Written by a pair of ex-admen with enough sense to appeal to both thrill-seeking adults and their demanding offspring, this Faustian morality tale comprises a cavalcade of amusing sight gags, small-screen spoofery and obligatory state-of-the-art special effects for the Sega generation.
Roy Knable (Ritter) doesn't have much going for him : he's a useless husband, an unfit father, and he makes a living selling plumbing supplies. Worst of all, he's a TV junkie, a couch potato that has well and truly taken root. His wife (Dawber, Mindy to Robin Williams' Mork) is on the verge of leaving, his daughter lives for pom pom practice, and his son's the kind of handy spectacled whiz kid genius you need in a movie like this.
Roy slips further into cathode ray catatonia when the devilishly mysterious Spike (Jones) offers him an eye-popping 666 channel TV if only he'll sign on the dotted line. Transmission is interrupted when both husband and wife are sucked into their satellite dish and embroiled in Hellvision, a deadly underworld entertainment system, leaving their kids at home hot-wiring various gizmos to effect a rescue.