With its silly musings about the "pure evil of electromagnetic energy" and its sitcom conception of middle-class family life, this 1980s horror outing has little to recommend it. Smart slasher films put their focus squarely on teen protagonists -- those convenient stand-ins for the pubescent audience. But The Horror Show's script, credited to Leslie Bohem and Allyn Warner, is more police procedural than anything, with disposable high-schoolers playing second fiddle to Brion James' hokey boogeyman and Lance Henriksen's put-upon patriarch. About the only thing The Horror Show has going for it is the casting of sci-fi mainstay Henriksen and veteran character actor Lewis Arquette as grizzled cops. If the filmmakers had jettisoned everything else and simply built a buddy movie around those two performers, maybe they'd have come up with a B-movie worth watching.