“Addams Family Values” Is a Perfect Thanksgiving Horror Film [The Lady Killers Podcast]

“I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs, or electric chairs. But sometimes people just won’t listen. And so, I have to use persuasion. And slides.”

As the weather cools and the holidays approach, we get the urge to curl up with loved ones around a crackling fire to watch a good old-fashioned family movie. A film where a loveable clan tries to overcome their problems by leaning on love and respect for one another. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, but we hopefully emerge from this loving cocoon reaffirmed in our own sense of family values. For horror fans, only one household fits the bill. Barry Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family Values features one of the genre’s most beloved broods, a lineage of morbid misfits who live by their own rules and love to take pleasure in the spooky and macabre. This perfectly cast and executed film not only features a flawless depiction of familial love, but a polished lady killer we just can’t seem to hate. 

Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack) is looking for love. This perky and effusive nanny takes a job caring for the newest member of the Addams family, but finds herself smitten with the baby’s reclusive Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd). After a whirlwind courtship, the two marry and dash off for a tropical honeymoon. But the moment Fester says “I do,” Debbie’s affection evaporates. It seems she is a notorious Black Widow with a string of dead husbands in her wake. Perhaps she hasn’t fallen head over heels for the bald Addams brother, but plans to make him her next victim. 

In the newest episode of Bloody FM’s The Lady Killers Podcast, co-hosts Jenn Adams, Sammie Kuykendall, Rocco Thompson, and Mae Shults walk down the aisle with one of their favorite female murderers while chatting about blond villains, insufferable camp counselors, and a musical number we can’t stop singing. How does Morticia (Anjelica Huston) look so glamorous while giving birth? Is Debbie destined to become an Addams? What other horrors lurk in the Harmony Hut and why would a Summer Camp mount a Thanksgiving musical? They’ll answer all these questions and more while sharing their love for this kooky family classic.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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