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It's the year's funniest prank. The hecklers jeer at love scenes, hoot at tacky special effects and pounce on every dumb line. Creator Joel Hodgson and his colleagues throw in savvy technical references ("I think we just flew through a dissolve," someone cracks during an airplane flight) along with a torrent of smart-mouthed ad libs. "How do we stand on fuel?" asks an onscreen astronaut. "I'm for it," comes the offscreen retort. In the tense few seconds before lift-off, a voice pipes up, "Did I leave the water running?" A scientist leans into a pair of earphones, trying to pick up a weak radio signal; the invented line is "I can't see a thing." Not since Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? has anyone had so much fun with bad movies.
Joe Flaherty knows bad movies too; as Count Floyd, the seedy late-night host on the old SCTV comedy show, he used to introduce dreck like Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses. Playing the incompetent mad scientist in Maniac Mansion, Flaherty again shows a flair for sweet dimwittedness. Another SCTV veteran, Eugene Levy, is co-creator of this twisted update of The Addams Family, which was inspired by, of all things, a computer game.
Maniac Mansion has the old SCTV spirit, mixing the outrageous and the banal with nary a hint that anybody knows the difference. In one episode, Uncle Harry, who is still buzzing around the house, falls for a female fly, then has to console his jealous (and still life-size) wife. "We've got 20 years -- that's a history," he tells her. "That's something I could never have with a fly. Because they only live for -- what? -- two weeks max." Flaherty, meanwhile, is disarmingly oblivious to the havoc he is creating. When he concocts a serum that turns his shy guinea pig into a snarling monster, he simply lets the hellion loose outdoors with a cheery "Run free!"
For TV's oddball comedies, that could be a rallying cry.