Robert Carradine

The origins, exploits and the ultimate fate of the Jesse James gang is told in a sympathetic portrayal of the bank robbers made up of brothers who begin their legendary bank raids because of revenge. After the American Civil War, outlaw Jesse James forms a gang comprised of himself, his brother Frank James, Cole Younger and his two brothers, Jim Younger and Bob Younger as well as Ed Miller and his brother Clell Miller. The gang is led by Jesse James and Cole Younger. The gang starts by robbing small banks and stagecoaches in the Midwest and in their home state of Missouri. Later, the gang targets bigger prizes, such as larger banks and trains. This criminal activity attracts the attention of the railroad company owners who hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to capture the gang. When the gang kills a few Pinkerton detectives, a war of sorts starts between the Pinkerton Agency and the James-Younger gang. Sometimes caught in the middle of it are innocent civilians. In 1876, the gang is running out of banks to rob in Missouri and decides to raid a supposedly fat bank, far up North, in the state of Minnesota. But the Pinkerton Detective Agency is setting up a trap there.

Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) is an Irish Canadian fisherman who catches marine animals and sells them in order to pay off the mortgage of his boat so he can return to Ireland. Nolan's crew is looking for a great white shark for a local aquarium, but a scientist named Ken (Robert Carradine) is being targeted by the shark. An orca killer whale comes and kills the shark, subsequently saving Ken. This switches Nolan's target to the orca. While Nolan is on the journey with his crew, he tries to capture what he believes to be a bull orca, but mistakenly harpoons a pregnant female. Nolan and his crew get the orca on board, where she subsequently miscarries. The crew hoses the dead fetus overboard as the male looks on screaming. Seeking release of his near-dead mate, the male orca tries to sink the ship. One of Nolan's crew members, Novak (Keenan Wynn), cuts the female off the ship, but the male leaps and drags him into the sea, eating him alive. The following day, the orca pushes his now dead mate onto shore. Alan Swain (Scott Walker) berates Nolan on his actions after finding the dead whale. Nolan denies responsibility, but Swain and the villagers eventually find out his involvement. The villagers insist that he kill the orca, as its presence is causing the fish vital to the village's economy to migrate. The orca then terrorizes the village by sinking fishing boats in broad daylight and then breaking fuel lines, thus destroying the village's fuel reserves and causing a massive fire. Dr. Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling), a colleague of Ken and whale expert, shows him how similar whales are to humans and tells Nolan that, "If he (the orca) is like a human, what he wants isn't necessarily what he should have." Nolan confesses to Rachel that he empathises with the whale, as his own wife and unborn child had previously been killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Nolan promises Rachel not to fight the whale, but the orca attacks his sea-front house, containing an injured crew member of Nolan's, Annie (Bo Derek) within it. The house starts slipping into the sea and the whale bites Annie's leg off. Nolan decides to fight the orca, although with Novak dead and Annie maimed for life, Nolan and Paul (Peter Hooten) are now the only crew members left. Dr. Bedford and Ken join the pursuit, along with a native American man, Jacob Umilak (Will Sampson), enlisted for his orca knowledge. The crew begins to chase the whale after it signals Nolan to follow him. Ken is leaning over the side when the whale surfaces and grabs him, eating him alive in the process. They follow the whale until they reach the Strait of Belle Isle, though when Paul starts to get into a lifeboat, the maddened orca knocks Paul out of the boat and drowns him. The next day, the whale shoves an iceberg into the boat and starts to sink it. Nolan manages to harpoon the whale just before he and Dr. Bedford escape from the boat, while Umilak is crushed beneath an avalanche of ice just after sending out an SOS. Nolan and Dr. Bedford hide in an iceberg, although Nolan slips onto another. The orca separates the icebergs, trapping Nolan. The whale jumps onto the ice, causing it to tilt and send Nolan into the water. The whale lifts Nolan up with his tail and throws him onto another iceberg, killing him. Dr. Bedford looks on as the dead Nolan slips into the water in a cross shape. With his revenge complete, the whale swims southward under the ice, while a helicopter is seen to rescue Dr. Bedford.

