‘Wednesday’ Is Here: Our Ranking of the ‘Addams Family’ Films & TV Series

Not even Tim Curry could save this direct-to-video movie, which followed the Addams clan as they mistakenly attended the wrong family reunion. With the movie’s bargain-basement VFX and production values, we doubt anyone shed a tear when their VCR gobbled up their Addams Family Reunion VHS tape.

The uninspired title says it all: This sequel to the computer-animated Addams Family — see below — just feels like a by-the-numbers cash grab. Plus, the road-trip premise took the family away from their usual Gothic milieu, one of the highlights of the first movie.

The first animated adaptation of Charles Addams’ cartoons came in this short-lived NBC show, which depicted a road-trip storyline similar to that of The Addams Family 2, right down to the “creepy camper.” This series hasn’t aged well, but at least it featured a young Jodie Foster as the voice of Pugsley.

The Addamses returned to Saturday morning TV nearly two decades later in this ABC series. This Addams Family lacked the dark humor of other adaptations but boasted a stellar voice cast — including Carol Channing, Jim Cummings, and John Astin, who was the original Gomez in the 1964 series.

An animated Addams Family movie seemed like a good way to reunite with the fam, especially because CGI can provide thrills and chills difficult to pull off IRL. But part of the appeal of the Addams Family is that they’re not so family-friendly, and this film’s PG humor lacked the subversiveness of its live-action predecessors.

What even is an Addams Family film or TV show without that familiar finger-snapping, harpsichord-heavy theme song? Nevertheless, this live-action sitcom, which aired on Fox Family in the U.S., was sufficiently twisted and often hilarious, like when Wednesday (Nicole Fugere) and Pugsley (Brody Smith) went trick-or-treating as Siskel and Ebert (or “two of history’s most frightening and intimidating creatures,” as Gomez says).

Anjelica Huston got a Golden Globe nomination for her turn as Morticia in this Paramount Pictures blockbuster (and for its sequel, too), but we’d say Christina Ricci’s performance as Wednesday was just as iconic. And all these years later, we’re still freaked out by the sight of the disembodied hand known simply as Thing.

We have this live-action ABC sitcom to thank for Vic Mizzy’s iconic Addams Family theme song, and Carolyn Jones and John Astin set the tone for all Morticias and Gomezes to follow. Plus, we give special props — pun intended — to the set design, which had the Addams mansion decorated with a two-headed turtle, for example, and a mounted swordfish with a human leg sticking out of its mouth.

Rare is the sequel that improves on the first installment, but this movie — our pick for best Addams Family movie to date — upped the stakes and the humor as a gold-digging serial killer sets her sights on Fester and as Morticia and Gomez welcome a son named Pubert. (Gomez, gazing down at his newborn: “He has my father’s eyes.” Morticia: “Gomez, take those out of his mouth.”)

Casting Catherine Zeta-Jones as this Netflix series’ Morticia was a master stroke, but the real casting coup, it turns out, was Jenna Ortega, whose performance as Wednesday marked a clever reversal of her scream-queen reputation and earned her a Golden Globe nomination. With direction from gothic filmmaker Tim Burton, Wednesday puts its titular character in a new milieu, the private school Nevermore Academy, where teens are even more monstrous than usual.