The film stars Ernest Borgnine as a grandfather telling his grandson a story about the wizard Merlin opening up a store in the modern-day United States.

Although the opening segment implies that Merlin's magical interventions in people's lives are intended to have a benign effect, in practice this proves to be far from the case.

Jonathan quickly grows excited and becomes obsessed with the book's powers, but begins to dramatically age due to the rapid depletion of one's life force required to cast the spells.

Suspicious, the boy's father David consults a psychic friend, and she advises to throw the monkey away, which he does, but Michael finds it in the trash and returns it to the house.

The family attempts to flee as the monkey's cymbals go into motion, but before they can strike again, Merlin, who had been searching for the toy the entire time, suddenly appears and takes it back to his shop, promising to “deal with” the murderous object “later”.

[5][6] The hosts and writers of the show used the sloppy editing on the second subplot, the disconnection between the two halves of the movie, and the wildly varying tone of the film as the basis for many of the jokes.

On December 29, 2020, RiffTrax released a VOD version featuring Mystery Science Theater 3000 alums Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett.