New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.
Wayward and uninhibited young runaway Kim has fallen in with a bad crowd. Kim decides to flee said crowd and goes to the west coast to reunite herself with her uptight and neurotic estranged older sister Hilary so she can collect some of the inheritance left behind by their deceased parents. However, evil drug dealer Maury and his flock follow Kim to Hilary's house.
Paul Steward, editor of a scientific journal, considers his life to be an empty failure. Awake one morning after a sleepless night, he comes to a decision: this evening he will take a rifle and shoot and kill his wife, their three children and then himself.
