T.K. Carter

A developer attempts to sabotage the safety record of a ski resort. The Snowy Peaks ski patrol is one diverse crew. Jerry, the senior member loves skiing and is in love with Ellen, a ski school instructor at Snowy Peaks; Iceman is a singer and a master of impressions; Eddie is the demolition and explosives expert; Stanley has failed to make the patrol seven years in a row; and foreign-exchange patroler Tiana likes Stanley. While having fun and keeping the mountain safe, they try to save the lodge from greedy land developer Sam Maris. —Pat McCurry

The story follows the escape of two men from an Alaska prison, the efforts of a train dispatching office to safely stop the out-of-control train they are on, and the hunt by their warden to recapture them. Oscar "Manny" Manheim (Jon Voight) is a ruthless bank robber and hero to the convicts of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. After two previous escape attempts the doors to Manny's cell have been welded shut for three years. A court order compels Manny's nemesis, the vindictive Associate Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan), to release him back into the general prison population. Manny immediately sets his next escape plan into action. Buck (Eric Roberts) is another convict (convicted of statutory rape) who, due to his position in the prison's laundry room, is recruited to smuggle Manny out in a laundry trolley. Naive and unintelligent, Buck decides to escape with Manny, who doesn't care for company. After a freezing cross-country hike (involving a 300 ft drop into a river and subsequent swim) the two hop on board a train consisting of four locomotives at a remote Alaskan rail yard. Just as the train is set in motion, the elderly engineer suffers a heart attack. In attempting to stop the train and get off, the engineer does not close the throttle, instead pulling on the conductor's emergency brake lever, before collapsing off the still-moving train. Consequently, although the brakes apply, the locomotives overpower them, and the brake shoes burn off, making it now impossible to stop the train. Neither the two convicts nor the only railway worker left on the train, a locomotive hostler named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay), are aware of their situation (the convicts due to taking refuge inside the fourth car's toilet compartment, Sara due to being asleep in the second car). As the train accelerates, dispatcher Frank Barstow (Kyle T. Heffner) is alerted to the situation. Unaware of the failure of the brakes, Barstow authorises employees to allow the runaway out onto the main-line, arrogantly insisting that a computer-controlled signalling system of his creation will trigger a brake application on the locomotives. The last of the brake-shoes burn out and the dispatchers realise the severity of their situation, forcing them to keep the tracks clear. The runaway collides with the tail-end of a freight train that was in the act of moving out of its path. Learning that the train's excessive speed will most likely collapse an elderly trestle ahead, Barstow's superior orders him to derail it, believing that no one alive is on board. Upon doing so, the signal maintainer hears the whistle. Realising someone is indeed alive on the train, Barstow orders a reversal of the switch. The speeding train continues onwards towards the aging Seneca trestle, where emergency workers are gathering in expectation of a disaster. Warden Ranken concludes that his two escaped convicts are escaping by rail. Meanwhile, the two fugitives have found Sara on board when she climbs back to the fourth engine in the belief she'll be safer in a possible collision at the rear. Now aware the engineer must be dead, the three must get to the lead engine so they can press its emergency fuel cutoff switch. Sara informs them that they can't because the second locomotive is a streamlined F-unit with no forward catwalk. Its nose door, which would normally allow access to the lead engine, is jammed. At her suggestion, they are able to slow the train by disconnecting the electrical bus link cables supplying commands to the two rear locomotives, shutting them down. Unintentionally, this slows the train enough that it is able to safely cross the Seneca trestle. The dispatchers divert the runaway onto a branch after determining it only five minutes away from a head-on collision with a passenger train. This is only a brief respite, as further ahead the branch negotiates a tight curve adjacent to a chemical plant. Even at its reduced speed, the runaway is likely to derail on this curve and trigger a major chemical spill. His hand forced by his superiors, Barstow agrees that they must switch the runaway onto a stub-ended siding and crash it, thus sending the three people on the train to almost certain death, rather than risk a catastrophic chemical explosion. Warden Ranken refuses to wait, coercing Barstow's assistance in chasing down the train by prison helicopter. Manny shows an increasingly violent streak, repeatedly asserting his dominance over Buck. He eventually forces Buck to attempt a suicidal scramble around the outside of the second engine's nose (Buck already having tried once and failed). Sara's intervention on Buck's behalf forces an armed face-off between the two convicts. Emotionally broken, all three slump into a fatalistic depression, only broken when Ranken's helicopter catches up with the train. Spurred on by the appearance of his arch-foe, and resolved not to return to prison, even if it means his own death, Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine. There, after a struggle with Ranken (who has successfully boarded by helicopter), he handcuffs Ranken inside the cab. To the music of the second movement of Vivaldi's Gloria in D (Et In Terra Pax), Manny then uncouples the first engine from the rest of the train, leaving Buck and Sara safely behind. He refuses to stop the lead engine despite Buck's screamed pleas. With Ranken his prisoner now, Manny climbs onto the roof of the lone engine in the freezing cold and blowing snow, his arms stretched out in a cruciform shape, ready to meet his end. After a series of cross-cuts of Buck and Manny's fellow inmates mourning in their cells at Stonehaven, the film fades to white and closes with an on-screen quote from William Shakespeare's Richard III:- "No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast."

Wrongfully accused of a bank robbery, a writer seeks the help of his ex-wife, who is now married to the soon-to-be Attorney General of California. Writer Nick Gardenia is kidnapped from his California cliffhouse and forced to rob a bank. Now a fugitive, he seeks help from his ex, Glenda. She is a public defender remarried to a prosecutor, and we get a houseful of hijinks. —<rth@ece.arizona.edu> Glenda Parks is a bleeding heart liberal lawyer, who believes she can be a major part in the redemption of her down and out minor criminal clients by employing them to do odd jobs for her. Her husband, Ira Parks, is the Los Angeles District Attorney who has just found out that he is in the running to become the state Attorney General. A major obstacle in him getting this position is that Glenda's first husband, non-fiction writer Nicholas Gardenia, was caught clearly on a video surveillance camera as being the perpetrator of a bank robbery in Carmel. In reality, Nick was abducted at gunpoint by the true bank robbers who forced him to be their front man. Nick is hesitant about turning himself in as he was previously wrongly imprisoned for two years in Mexico while he was working on an illegal alien story, prison where he does not want to go back. As such, he turns to the only person he believes can and will help him, namely Glenda. Glenda has mixed emotions about Nick reentering her life. Her head wants to hide Nick from Ira and get him out of their Brentwood house for good as quickly as possible, especially as a lot of powerful and authoritarian figures are mulling around the house, but her heart wants to help Nick much like she helps her clients and the many stray dogs that have entered the Parks' lives. Nick, on the other hand, tries somewhat to clear his name, but he seems more interested in reuniting with Glenda who he still loves and who he believes still loves him. —Huggo Nick Gardenia is a writer and was at home working when two men knocked on his door and pulled a gun on him. They make him drive them to a bank and rob it. The surveillance cameras catch him. Eventually it is sent to the D.A.'s office and the D.A., Ira Parks recognizes him as his wife's ex-husband. When he tells his wife, Glenda, about it she doesn't believe it. The guys who grabbed Nick throw him out of the car and he makes his way to Glenda and asks for her help. —rcs0411@yahoo.com

During the opening credits, the voice of deejay Surf Sam (Dave Sebastian Williams) of radio station KBLA announces that Halloween night 1965 is hours away, and that Tubby's Drive-In, the Hollywood Knights' hangout, is closing for good that evening. An egg hits the name of director Floyd Mutrux. The leader of the Knights, Newbomb Turk (Robert Wuhl), pulls a dead body prank on an elderly woman with one of his friends hiding under the tarp cover of the 1965 El Camino he borrowed from his older brother. Sally (Fran Drescher) and her friends are tanning (some topless) by the pool, and Newbomb catches some instant photos with his camera before they discover him and drive him off. Officer Bimbeaux (Gailard Sartain) and Officer Clark (Sandy Helberg) meet with the police chief. He warns the officers not to aggravate the situation about the drive-in on its last evening of business. He then notices that the Knights have tagged the side of the patrol car with spray paint. The Beverly Hills Residents Association meets at the home of Jacqueline Friedman (Leigh French). Bimbeaux and Clark stand by in the kitchen, arguing loudly about popular music. The doorbell brings Jacqueline and her secret lover Nevans (Richard Schaal) onto the porch where a flaming bag of dog poop awaits them, and the Knights moon them from their car as they speed off. At nightfall, three of the Knights: Wheatly (Randy Gornel), Shorty (Glenn Withrow) and Simpson (P.R. Paul) meet Newbomb at Tubby's Drive-In restaurant and ask whether it is a good idea to borrow the El Camino. Simpson promises he will bring his custom rail job car later. In the patrol car, Clark asks Bimbeaux if he would look good in a mustache, and sings about Lawrence of Arabia. Bimbeaux argues the movie soundtrack has no lyrics. The Knights drive to Watts with their four club pledges, order them to strip naked and retrieve the four tires in the trunk. For initiation, they must request a song from the KBLA deejay and return to Tubby's Drive-In by 2:00 am in the morning. Surf Sam turns over the broadcast to Doctor J (Humble Harvey Miller). Back in Hollywood, the Knights hide in a tree to wait for Sally and the girls to arrive at their secret spot to change into other, more sexy clothes for the pep rally. As they remove their bras, Newbomb loses his balance and gives them away; the girls flee as the cops arrive. Bimbeaux reads off the Knights. At Smitty's Auto Shop located right next door to Tubby's Drive-In, fellow Knight Duke (Tony Danza) and his girlfriend Suzie Q (Michelle Pfeiffer), a car hop waitress at Tubby's, discuss her upcoming screen test and her job as a carhop. She needs a flexible schedule to pursue her acting career. Duke complains that men making wisecracks about her disturb him, and she argues that she is the one who must tolerate it. Meanwhile, the Iron Box Twins, Brenda and Shirley Weintraub (Joyce Heiser, Roberta Wallach), arrive at the drive-in for burgers, and when the song "Volare" plays on the radio the girls pull off to avoid Newbomb, who tends to do a farting version of the song. Jimmy Shine (Gary Graham) discusses his deployment to Vietnam with Duke and Smitty (James Jeter), their mentor. Moosie (Moosie Drier), a youngster with a penchant for skateboards, arrives. The officers yell at him for carrying cigarettes, but he then hops a ride with some of the girls in their convertible. Sally cruises off with a college-aged man to Newbomb's disappointment While driving down a road in Hollywood, Newbomb shows the girls the pictures he took of them at the pool. He parks the El Camino by a fire hydrant outside the high school to go to the pep rally and ignores warnings from his friends. At the rally, Jacqueline brings her husband Jack (Garry Goodrow) onstage with local weatherman Thorny Thornwell (Will Thornbury). The band enters the gym, and a banner is unfurled which reads, "Beat the Panthers," with graffiti ("shit out of the") added in the middle, tagged by the Knights. Elsewhere, the overweight and slow-witted Dudley Laywicker (Stuart Pankin) and his overbearing mother (Mina Kolb) drive to the rally for Dudley to receive his honor student check for $500 to cover his first year of college tuition. He is wearing his band uniform and balks when his mother suggests stopping at a restaurant because he says the staff teases him when he arrives in uniform. She ignores him. Jacqueline is making out in a car with Nevans when Dudley arrives and asks for her opinion of which magic trick he should use for the evening's talent contest. Nevans hides on the floor of the back seat, but Dudley spots Nevans' trousers. As Jacqueline tries to make an excuse, Dudley accidentally hits the car horn, which jams on. Jacqueline shoos him away. Newbomb and the Knights startle Dudley into a pseudo asthmatic fit. Dudley begs for his puffer inhaler, asking them not to hurt him as he might be a bleeder. Newbomb borrows parts of his uniform. Back at the rally, one of the Beverly Hills cheerleaders innocently forgets her underpants and flashes the crowd during a cheer. The officers spot the El Camino at the fire hydrant and call to have it impounded. Some of the Knights in hiding egg the cops and sing the Lawrence of Arabia tune Clark had sung earlier. Jack Friedman announces that Dudley is coming onstage for his scholarship check, but Newbomb takes the stage in Dudley's uniform and launches into his farting rendition of "Volare," escaping by outrunning security. The other Knights tell Newbomb that Bimbeaux towed the El Camino. They speed out, leaving behind Dudley to retrieve his discarded clothes. The officers mistakenly think Dudley is the perpetrator until the faculty and school photographer arrive and straighten everything out. Meanwhile, two of the pledges in Watts are hiding in the bushes outside a couple's home (and realize they are making love) while the other two borrow makeshift outfits from white sheets on the clothesline. The corner of a pillowcase stands up on one pledge's head, and the husband spots it and grabs his shotgun, thinking he sees the KKK. The boys flee, finally arriving across from the record store but unable to figure out how to get to the deejay. Newbomb returns to Tubby's Drive In in his parents station wagon, labeled as the "pie wagon" (his parents own and work at a local bakery and their station wagon is their vehicle used to make deliveries). He hides under it when his older brother (Demetre Phillips) arrives looking for the El Camino and tells the Knights if anything happens to the car, he will strangle Newbomb. The others cover for Newbomb and he fakes indifference when the coast is clear. In the women's restroom, the Iron Box Twins discuss a rumor about the Friedmans' daughter until they find that Newbomb has hidden in a stall and tape-recorded them. Surfer dude Tarzan (Gary Prendergast) arrives at Tubby's with his two hot blonde girlfriends Jane (Carol Ann Williams) and Cheetah (Debra Feuer). Newbomb drives them around the neighborhood in their custom Woody, tries to score a feel and gets a milkshake dumped on him. At the same time, Simpson and Wheatly race another souped-up car, and when they lose, they discuss whether the Knights will stay together once some of the members go to Vietnam or college. Wheatly says Simpson can cruise with him and the Knights will not ever break up. A catering van pulls up at the high school dance, and the Knights convince them to hand over the punch they are delivering. Newbomb tells the caterers to detour the van through the hibiscus gardens because the area will soon be dug out for the Newbomb Turk Memorial Library. The Knights, in a tribute to Tubby's, spike the punch by urinating in it. Moosie warns people going into the dance but, when Bimbeaux and Clark catch him with a cigarette, he tells them to enjoy the punch. At the punch bowl, Jacqueline and Nevans discuss the strange beverage and summon the officers. Bimbeaux tries the punch and asks for seconds. The caterers, anxious to be finished for the night, decide to drive through the bushes as Newbomb said, and the underbrush wrecks the delivery van. The faculty members and Jacqueline are furious that the Knights are involved again. Jane and Cheetah join in another plot and flash Dudley so they can borrow his clothes again. Newbomb and the other Knights again ambush Dudley to take his clothes. Dudley asks Newbomb to be careful with the rented magician's cape when he goes to the talent contest. Beside the stage, Shorty switches out the PA system and replays the recording of the bathroom conversation by the Iron Box Twins for the audience, to the embarrassment of the twins and Jack, who is the emcee. Simpson assures Dudley that he will be back shortly in his rail job and to stay put while he is missing his clothes (and with them, his glasses and puffer). Jack Friedman announces the next talent contestant, Mr. Sasha Dabinski, the One-Armed Violinist. Dabinski is actually Wheatly, with Newbomb accompanying him at the piano; hiding one arm inside the waistband of the pants, Wheatly holds the violin with his chin, rasps a solo with his free hand, then grabs the bow at his crotch. Jacqueline and Nevans leave the usual confines of his car to make out on a trampoline, only to meet up with Dudley, who is stumbling around in the dark without his glasses and accidentally locks them out of their car. Nearby, Sally brushes off her college boyfriend, Dark, in favor of Newbomb, and they head to the pie wagon. Some of the Knights, as well as Dudley, Tarzan, at least one of the Tubby's car hops, and several other people are now at Sally's house in a wild party where several of them strip off their clothing and jump into the backyard swimming pool. In the garage, as Newbomb and Sally get ready to make love in his car, Newbomb is unable to hold out long enough and premature ejaculates. She whines at him for being immature, but he is relieved. At Smitty's Auto Shop, Smitty, Duke and his co-workers they reveal a special custom car to Jimmy Shine as a going away present. Their guest, custom car man Tony Nancy, and the men show Jimmy a tape deck inside playing the Mamas and the Papas 'California Dreaming' as Jimmy thinks about his deployment the next day. The time is now 1:00 am in the morning. Back in South-Central Watts, two local thieves strip tires from a parked car just as the four pledges (now wearing dresses stolen from another homeowner's clothesline) pass by with their tires from the Knights' car, and the homeowners give chase... mistakenly thinking that the four teens stole their tires. Back at the shop, Smitty is discussing his time in the war, when he and a man known as Grease modified a jeep engine and buzzed General MacArthur during a parade. Grease later died in a drunken crash. As they reflect on the tragedies of war, Jimmy Shine says he wants the new car to go to the club if anything happens to him in Vietnam, but the other men tell him not to worry. Back in Watts, the pledges decide to take their chances with a group of four Do-Wop street corner singers, hoping they can give the song dedication to the deejay. The pledges are running out of time to return to Beverly Hills. The singers ask the pledges if they are familiar with marijuana and agree to take on the task after the boys share a toke. Back at Tubby's, officers Bimbeaux and Clark receive an upbraiding by the captain on their radio. Still, Bimbeaux cannot resist teasing Newbomb about the impounded El Camino, and Newbomb decides to get even when the officer uses the restroom. Shorty fixes the restroom doorknob with his handy screwdriver, and Tarzan gets a potato for the tailpipe of the patrol car. While Clark waits in the car, he draws a fake mustache on his face using a marker. Bimbeaux goes into the bathroom. The toilet, stopped up with toilet paper, floods the floor when he flushes. Outside Newbomb dumps cans of garbage in front of the door. When Bimbeaux is trapped in the bathroom and calls for help, Clark shoots out the doorknob with his service pistol, and Bimbeaux slides on the trash when he comes out, ruining his uniform. Simpson arrives with his rail job (having hooked up with one of the Tubby's car hops). Dudley jumps in front of the patrol car when the officers attempt to give chase, as if seized by epilepsy, then jumps up and escapes the cops by hopping a ride in the rail job. When the officers try again to pursue, they hit another car. Returning to the drive-in at closing time at 2:00 am, Jimmy Shine gives Dudley his Knights jacket to watch until he returns from Vietnam. When the Knights suggest picking up the pledges they left in Watts, at first Dudley panics, then he takes a final drag on his puffer and discards it, ready to go. Duke and Suzie talk at last. She says she cares more about him than her screen test. Duke confesses that he was worried if she became an actor he would not be good enough for her, but she says she loves him and they reconcile with a kiss. The street corner singers meet Doctor J on KBLA just in time, and he announces the request on the radio as the four pledges arrive at Tubby's parking lot, the requested song plays to end the Halloween broadcast, and they earn their Knights jackets. Jimmy Shine leaves to have a farewell late-night dinner with his family before he departs for Vietnam and he hugs Smitty, who has been like a father to him. Newbomb tells Sally that he wants to keep in touch with her after graduation when she will be attending UCLA. Dudley calls his mother from a payphone to tell her he will be late because he has an assignation with a girl and is going to get laid, and she faints. Some distance away, Jacqueline and Nevans are still experiencing aftereffects from the spiked punch, but are in Nevans' car parked outside her home. She assures him that her husband is too drunk to wake up. When the cops give chase to the Knights, the patrol car crashes into Nevans' car and Jack appears, catching the two with their clothes in disarray as Newbomb, Dudley, Simpson and the Knights moon them all. In the final scene, Tubby's Drive In shuts off their lights for the last time as the end credits roll.