Stay Tuned

Stay Tuned is a 1992 American fantasy comedy film directed by Peter Hyams and written by Jim Jennewein and Tom S. Parker, with an animated sequence supervised by Chuck Jones. The film stars John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Jeffrey Jones, and Eugene Levy. Its plot follows a suburban couple who are sucked into a television world by an emissary of hell, and must survive for 24 hours in order to be released from it. Stay Tuned was released in the United States on August 14, 1992, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $12 million. Plot Struggling Seattle plumbing salesman, former fencing athlete, and couch potato Roy Knable lives with his neglected wife Helen, a vitamin product senior manager. After a fight (which involved Helen smashing the family television screen with one of Roy's fencing trophies as a wake-up call to reality), Mr. Spike, a mysterious salesman, appears at the couples' door, offering them a new high-tech satellite dish system filled with 666 channels of programs one cannot view on regular television (with titles including "Three Men and Rosemary's Baby" and "Sadistic Hidden Videos"). But Helen showed up when she discovered a TV set and later plans to divorce. Unbeknownst to Roy, Spike is an emissary from hell who wants to boost the influx of souls by arranging for TV junkies to be killed in the most gruesome and ironic situations imaginable. The 'candidates' are sucked into a hellish television world, called Hellevision, and put through a gauntlet where they must survive a number of demonic satirical versions of sitcoms and movies. If they can survive for 24 hours, they are free to go, but if they get killed, then their souls will become the property of Satan. The dish sucks Roy and Helen into this warped world, where they are put through a hellish game show, wrestling match, and a parody of Northern Exposure (titled "Northern Overexposure"), in which they meet Crowley, an exiled former co-worker of Spike's, who explains to them how this world works. Through tenacity, improvisation, and sheer luck, the Knables stay alive and escape into different channels through portals hidden within the shows and movies. While watching the TV, their young son Darryl recognizes his parents fighting for their lives as animated mice in a Tom and Jerry-style cartoon in which they are pursued by a robotic cat, after which they become separated.