A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.

A neighborhood boy might have the solution to his problems, though. For two silver candlesticks, he promises to give Conrad a rare, vicious, growling and cunning animal with supernatural abilities, which supposedly was coveted in the past by Egyptian pharaohs, Borneo pirates and even Napoleon Bonaparte himself. Eventually the trade is made, Conrad gets the creature.

Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.