Awful

Abysmal horror-'comedy'. Real-life husband and wife Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss play a couple who move their family into a rundown mansion, left to the husband by his recently deceased uncle. Turns out that somewhere in the house is the Book of Evil, which ends up releasing several monsters into the 'real world'. To save the world a way has to be found to return the creatures to the book. Richard Benjamin is normally entertaining, but everything about the way he looks and sounds here (he's almost sleepwalking) says he'd rather be somewhere else. Paula Prentiss seems at least to be trying to have fun. Jeffrey Tambor in an early film appearance as a vampire looks embarrassed. Character actor Severn Darden hams it up as Van Helsing. The title misleads - the movie doesn't satirise 'slashers' (Friday the 13th came out just the year before), but focuses on the classic Universal-type monsters - and the humour is pretty non-existent. The very cute Kari Michaelsen as the daughter gets this a 3/10. Truly dreadful.