David Welch Movies

Inspired more by the 1960s TV series than by the original Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons, The Addams Family proved to be one of the more successful of the TV shows-turned-movies of the 1990s. The film opens on a recreation of the magazine cartoon wherein the ghoulish Addamses prepare to pour hot oil upon a group of merry Christmas carolers. After a series of vignettes which establish the characters of Gomez (Raul Julia), Morticia (Anjelica Huston), Wednesday (Christina Ricci), Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and family servants Lurch (Carel Struycken) and Thing (Christopher Hart), the plot proper gets under way. A stranger, played by Christopher Lloyd, shows up on the Addams doorstep, claiming to be long-lost Uncle Fester. It appears, however, that Lloyd is a ringer, in cahoots with attorney Tully Alford (Dan Hedaya) to strip the Addamses of their fortune. In their usual against-the-grain fashion, the Addams Family seems to delight in the possibility that they're being hoodwinked-indeed, not even kidnapping or death threats dampen the Addams clan's joy of living (or should we say dying?). The Addams Family served as the directorial debut of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a string of box-office hits, including Coming Home and Being There, director Hal Ashby announced in 1979 that his next film would be a "personal" project called The Hamster of Happiness. Two years would pass before this effort would appear on screen, by which time it had been heavily retooled in the editing room (by Ashby himself) and retitled Second-Hand Hearts. Robert Blake plays a boozing drifter, who while drunk as a skunk marries waitress Barbara Harris. The newlyweds set off on a long car trip to California, with Harris' two wretched children in tow. For this we waited two years? Weighted down with allegory, symbolism and "meaningful" character names, Second-Hand Hearts was the beginning of the end of Hal Ashby's glory days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide