It's not just that The Crazysitter is a terribly made and entirely laugh-free "family comedy" that features a whole lot of inappropriate schtick and looks like it was made over the course of three lazy afternoons in between repeated viewings of Home Alone and Full House reruns. It's that this keeningly terrible flick features a half-dozen performers who, given the right material, can be really quite excellent. This movie feels like a character actor garage sale, and as you pick through the merchandise, all you'll feel is an unhealthy dose of humiliation for all involved parties.

Ed Begley Jr. and Carol Kane play a pair of snooty and inattentive parents who have two blonde terrors. The little boy and girl do all sorts of terrible things, and when they plant firecrackers inside of a birthday cake, the most recent nanny heads for the hills.

Fortunately here comes Edie, a brassy ex-con who cares nothing for children, but digs the idea of a job in which she can laze around the house all day like a beer-swilling slug. So through a series of outlandishly moronic contrivances, the parents hire Edie, head overseas, and leave the grating harlot in charge of the two blonde terrors.

So far it sounds precisely like the terrible comedy you'd expect, right? Well, then wait till you get a load of the actual "plot" of The Crazysitter: Edie hatches a plan to "sell" the two kids to the highest bidder, which affords the viewer numerous scenes in which prospective "buyers" are horrified by the kids' behavior, thereby prompting Edie to somehow grow half a heart and...

Ugh, I can't even continue. This thing is so bad it makes the Beethoven sequels look like the Beethoven symphonies.

Wandering through the low-budget dreck you'll find Phil Hartman as a creepy salesman, Lisa Kudrow as a ditzy talk-show host, Bill Schilling as a child-absuing doctor, Steve Landesberg (?!) as a detective, and Nell Carter as a singing jail warden. Were The Crazysitter even remotely amusing (even by accident) we might have a surreal cult classic of the wackiest variety, but no. The humor os forced and desperate, the acting is outright terrible, and the forced sentimentality that dares to poke its head up during the final frames ... shameless.

The DVD

Video: Yet another Corman/Dinsey full-screened and shoddily framed eyesore.

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Much of the flick sounds like it was recorded via answering machine.

Extras

A few cast & crew biographies and some trailers for The Crazysitter, No Dessert Dad, Invisible Mom, and The Kid with X-Ray Eyes.

Final Thoughts

Long before he was a MADtv favorite, Michael McDonald churned out some questionable fare for the Corman Machine. McDonald's Welcome to Planet Earth is a surprisingly funny little oddball flick; The Crazysitter is eleven kinds of cinematic torture rolled up into one 90-minute migraine.