTA!”
“Forget it, Herman,” Grandpa soothed. “When we perfect our invention, we’ll be national heroes; and heroes they don’t throw in jail.”
Scene 18
The inventors hid when the doorbell rang
From the 16-page booklet:
Lily came home from work, almost in tears. She could hardly read the letter they had received from Holmes. Haltingly, she made her way through the dreary words: “On behalf of my clients we are instigating a lawsuit against you, demanding $10,000.”
Herman still played the wide-eyed innocent as he told Lily “I hate to say I told you so . . . but I was against this beauty shop idea from the start! What’s happened now?”
Lily confided, “At three-thirty, the hair dryers began humming, and our customers turned bald!”
Grandpa saw the whole situation in a flash. “Why, Herman, at three-thirty we were trying to ring Lily’s! In legal terms, we are the baldors and they are the baldees!”
The front door knocker stunned the Munsters from their silence. “It’s the Police,” shouted Herman. “Quick, Grandpa, let’s hide in the basement!” The two men quickly tumbled through the trapdoor to the lab.
Scene 19
“Our hair is back—we’ll buy your invention!”
From the 16-page booklet:
Lily answered the door and found, to her surprise, the Harknesses. Lily was astonished. “Your hair . . . it’s grown back!” she sighed happily.
Mrs. Harkness assured Lily that her treatment has been responsible; she even offered financial aid to put Lily’s “overnight hair restorer” on the market.
Scene 20
“Our troubles are over, Lily; we destroyed the machine!”
From the 16-page booklet:
Lily was in a delirious frame of mind as Mrs. Harkness and Dorothea left. “Come up here, at once,” she called down to Herman and Grandpa. Her optimism was short-lived, for Herman replied as he stuck his head through the trap-door, “Good news to you, Lily. We’ve destroyed the ray machine!”
Scene 21
The repaired machine grew hair—on bowling balls!
From the 16-page booklet:
Lily broke into tears as she told them, “The machine is worth a fortune. It grows hair overnight!”
Quicker than you can say “Boris Karloff,” Grandpa and Herman were back in the lab tinkering with the power-ray machine. And faster than “Jack Dracula” . . . it was in operating condition. Grandpa aimed the ray-gun at Herman’s head and waited. No hair grew from his skull. “I don’t understand it,” moaned Grandpa. “There’s enough juice going through there to grow hair on a bowling ball!”
He seized the controls and jammed them from “full on” to EMERGENCY! Herman gasped. He pointed to the machine. The bowling balls were sprouting hair!
“Well, Grandpa, I guess if we can find somebody who’ll buy hairy bowling balls, we’ll still make a fortune!”
15 comments:
Nice scans. I'm Joe that you traded emails with last year. Just started a Blogger account now.
By this point in the series they were saving time by not applying the makeup to their hands and arms. Hey, the View-Master people are here. And they're shooting in color.
Thanks Joe. Good to hear from you again. These particular Munsters scans are time consuming to remaster, but they are almost done.
What is your blog's name? Can you provide the URL? I'd love to drop in and read some stuff.
Cheers. JAM
I haven't created one. I signed up so I could post some comments on your blog.
I have the Munsters View-Master. I bought it around 2004 on Ebay for about 25 dollars. Worth it for a rare item. I was ready to outbid everyone.
Wow, only $25? If you ever wanted to sell it on eBay, these days you could fetch around $150 as long as it is in good condition. Getting it for $25 was a steal!
Also got the Green Hornet View-master for about the same amount. I have my Ebay purchases with the prices listed on a paper somewhere. I bought alot of stuff with my introduction to the Internet and Ebay.
I miss getting those rare items on Ebay. I think all payments now are done through Paypal which I haven't made the effort to understand. I was always paying before with money orders. So I haven't gotten anything from Ebay in years.
That table also served as Herman's barber chair. A mad doctor's only recourse.
I read that the View-Master people would come in with their special cameras for a TV series episode filming day. Makes me wonder if there were shots taken but never used?
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I wish I had the Green Hornet. I've been wanting to get that one for years, but every time somebody offered a good quality copy for sale I was not in the position to take advantage of it. So GH is on my wish list. I had a copy as a child, but it got lost and did not survive my childhood. Maybe one day I can get a copy and put it on the blog. I think the visitors would probably like it.
I've done snapshots of the Green Hornet View-Master pictures, with a negatives light viewer and a digital camera on macro. I could email them to you and you could put them on your blog. When I bought them on Ebay, it didn't come with the outer package and booklet. You could use the story descriptions on the reels.
Okay. We can try. Maybe I can piece together the booklet and cover from other sources. That's very nice of you. Thank you. The email address would be the one inside my ABOUT ME page.
I don't know why they changed Al Lewis' jacket lapels to red when they were still filming in black and white.
It was me with the last post. I had javascript disabled and that made me be labeled Anonymous.
I wish they would of made a return visit to the most popular shows and do a second episode View-master release. Zombo or Not Just Another Pretty Face would of been good ones.
Happy Days and Land of the Lost got the 2nd release treatment in the 1970s.
Yeah, it would have been nice to have another episode. Besides the ones you named I also remember The Partridge Family had two episodes too. I'm going to be publishing one PF in a post eventually.
I wish they would've started The Munsters VM with a Season 1 episode. Season 2 had many good ones, but I think Season 1 was consistently better. Another Season 2 episode that would've been nice to see on VM, besides the ones you mentioned, might have been The Treasure of Mockingbird Heights.
I did like Fred Gwynne's characterization better in the first season. Just slightly naive, but mostly clumsy. By the second season he was being made childish for more comedic effect I guess, but the earlier characterization was more subtle and likable.
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