Gomez Addams - Film Versions

Film Versions

Gomez was played by Raúl Juliá in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). The film version of Gomez shares the fun-loving personality of his sitcom counterpart, including his affinity for swordfighting and train sets. However, Gomez is noticeably calmer and more suave in the films than his television counterparts, and even speaks with an English accent (as Juliá had previously adapted his accent to an English one for various Shakespeare plays). Gomez also regularly plays chess with Thing, the disembodied hand, friend and servant of the family. Another quirk is his tendency to drive golf balls off the roof of his house, enraging his next-door neighbor, who has to contend with the balls smashing his windows. He likes to play darts as well, with Lurch holding the board and maneuvering it so that he always scores a bullseye; at one point, Lurch forgets to move the board and ends up swallowing a dart.

In the first film, Gomez has lost track of his brother Fester's whereabouts and has not spoken to him in 25 years. Gomez's desire to locate Fester leads to him and his family being conned by grifters who want to swindle their fortune. Gomez is so depressed at being thrown out of his own home that he becomes unemployed and spends all day watching daytime TV and calling in to the Tv show asking if the person who they are chatting to knows the whereabouts of witches.

The films differ from the television series in several ways, most significantly that Fester is Gomez's brother (in the television show, he was Morticia's uncle). The Addams Family notes that Gomez's parents were murdered by an angry mob, though in one scene in the sequel, when Gomez catches Fester with a pornographic magazine, they both look at the centrefold (unseen by the viewer) and fondly say "Mom" (though this could be indicative to the model's likeness to their mother). In Addams Family Values, Gomez and Morticia have a third child named Pubert, a seemingly indestructible baby with a thin, black moustache like his father.

In 1998, Tim Curry took up the role in the film Addams Family Reunion. The next year, Gomez was played by Glenn Taranto in the TV series The New Addams Family, where he returned to the madcap attitude of his original 1960s incarnation.