Rob Zombie's legendary debut solo album Hellbilly Deluxe came out 23 years ago, and today Twitter user @fart decided to blow everybody's minds with a very interesting story about the lead single, "Dragula."
In case you've somehow never seen the video, the hook is of course "Dig through the ditches and burn through the witches / I slam in the back of my Dragula." Here's the video:
"Dragula" refers to the car he's driving, and it's a reference to a car in the old TV show The Munsters. Except there's one problem, there was no "back" of the Dragula car in The Munsters, however there is a backseat in another car in the series, the Munsters koach. Zombie has been E X P O S E D!
I'll let @fart explain it in depth:
Okay Twitter, I'm seeing a lot of discussion on this piece of media and nearly all of it ignores a crucial fact that, once understood, changes the nature of the work.
We need talk about Dragula. Thread. (1/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
In the Summer of 1998, White Zombie frontman Rob Zombie released his first solo album, "Hellbilly Deluxe: 13 Tales of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside the Spookshow International," known to most as Hellbilly Deluxe. It was a hit. (2/21) pic.twitter.com/E9qUjfRqJT
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Hellbilly Deluxe debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200 primarily on the strength of its lead single, "Dragula." The song and video would become one of Rob Zombie's best-known tracks, and launched the album to triple platinum status in the US. (3/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
The video for the song features Rob Zombie driving the titular vehicle, but let's rewind a moment– What is the Dragula, and where does it come from? (4/21) pic.twitter.com/Igz5XC0nDn
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
To find out, we have to go all the way back to 1965 to "The Munsters" and its 36th episode, "Hot Rod Herman." In it, Herman munster modifies the family car– what Rob Zombie would call the Dragula– into a drag-racing hot rod and enters a race.(5/21) pic.twitter.com/u7845GDE3Z
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
But the Munsters' family car is not known as the Dragula. It is called the Munster Koach, and was commissioned by the show's producers to be built by Barris Kustoms in Los Angeles. The Koach is 18 feet long and required 3 Ford Model T bodies. (6/21) pic.twitter.com/4XVUL3pCyN
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
It is a real car with V8 engine. The Koach appeared in over twenty episodes of The Munsters as the family car. But fun fact: Fred Gwynne (who played Herman) was too tall for the driver's seat and had to sit on the floor to drive it. (7/21) pic.twitter.com/Ui1u5vmbLK
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Anyhow, in Hot Rod Herman, Eddie Munster boasts that his father Herman is a better driver than his friend's father, "Leadfoot" Baylor. In his arrogance, Herman modifies the Koach to be a dragster and wagers the car itself on the race. (8/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Herman loses the race and the Koach with it. But by now you're probably saying, so what, perhaps Dragula is just a nickname for the Munster Koach, and all of this makes perfect sense… Nope! (9/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
You see, the episode doesn't end there. Grandpa Munster, in his ingenuity, constructs a new hot rod to win back the Koach. And THIS vehicle is known as the Drag-U-La. (10/21) pic.twitter.com/bmslcgnDlt
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Grandpa's Drag-U-La features a golden coffin body and a 350 HP Mustang V8 engine. Instead of a typical exhaust pipe, it had organ pipes. The driver would sit in the rear. (11/21) pic.twitter.com/1e2LrzLkFP
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
This Drag-U-La looks nothing like the Munster Koach or Rob Zombie's Dragula. It's an entirely different car. In it, Grandpa gets behind the wheel and wins back the Munster Koach. (12/21) pic.twitter.com/TZCmwRjshW
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
So if the Dragula in Hellbilly Deluxe is actually a reference to Grandpa's Drag-U-La, why does the video show the Munster Koach? Was it just a case of the Koach looking cooler for the video? (13/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
If that were the case, I'd be fine with that answer and the case would be closed. But it doesn't quite add up, particularly the lyric "slam in the back of my Dragula." There's no back of Grandpa's Drag-U-La! It's a one-seater! (14/21) pic.twitter.com/r2R4ZN3KNa
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
But there IS a backseat in the Munster Koach. In fact there are demons riding in the back seat in the music video. So the Koach definitely must be the car Rob Zombie was thinking about, despite calling it a Dragula. (15/21) pic.twitter.com/T7fB2eHbzh
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
So how did those wires get crossed? And how did Rob Zombie go through the entire process of writing a song and producing a music video about the wrong car? Furthermore, there is a somewhat active community of custom car manufacturers who (16/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
would definitely know the difference between the Munster Koach and the Drag-U-La. In fact, there are replicas of both cars around Los Angeles, and one of those replica Koaches is likely what is being ridden in the video. (17/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
In "House of 1,000 Corpses," footage of the drag race from Hot Rod Herman is included in the film, so the argument could not even be made that the 1998 Dragula is of an alternate canon. The Drag-U-La exists in the Dragula universe. Fucked up. (18/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Whatever the case, what is clear is that the Dragula/Koach/Drag-U-La confusion is not terribly unlike the Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Monster discussion– you'll know what someone's talking about, but they're calling it the wrong thing. (19/21)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
To recap: Munster Koach is the original Model T-based car that the 1998 Dragula is based off of. But the name "Dragula" comes from the Drag-U-La dragster built by Grandpa Munster in Hot Rod Herman. (20/21) pic.twitter.com/Z3kvaLq4Gw
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
Thank you for reading. If you found this thread helpful, please send it to your friends so they can educate themselves about Dragula and learn more about the Munsters. (end)
— food truck drove away with my debit card (@fart) April 20, 2021
I feel so lied to, but glad I learned what's what. It's more than likely that Zombie was just taking artistic license.
If the above was too much to read for you, then allow our friends at Two Minutes to Late Night explain it succinctly in a video they posted two months ago:
