 Doctor Fred Edison is an eccentric scientist who lives with his bizarre family in his centuries old home, somewhere in New England. One day, his pets, genetically engineered tentacles by the names of Green and Purple, come across waste being dumped into a creek. While Green stays away from it, Purple takes a taste of some of it and is mutated, giving him limbs as well as superhuman intelligence. Driven mad by the sudden power rush, Purple sets off to conquer the planet and replace the human race with tentacles. However, Fred captures them, and thinking Green may have been exposed as well, regretfully decides he must euthanize them. Fearing for his life Green sneaks out a telegram to his old friend, nerdish college student Bernard Bernouli. Bernard, bent on rescuing Green, sneaks himself, his med student girlfriend Laverne, and roomate, Hoagie, off campus and drives to the mansion, where Purple and Green are both set free and Purple escapes to go on a rampage. Deciding the only way to catch Purple is to stop the mutation from ever happening, Fred rigs up a machine that can rip open the space-time continuum and allow Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne all to go back in time and stop Purple from being exposed to the waste. Unfortunately, during the transport, the Cubic Zarconia Fred is using to reflect the time machine s laser is destroyed, resulting in Bernard staying in present day, Laverene being sent 200 years in the future, and Hoagie being sent back 200 years to Colonial America. Now not only must Hoagie and Laverne get themselves back home, but Laverne must escape the brutal concentration camps of a tentacle ruled future, Bernard must contend with Fred and his passively insane son and sex obsessed wife, and Hoagie and Bernard must stop the nightmarish future from ever happening.