1. Stay Tuned (1992)

Nick’s Post:

In August of 1992, another film was added to the already growing pile of domestic fantasy films that were towering over the late 80’s and early 90’s. You know exactly what I’m talking about: “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (along with the Shrunk sequels), “Mom and Dad Save the World”, “Little Monsters”, “Harry and the Hendersons”, “Hocus Pocus”, mutha-truckin’ “GHOST DAD” (I’m sorry for the last one).

“Stay Tuned” is a twist on the tried and true ‘Deal with the Devil’ story. I could take the easy way out and say it’s the Faustian story, but I prefer to call it the “Oh God! You Devil” story. Basically something is lacking in a character’s life, the devil comes around, they make a deal (do I really have to explain this?)

In this film, the deal is made between a slovenly plumbing equipment salesman named Roy Knable played by John Ritter (who I have a soft spot for – and not just because he looks like my dad from the 70’s) and a demonic door-to-door TV/satellite salesman named Spike, played by resident 80’s/90’s comedic bad guy Jeffrey Jones (let’s not get into the disturbing aspects of Jones’s personal life, that you can look up yourself).

Here’s the gist: Roy is an absolute freak for television. He comes home from his job and sits in front of it for hours and hours (He doesn’t even take the time to beat his kids beforehand!). Roy purchases a TV/satellite package from Spike which promises to provide channels that you can’t get with normal television service. Roy’s wife Helen (Pam Dawber of “Mork and Mindy” fame – obviously the main character casting was not an accident) disapproves of the purchase and Roy’s psychotic obsession with television. They both get sucked into the satellite, sending them into hell-ish parodies of games shows, Wayne’s World,  wrestling, and others (I know, it’s the same exact plot as “The Falcon and the Snowman”).

The whole movie is unapologetically stupid, but it’s the good kind of stupid. They make an attempt to provide a logical reason for bringing the couple into the satellite: Spike and his minions need souls for Beelzebub. If the Knables are destroyed before the time limit runs out they stay in hell for eternity, but if the Knables survive, they’re returned home, blah, bling, bloop, blah, blah, blah.

Really, the justification for this movie’s existence is to see what parodies they can come up with. For the most part the titles are pretty funny (“The Golden Ghouls”, “Northern Overexposure”, and the very topical “David Dukes of Hazzard”) even if they forget to include the demonic element in most of the programs the Knables escape to (The Old West film, the detective film, the French Revolution miniseries). But again, who cares? Eugene Levy is in the damn movie!

The two strongest parts of the film are without a doubt the cartoon segment (directed by Chuck Jones) and the Salt n’ Pepa music video. I haven’t seen this movie in about fifteen years, so seeing that video again was an awesome surprise. I almost feel bad mentioning it here, because part of its effectiveness is how surprising it is when it appears (Note: That didn’t keep the makers of the trailer from including all of the best surprise moments. Leave us SOMETHING!).

The main weakness of the film is the kids. The damn kids. I think the filmmakers just reached their hands into the Generic 90’s suburban kid barrel and came up with two of the most uninspired characters they could find. The son is nerdy, introverted, and incredible with machines. Wow. What a refreshing change of pace! I’m pretty sure you couldn’t have a 90’s movie without that kid. It was a law. The daughter is a “Blossom” reject with a distracting speech impediment (she always sounds like she’s talking through a whole pack of Hubba Bubba) whose main purpose in the film is to yell such things as “Daryl!”, “Hurry!” “That’s looks just like mom!”, “That’s looks just like dad!” and my personal favorite threat in the film: “You’re pizza topping!”

If you want to delve into “Stay Tuned” don’t expect the world of it, but also don’t expect it to be completely unentertaining. It actually surprised me how much I still enjoyed it (which I’m afraid might not be true of other films on this list).

I could definitely see “Stay Tuned” being sold in a double-sided DVD two pack for 2.99. I would gladly scoop it up.

Kate’s post:

Having lived for 27 years as Kate, I know her motivations and weaknesses well. I know that she wildly rides waves of enthusiasm that break suddenly on shores of disappointment. I know that she loves parody, subversion, and the concept of parallel realities. I know that she loves Halloween. I know that she loves ‘The Golden Girls’.

My boyfriend also knows me well – a bit too well, as I’m now discovering that I can’t get away with nearly as much as I used to. Resolved to choose the movie that we watched on a particular night, he piqued my interest in ‘Stay Tuned’ (1992) by using the keywords ‘The Golden Ghouls’. My eyes lit up, my heart raced against my mind – is Sofia actually a reanimated skeleton with giant glasses and a handbag? Is Blanche intentionally spreading STDs through Miami’s geriatric population (à la ‘Kids’)? Did Rose commit atrocities on the Germanic simpletons of St. Olaf? Has Dorothy made a golem from Stan’s toupées? Will we finally discover that the oft-threatened Shady Pines is really an asylum for the criminally insane? All I could say was, ‘Ma-estro!’

Alas, the love of my life quickly revealed that the title ‘The Golden Ghouls’ is merely referenced in the movie – it doesn’t show any actual scenes. I collapsed, feeling utterly betrayed, and wondered how hard it would be to get out of my lease, as I was clearly living with an absolute monster – the Karl Denke of our generation, if you will.

How dare you, sir? How dare you use your knowledge of my soul just to be able to watch what you want?

But dare he did, and thankfully succeed he did, because I was exposed to this feat of cine-magic. This is my story.