Coy "Cannonball" Buckman is a race driver-turned parolee, who signs on to compete in the Trans-Continental Road Race, a cross-country journey starting at the Santa Monica Pier and ending at a garage in New York City. This does not sit well with Coy's parole officer girlfriend Linda Maxwell, who is legally responsible for him and he could go back to prison for violating his parole. Fixing up Coy's red Pontiac Trans Am is his loyal pal Zippo Friedman, who decides to enter the race himself in a identical Trans Am and even dressing up like Coy to fool the cops. Coy's rival is Cade Redman, an embittered fellow racer, who is also tasked to take no-talent country singer Perman Waters and his mother Sharma Capri to New York to jump-start Perman's stalled career. Other participants in the race is eccentric European racing champ Wolfe Messer, driving a yellow DeTomaso Pantera, Jim and Maryann Crandell, a surfer couple racing in a silver Corvette owned by her father. Terry McMillan, who sheepishly uses sneak tactics to make it to New York without driving his orange Chevorlet Blazer, Beutell Morris, who uses the race as a ruse to help a rich couple deliver their Lincoln Continental to New York without a single scratch, and Sandy, driving a custom blue van with her two waitress friends, Judy and Ginny. What Coy does not know is that his gambler brother Bennie made a deal with mob boss Lester Marks to make sure Coy wins the race as Bennie is in heavy debt to them. Linda has no choice but to accompany Coy in the race, but eventually decides to leave her in Zippo's company, when Redman starts trying to run him off the road. Not long after, the dirty tricks begin to come into play: Bennie, with the help of his prison escapee friend Sharpe, secretly planted a bomb under Messer's Pantera, which explodes during a police pursuit in the desert and Redman shoots out a tire in Coy's Trans Am. He later beats up Sharpe, posing as a motorcycle cop pretending to stop Coy on a routine traffic stop, and confronts Redman at a roadside grocery store, where they wreck the entire establishment. Redman escapes the melee and shatters the headlights on Coy's car before taking off. That night, Coy notices the broken headlights and winds up totaling his car on a winding mountain road, but not after being loaned a green Ford Mustang by a pair of rural auto mechanics, who are big fans of him. Redman gets word that Coy is still in the race and is forced to call in more reinforcements to stop him. They mistake Zippo as Coy and beat him to a pulp, with Linda defeating most of the men with judo and karate moves. Coy shows up and learns from Linda that Zippo was actually driving the car that night when a young girl died, resulting in Coy's prosecution. Coy tells Linda that he took the fall for it because Zippo would have never survived in prison. Linda wants to ride with Coy again, for fear of her safety, but Coy says the race is almost over and they will be together soon. Other sub-plots include Jim's Corvette suffering from a damaged fan belt and after unsuccessful attempts to repair it, they try to steal one from a supermarket parking lot, only to be chased away by a suspicious cop and Sandy and her friends duping a pair of handsome patrolmen by having sex with them to avoid a speeding ticket. At this point, a half-crazed Redman notices Coy driving into the construction site of an unfinished bridge. He dumps Perman and Sharma out of the car and speeds after him. Coy manages to jump the bridge to the other side, but Redman's brakes give out and pummels down to a fiery death. Meanwhile, Sharpe plans to assassinate Coy using a sniper rifle, not knowing it is actually Zippo driving the car. Sharpe shoots Zippo through the head and loses control of the Trans Am, ejecting Linda in the process, and explodes. Beutell, distracted by the explosion, accidentally knocks down the car Sharpe was laying under, fatally crushing him. Jim and Maryann spot Linda lying on the road and to take her to a nearby hospital, but not after unintentionally causing a multi-car pile-up. At the hospital, the doctor tells them she will be okay and Jim thinks they should forget about the race and go home, but Maryann still wants to push forward, even though they might not win first place. Terry and his girlfriend Louisa are the first ones to arrive at the finish line, but are disqualified when she blabs that they left their celebratory champagne on the plane. The second one to arrive is Coy, who is greeted by Bennie, but the victory is cut short when a TV cameraman tells Coy about the pile-up, the other red Trans Am destroyed in the explosion, and that Linda was taken to the hospital. Coy learns the truth about the plan Bennie had all along, rips up his race ticket, and heads for the hospital, as a disappointed Lester and his bodyguard escort a doomed Bennie to Lester's limo, as Jim and Maryann arrive and end up the official winners of the race. At the hospital, Coy rushes to Linda's room and is relieved to see her alive, but badly injured, and the two lovingly embrace, as Beutell eventually delivers the now-wrecked Lincoln to the couple standing outside a downtown hotel.

Rancher Wil Andersen is forced to hire inexperienced boys as cowhands in order to get his cattle herd to market on time but the rough drive is full of dangers and a gang of rustlers is trailing them. When his cattle drovers abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his drovers in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage; however, neither Andersen nor the boys know that a gang of cattle rustlers is stalking them. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net> Wil Andersen finds himself with a herd of cattle which he has to get to market before the winter sets in, but he has no men to help him. He turns to a group of young schoolboys as his last hope to get the job done. There is no better training for these boys than hands-on as they don't know what they are in for. They set out as schoolboys but return as Cowboys. —Christopher D. Ryan <cryan@direct.ca>