Jesse Page is an ex-convict who wants to go straight but has problems with his former cellmate Larry, who wants Jesse's help with his friends for a drug deal. But when several thugs try to rip them off, the deal goes sour, and the thugs get killed. Jesse and Larry flee to a dilapidated motel in the California desert, where Jesse decides to change his life by going to Detroit to join a band he played with. But with Larry tagging along, it brings up more complications, as do the eccentric motel owner Edsel and his crazed ex-stripper wife Hester, while two homicidal drug dealers slowly begin closing in on all of them.—Anonymous