***

Once in a great while, you meet someone who makes you think, why couldn’t we have been childhood friends? We could have had so much more time together before adulthood ravaged our sleep schedules and ability to trust! That’s how ‘Stay Tuned’ felt for me. Why didn’t I watch this instead of renting The Sandlot for that 136th time? Why wasn’t this movie integral to the formation of my personality? I might have been a different person. I might have been an astronaut, or a robber baron, or had fewer cavities.

Unfortunately, I’ll never know the ‘Sliding Doors’-type alternate reality that may have been had I watched ‘Stay Tuned’ as a child. Fortunately, I was able to watch this movie for the first time with all of my accumulated experiences and knowledge, which made viewing ‘Stay Tuned’ all the more rich.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that it is this same accumulation of experience and knowledge that ends up being our protagonist’s greatest asset in the film. John Ritter breathes life into Roy Knable, a Seattle-based plumbing salesman who spends his days camped out in front of the television, blind to the needs of his family – and especially those of his wife, Helen. Following a heated argument culminating in Helen breaking the TV, Roy receives a new dish system from Hell Vision. Helen and Roy have another fight about the dish and are sucked into Hell Vision, where they are given 24 hours to save their souls while bouncing between hellish parodies of shows and movies. They must use problem-solving and Roy’s broad knowledge of TV tropes and conventions to get through alive.

The shows that they are put in range in genre and length, which include (among many others): a skit from ‘Duane’s Underworld’ on ‘Saturday Nite Dead’ (“Excrement!”); a preview for ‘Three Men and Rosemary’s Baby’ (which I want to watch more than anything); a clip from a workout video called ‘The Exorcicist’, which, taken out of context I would’ve assumed was a Tim and Eric creation; a millisecond of ‘Frankensteinfeld’ (yep, that’s Frankenstein’s monster doing stand-up); and then just titles, like ‘The Golden Ghouls’. My favorite parts of the movie were Roy’s appearance in a Salt n’ Pepa music video (for his costume alone) and the commercial for an armchair that is also a toilet (the movie consistently pokes fun at the cheesy materialism of the ‘80s/’90s and the interrelated decline of the ‘American dream’, but that could be a post on its own).

An interesting aspect of the movie is the tension between the successful wife and the clearly unfulfilled husband, which is presented to us the reason for Roy’s couch-potatery (that’s a noun now). It’s easy to comment on the use of escapism, as Roy is obsessed with television, but the movie cleverly flips this escapism theme on its head by making the otherwise passive audience (Roy and Helen) into the active party. This subversion of escapism is used later in ‘Pleasantville’ (1998), in which Tobey Maguire’s character tries to ‘escape’ the complexities of modern life by living vicariously through a ‘Leave it to Beaver’-type show; when he’s sucked in, however, he realizes that life there is just as, if not more, complex. (Fun fact: the son [David Tom] in ‘Stay Tuned’ also plays Whitey in ‘Pleasantville’.)

Another connection between ‘Pleasantville’ and ‘Stay Tuned’ is the function of the ‘producer’, which, in ‘Pleasantville’, is Don Knotts as a television repairman, who supplies the remote control and remains the connection between the two worlds. In ‘Stay Tuned’, Jeffrey Jones plays Mr. Spike, the producer of Hell Vision, who ostensibly has control over the programming. His role is also similar to that of Ed Harris in ‘The Truman Show’, in that they have the most knowledge (and thus control) of the circumstances, and are simultaneously the narrator and a reflection of the external audience.

The office dynamics of Hell Vision are nearly as entertaining to watch as the Knables’ own trials. There is an ongoing power struggle between Mr. Spike, Mr. Crowley (Eugene Levy), and a young ambitious intern, who, when alive, was a film student. One of the more memorable lines in the Hell Vision scenes comes from the latter: ‘It’s not the blood I find distressing, but the lack of context.’ While I cringed at the genuity of his pretentiousness, I realized that this is exactly how I feel about ‘American Horror Story’.

Perhaps of most interest to me was that the story is clearly a good application of the Hero’s Journey, as developed by Joseph Campbell. First, we have the ‘ordinary world’ – in which we find our ‘hero’, Roy Knable, uneasy about his place in his family and in life in general. Then, the appearance of Mr. Spike and the damned dish provides the ‘call to adventure’. As both the blocking and helping female character, Helen Knable ‘refuses the call’ for Roy, but nevertheless, they ‘cross the threshold’ into Hell Vision. While Mr. Spike continues to be the primary ‘enemy’, Mr. Crowley ends up being an unlikely ‘ally’. The ‘ordeals’ are self-evident, as is the ‘reward’ – in the end, in true Campbellian fashion, the hero follows his bliss.

To end, ‘Stay Tuned’ is truly one of the better movies I’ve seen recently. It appeals to my own tendency for escapism and infuses a sense of novelty into my accumulated experience of media.

If you like the following, you should definitely give ‘Stay Tuned’ a shot:

‘The ‘Burbs’; ‘Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job’; ‘Tales From the Crypt’; John Waters; ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’; ‘Pleasantville’; ‘Beetlejuice’; ‘The Truman Show’

*I’ve been informed that we should have a rating system. After consulting with my sister, my rating system will be ‘How Many Nights Nick Will Be Sleeping On The Couch After Making Me Watch That’.

‘Stay Tuned’ (1992): 0/5 nights

Watch the trailer here!