Funny inspite of itself, Demon Keeper is a rapaciously campy horror film that asks the musical question: "What did I ever do to get mixed up in your lousy karma?"

The film works essentially on The Cat and the Canary principle of assembling a group of people together (the more ornery the product mix, the better) in an old creaky house for a seance, impede their exit via a thunderstorm and flash flood, then proceed to knock them off like flies on a picnic brunch.

Like cop movies that open with a shootout in a convenience store, torching a 17th-century witch at the stake is as an honorable means as any to get the ball rolling with a fright flick. It's no different here as a young maiden gets her naked tits tweaked by the masked executioner, only to exhale Scud missiles of bad-breath demons into the air that will subsequently wreak havoc a few centuries later.

Edward Albert plays a modern-day psychic out to bleed a rich widow dry. Her nephew, however, wants the money for himself, and so hires a goa-tee'd Dirk Benedict, playing a celebrated medium named Alexander Harris, to determine if Albert is on the up and up. Excuse me? A medium investigating a psychic? Isn't that on the same oxy-moronic wavelength as police internal affairs? And, as if the ghost of Charlton Heston were lurking somewhere in the hallway closet, Albert and Benedict play this thing like shameless hams vying for prime shelf space on a deli counter.

To prove his validity to the widow, Albert holds a "special" psychic retreat (as if there are common garden varieties of them). Only quicker than you can say H.P. Lovecraft, Albert taps, erringly, into a demon force and keeps bleating, "there's something unnatural in this house!" Evidence that Albert must be a true psychic, because at this point, there's a tally of four stiffs with more to come.

The body count rises, and so does Benedict to the occasion to do battle with Satan. Benedict gets that look in his eye and you wonder which of the two is going to be worse for wear by film's end.

Lovely Penthouse Pet (1992) Katrina Maltby is along for the ride to add some totally pointless (but thankful) nudity to the proceedings.

Also stars Andre Jacobs, Adrienne Pearce, Jennifer Sieyn, Claire Marshall, Diane Nuttall and Elsa Martin.