A wealthy neurotic woman escapes from a New York mental asylum, and hitches a ride back to California with a moody down-on-his-luck cowboy trucker. They fall in love with each other while on the run from bounty hunters and a repo man.
Madie Levrington is a neurotic, wealthy woman who escapes from a New York mental institution where her unwholesome husband had her committed to avoid the trial of an expensive divorce. She manages by taking her doctor hostage and leaving him behind in an open field, and flees into the night. Madie hitches a ride back to California with Charles Callahan, a moody, debt-ridden truck driver. Madie and Charles eventually fall in love while evading an assortment of villains including a pair of thugs hired by Madie's husband to prevent her from returning to California, and a repo man sent to reclaim Charles' truck.—matt-282
Madie Levrington (Dyan Cannon), a wealthy neurotic woman is committed to a New York mental institution by her unethical husband, Benjamin, in order to keep her from divorcing him and taking his money. She manages to escape by taking hostage her doctor (Michael Lerner) and leaving him behind in an open field, and flees into the night. As it begins to rain, Madie hitches a ride on a livestock truck.
The truck is driven by Charles Callahan (Robert Blake), a moody cowboy who is reluctant to help her out. However, he hears over his CB radio about her escape and a substantial reward for her return. This gets his attention as he is so in debt that he has a repo man after him to repossess his truck. Upon arriving at his home, Callahan is met by the repo man as well as his estranged wife which forces him to flee with Madie tagging along. She insists that he drive her back to California so she can confront her husband for abandoning her.
The neurotic and unpredictable Madie soon proves a handful to Callahan as she cannot stop talking about her unhappy life and gets him into trouble at times. The next day at a local road stop diner, she orders a large meal despite that she and Callahan have no money to pay for it and she is forced to wash dishes to make up for the tab. Madie next gets some money by hiring Callahan to transport a herd of cattle to Oklahoma without his permission.
Behind her back, Callahan meets up with people who are out to get Madie, and gets part of the reward money from the woman bounty hunter Sam Klinger (Maxine Stuart) who leads them. At the same time, he is also slowly falling in love with her. He even teaches her to drive the truck (frantically, after he was hit in the crotch and sent flying by a bull).
After camping out in an open field somewhere in Texas, Madie eventually finds the money he was given and she wonders how he got it. He then reluctantly explains how, trying to explain that he took it unwillingly. She doesn't believe him and ends up getting in the truck and driving off without him. Callahan winds up hitching a ride on the back of a motorcycle with an older man (Leonard P. Geer). When they finally find the truck, he is forced to get off the bike and jump onto the back of the truck while both are still moving, thus putting him in her shoes at the beginning.
She drives the truck all the way back home in Beverly Hills to her husband, who is having a party in the backyard. Despite his pleas for her to stop the truck and that "everything will be just fine", in probably the most memorable scene in the film, she proceeds to wreak havoc on the party by running over everything in its way, then putting the icing on the cake by putting the hammer down and ramming the truck through the house until it won't go any further. The cattle get loose and roam freely around the destroyed house and property.
After getting out of the truck, Benjamin tries to choke Madie to death, but Callahan jumps out of the trailer and floors him to the canvas. When the police arrive, she fingers out Benjamin as the driver of the truck, and she and Callahan get away, but not before running one more time into the repo man, where he simply concedes the truck to him.
