directed by jack sholder

masada productions/new line productions

Sometimes, I watch a movie and I just wonder how it ended up exactly the way it did. Take this flighty little number: It plays essentially like a PG-rated family comedy, but it also includes some vaguely gory killings, flashes of nudity, a mislocated but frightening hallucination, and, unexpectedly, the band Sic F*cks. And Jack Palance, and Martin Landau, gleefully overacting as two deranged asylum escapees. Fans of the original NBC-TV series The A-Team will be glad to see “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock as the patriarch of the family in peril, and general film aficionados possibly will enjoy Donald Pleasence’s turn as the loopy, stoned head of the psychiatric institution turned porous by a power outage. Amusingly, the family never actually seems to be in the dark, thanks to the marvels of movie lighting. (Hardly anyone’s alone at any point, either.) Overall, a strangely effervescent experience given the subject matter.

why did i watch this movie?

I don’t recall exactly, but it’s possible the star-studded cast had something to do with it. It was described as being a lot more suspenseful.

should you watch this movie?

If you enjoy the way movies were made in the 1980s, as it’s very of that time. Change a few elements and it could have been almost any type of flick from its era. The “club” scenes, as always, are a bonus.

highlight and low point

Palance and Landau are highly entertaining, as is Pleasence’s understated performance, and the Sic F*cks were a treat (which ceased to be a mystery once I saw Adny Shernoff’s name attached to theirs in the credits). Drawbacks are a lack of commitment to the scare trade and what could be construed as tokenism in some of the stock characters.

rating from outer space: B