When three young hoodlums rob a remote farmhouse, they end up killing the owner and having to take his secretary hostage. Luckily, her young son "Petey" (Jerry Mathers) escapes and turns up, shell-shocked, before his policeman father "Atlas" (Philip Carey) unable to speak! Now the thing is, the parents are estranged and the cop has no idea as to where his son has been, nor where his estranged wife "Linda" (Betty Garrett) actually is. We know that she is the hostage, and as the kids holding her get more and more paranoid, and liquored up, we can sense the increasing danger she is in all whilst ...