(Some Spoilers) It's when electronic engineer Gene Courtire, Jack Kelly, casually gave hitchhiker Victor Gosset, Vince Edwards, a lift his world turned upside-down. With the not too alert Gosset mistaking Courtier's Mercury for a Lincoln Continental, in him thinking by driving an expensive car like that Courtier is loaded, everything started to go downhill for Gosset and his fellow hoods Robert Batsford, John Cassavetes, and Luther Logan, David Cross.
Not only didn't Courtier have the big bucks that the trio of hoods were looking for but by kidnapping, a capital crime, him and later his wife Doris, Hildy Parks, they now face the San Quentin gas chamber if their caught: Which according to FBI statistics is in kidnappers getting caught is something like 99.9 % of the time. Instead of playing it safe and dropping the entire matter the thee hoodlums, two wanted by the police for murder, keep running with the ball, or kidnapping, making things even more worse for themselves then they already are.
Both Gosset & Batsford who at first were more then willing to murder Courtire if he as much as looked at them later let the guy and his wife live even after in a number of incidents they were attacked and assaulted by the battling couple! And in one case almost killed by one, Gene Courtier, of them! All the retaliation that came for the murderous duo was Courtier just getting belted to the ground by an enraged, whom he earlier almost killed, Gosset when he wasn't looking.
The film went on and on with the three stooges, Gosset Batsford & Logan, screwing up at every turn giving the police and FBI all the time they needed to finally capture them. It was Logan who came up with the "bright" idea to get Courtier's rich businessman dad, Stanley Andrews, to pay a $200,000.00 ransom to get his son back. By then Mrs Courtier was for some unexplained reason released by the kidnappers together with her two children making the kidnappers chances of getting away with their half baked crime even more difficult then it already was!
***SPOILERS*** Still thinking that he's got all the winning cards in the deck the head kidnapper Bastford, looking like he's Jerry Lewis' evil twin brother, demanded that the ransom money be delivered to him and his boys, Gosset & Logan, within the hour or Gene Courtier is history. The brainless jerk didn't realized that he was kept on the phone for something like 15 minutes so his whereabouts could be traced by the police. And sure enough just as both Bastford and Gosset, by then fellow kidnapper Logan was completely out of the picture, were waiting for the big payoff they were surrounded by 187 police and FBI units, a record in California crime history, before they could even realize just how ridicules their perfect plan or crime really was!
Not only didn't Courtier have the big bucks that the trio of hoods were looking for but by kidnapping, a capital crime, him and later his wife Doris, Hildy Parks, they now face the San Quentin gas chamber if their caught: Which according to FBI statistics is in kidnappers getting caught is something like 99.9 % of the time. Instead of playing it safe and dropping the entire matter the thee hoodlums, two wanted by the police for murder, keep running with the ball, or kidnapping, making things even more worse for themselves then they already are.
Both Gosset & Batsford who at first were more then willing to murder Courtire if he as much as looked at them later let the guy and his wife live even after in a number of incidents they were attacked and assaulted by the battling couple! And in one case almost killed by one, Gene Courtier, of them! All the retaliation that came for the murderous duo was Courtier just getting belted to the ground by an enraged, whom he earlier almost killed, Gosset when he wasn't looking.
The film went on and on with the three stooges, Gosset Batsford & Logan, screwing up at every turn giving the police and FBI all the time they needed to finally capture them. It was Logan who came up with the "bright" idea to get Courtier's rich businessman dad, Stanley Andrews, to pay a $200,000.00 ransom to get his son back. By then Mrs Courtier was for some unexplained reason released by the kidnappers together with her two children making the kidnappers chances of getting away with their half baked crime even more difficult then it already was!
***SPOILERS*** Still thinking that he's got all the winning cards in the deck the head kidnapper Bastford, looking like he's Jerry Lewis' evil twin brother, demanded that the ransom money be delivered to him and his boys, Gosset & Logan, within the hour or Gene Courtier is history. The brainless jerk didn't realized that he was kept on the phone for something like 15 minutes so his whereabouts could be traced by the police. And sure enough just as both Bastford and Gosset, by then fellow kidnapper Logan was completely out of the picture, were waiting for the big payoff they were surrounded by 187 police and FBI units, a record in California crime history, before they could even realize just how ridicules their perfect plan or crime really was!