The Munsters is an American sitcom about the home life of a family of benign monsters that aired from 1964 to 1966. The series stars Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster (Frankenstein's monster), Yvonne De Carlo as his vampire wife Lily, Al Lewis as Count Dracula, Beverley Owen (later replaced by Pat Priest) as their niece Marilyn, and Butch Patrick as their werewolf-like son Eddie. The show was a satire of American suburban life, the wholesome television family fare of the era and traditional monster movies. It achieved higher Nielsen ratings than did the similarly macabre-themed The Addams Family, which aired concurrently on ABC.
The Munsters are a Transylvanian-American family living in fictional city of Mockingbird Heights. The running gag is that the odd-looking family with strange tastes considers itself to be an average American family. Other than Marilyn, the characters' costumes and appearances were based on classic monsters of Universal Studios films of the 1930s and 1940s.