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A quartet of gangsters rob a jeweller, but the heist goes awfully wrong when
the alarm is sounded too soon, one of them is wounded by a cop & then shot
by his own accomplice, brutal Joe (Roy Morton), & somehow the the loot
lands on the back of the pickup of family man Dave (Kirk Duncan) - which Dave
of course fails to realize. Dave's little daughter Nancy (K.K.Riddle)
eventually finds the jewels though & hides them in her doll, not telling
anyone else about her find (& not realizing its value). Later that day,
Nancy & her mother Linda (Tracey Robbins) make a trip to Lake Tahoe by bus
... Meanwhile at Dave's place, the gangsters - boss Vito (Lyle Felice), his
moll Vicky (Tanya maree), his right-hand man Nick (John Armond), brutal Joe
& their mute black driver Curtis (John Talbert) - have finally caught up
with him & torture him to learn the whereabouts of the jewels - which he
has not the slightest idea of. Eventually the baddies decide it's a good idea
to take his wife & daughter hostage to make Dave talk, so they send
Joe & Curtis after them ... & doing that, Joe proves to be every bit
the brute one has thought him to be, eventually beating up both mother &
daughter ... Meanwhile back at Dave's place, Dave - tied to a chair - sees
his chances improving when Nick throws away his nerves & tries to persuade
Vito to give up on the jewels ... much to Vito's dismay, which does create
quite some tension - but that is nothing compared to the tension created when
Vito finds out nick has an affair with his moll Vicky ... & what's more,
Dave's cop friend Frank (Joey Benson) has decided to pick exactly that time to
pay Dave a visit ... which culminates in a shoot-out, at the end of which Nick
changes sides & shoots Vito ... Meanwhile Joe & Curtis are holding
Linda & Nancy hostage in a hut in the mountains, but when Joe tries to rape
Linda, Curtis - tired of being pushed around - changes sides & saves her
from the rape, which he has to pay with his life. Linda & Nancy escape into
the snow, but Joe is never far behind ... but by now Dave & cop Frank have
also caught up with them, & after a final shoot-out, Joe drops down some
cliffs, & somehow Nancy's doll, in which the jewels are hidden, falls down
the same cliffs & lands besides his dead body. Director Al
Adamson's debut picture is a rather unimpressive crime picture, but it already
shows the bluntness that would be apparent in almost all of Adamson's films, a
bluntness that would sometimes lead to interesting/entertaining results, as it
showed Adamson's drive to deliver just what he was asked for. However,
occasionally this would on the other hand make his films less interesting, even
predictabe & boring, as is the case here. When originally released, the
film met with a less than appreciative audience & as such soon faded into
obscurity, however much of the footage made it into Adamson's later movies, The
Fiend with the Electronic Brain (1968 - with footage starring John
Carradine added) & Blood of Ghastly Horror (1971 - which
incorporates footage from this movie as well as the Carradine footage from The
Fiend with the Electronic Brain, and newly shot footage with Kent Taylor
& Regina Carroll), 2 science fiction movies that take Psycho a Go-Go's
plot into totally different directions.
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