Plot
Scott (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) and the couple John (Robert Carradine) and Susie (Melanie Griffith) leave their jobs in California, and take their car on a ferry to Alaska with some saved money and dreams of making an easy fortune salmon fishing. Upon arriving, they enter a bar and the two men start slamming local hooch until they get drunk. Susie meets an older man named Frank Sanders (Tom Ligon) working for the oil pipeline who says he can get all three of them a job. Sanders gives Susie his card while Scott and John sleep off their drunkenness. The next morning, they find their car has been broken into and robbed. Desperate for money, the two men land pipeline jobs, with the help of Sanders; Susie gets a waitressing job. They walk out of a food market with a shopping cart of unpaid-for meat while it is being robbed.
One night, while John and Susie make love, a lonely Scott goes to a bar and meets Cindy Young (Anne Lockhart), but gets turned off when Cindy asks Scott for money to go home with her. Scott then buys three pistols, and all three spend the day improving their shooting abilities. But a discouraged Susie tells John that they are back in the same lives they had in California.
A few nights later, while making his rounds as a security guard, Scott pulls a gun on his co-workers to stop them from robbing the pipeline of equipment. Scott is fired and John is threatened off his welding job the next day. Susie quits her job after being groped once too often by her employer. All three are forced out of their apartment for being behind on the rent. Cindy finds Scott at the bar again, buys him a beer, and says he does not have to pay for it. When Scott pulls Cindy into the back seat of a car for some fun, two guys from the pipeline pull Scott out of the car and beat him up while Cindy runs off. Sanders, who was also Scott's former boss, lets him know he is responsible for the beating.
The three are down to eating dog food and resort to selling their car to survive. Scott and John steal Sanders' car, take it for a joyride, and end up totaling it at a garbage dump. The two men then go back to the bar and win enough money at a peeing contest to buy a 1957 Pontiac. Also among the winnings is an endorsed payroll check from the pipeline. Because the payroll office refuses to cash this check, they rob the office at gunpoint and then use Cindy, who is coincidentally there, as a hostage to escape the police. They switch from the stolen robbery car to their purchased 1957 Pontiac, which gets a flat tire and has no spare. While getting it fixed, they learn Cindy is a pipeline worker and they offer $5000 for her safe return.
After aborting a forced abandonment of Cindy, they shoot a bear for food, then gag and tie Cindy up in the car while riding a ferry. Scott removes Cindy's gag and she says they should ransom her off for $300,000, which Scott talks the others into doing. After Scott calls the pipeline company with a ransom demand, all four break into a deserted house and party naked in its hot tub. They instruct Henderson, the police officer with the money, to deposit it in an open railroad car which starts to move immediately after he puts the money inside. The cop follows the train which results in a car chase and pistol shots through the window when he spots them picking up the money, but they escape after the officer's car flips during the chase. After switching from the stolen car back to their purchased 1957 Pontiac, they abandon Cindy at a police station. Knowing the police know the serial numbers of the $300,000, they do not spend any of it and get a job melting scrap metal at a blast furnace.
After John catches Scott showering with Susie, he gets mad, dumps groceries on the bed to let them know that he knows, and then steals a camera while being caught on surveillance tape. John throws some of the stolen money at the shop owner, who then tries to choke him as he drives away. John tries to leave alone, but all three reconcile and they all drive away together. John is still angry, so he pulls over and has a fight with Scott on the highway, while almost getting hit by a passing car. Both Scott and Susie insist their fling is over with.
Abandoning their 1957 Pontiac for another stolen car, they run a U.S./Canada border checkpoint after they think that the officer has recognized them. After running a road block and surviving a shotgun blast through a window, they drive into the Canadian mountains where their car runs out of gas. John and Susie sleep the night in the car, while Scott goes in search of another vehicle. Scott succeeds, but John appears to have died from exposure. Luckily, Scott is able to slap John awake and he, John and Susie drive away in the newly stolen van, talking of going to Hawaii as the credits roll.
