It's a night in 1956, New York. Johnnie Sheppard, an ex-carnival worker with serious anger management issues, somehow manages to pick up Joyce, a nervous, attractive barfly during a Hopperesque tavern scene. There's a newsboy who flashes a portentous headline, a car chase over a railroad crossing with a train bearing down, and a romantic interlude in a spooky, deserted mountain lodge, all wrapped around the premise of a group of people searching for dear Johnnie, who just so happens to be a recently escaped murderer.