PopHorror Let's Get Scared
When Charles Addams created the brilliantly dark The Addams Family cartoon, he found a way to represent the outcasts who have taught important lessons about acceptance and family for decades. One iteration of the famous creepy kooky family holds as a shining example to this day. Let’s celebrate 30 years of Addams Family Values (1993)!
One of many adaptations of the original comic strip, Addams Family Values is considered superior even as a sequel to the original The Addams Family (1991). The humor is darker, the action is bigger, and the stakes are higher. But most of all, its message is stronger.
Morticia (Angelica Huston, The Witches, 1990) and Gomez (Raul Julia, Frankenstein Unbound, 1990) are celebrating the arrival of little Pubert Addams, but they must be on high alert as Wednesday (Christina Ricci, Yellowjackets, 2001) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman, Star Trek, 2009) try to murder the precious bundle of misery. This calls for a nanny! The Addams family hires Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack, Shameless, 2011) who provides just the right amount of instability and support to suit the spooky Addams clan. But Debbie has a dirty little secret.
She’s a bona fide Black Widow. She seeks the attention of rich men, marries them, and kills them, making off with their estates and changing her identity so she can do it all over again. Once more, Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd, Piranha 3D, 2010) is pulled into a scheme to rob the Addams of every last thing of value.
What Debbie doesn’t know is that this family has more value than she could have bargained for. After all, the family who preys together stays together. It’s understandable, really. Fester is a lonely man, baying at the moon, longing for a love as unshakable as Morticia and Gomez’s fiery passion, as most of us do. You can’t blame him for being swept away by Debbie’s evil charm.
Meanwhile, there’s the issue of the children. After several failed manslaughter attempts, Wednesday and Pugsley are shipped off to camp where they will learn conformity and how to smile… maybe.
Until the recent Wednesday (2022), directed by Tim Burton (Beetlejuice, 1988) and starring the lovely Jenna Ortega (Scream, 2022), we’ve only known Wednesday as the perpetual pre-teen. Here, she’s in her most difficult pre-teen prime. While she stayed mainly in the supporting role for the duration of the original 1964 television series, this is where we get our first real look at Wednesday out and about in the world, interacting with other children and adults. Sort of. In true Omen fashion, she plays it close to the chest, always getting the last word, and plotting murder at every opportunity.
Christina Ricci raised the bar to almost impossible heights that only the very talented Jenna Ortega could follow.
As we saw in the first feature-length adaptation of The Addams Family, Wednesday and Pugsley have a flair for the dramatic, and thrive in Le Grande Guignol. In a fantastic portrayal of the true meaning of Thanksgiving, the children strike out against revisionist history, teaching everyone that their oppressive rules and silly traditions mean nothing and that the truth is, that the colonists slaughtered the Native Americans, forcing them into poverty.
And Wednesday finds her smile.
In the end, we’ve learned that it’s okay to be weird, and important to be honest, family is forever, and if it isn’t just like Morticia and Gomez, we don’t want it.
If there’s one horror movie worth watching while the kids are in the room and mom is in the kitchen cooking up a feast, it’s Addams Family Values.
If it’s a family movie night you need, look no further – Addams Family Values is currently streaming on Paramount Plus.
