A hippie girl wandering on a California beach is taken in by a Korean War veteran who lives in a nearby mansion with his sister. The girl soon begins to suspect that the mansion is home to some very strange goings-on.
The near-sighted Mr. McGoo takes his duties as an Air Raid Warden, in the civil-defense, cold-war/iron curtain days of the 1950s, seriously. When he stumbles across the premiere of a new science-fiction movie at a theatre, he thinks his town has just been invaded by outer-space aliens. He takes the on-screen activities as part of the attack and goes through all the civil-defense steps to save the audience.
When genius cybernetics engineer Ted Lawson brings home his top-secret invention, a Voice Input Child Identicant or V.I.C.I., life becomes anything but mechanical for the Lawson Family. With his boss and his nosy family living next door, Ted, his wife Joan and their son Jamie must pass Vicki off as a real child. It is easy for Joan, who cannot help doting on her like a daughter, but harder for precocious Jamie, who uses Vicki to do his homework and to ward off Harriet, the annoying redheaded girl next door.
