***SPOILERS*** Mike Hammer, Darren McGavin, is hot under the collar looking for a serial murder after his good friend Tyler Earl's,Terry Becker, fiancé Edie Miller, Dale Kobe, was sliced up and left for dead in her apartment.It was Edie's ex-boyfriend gangster Joe Dunn and his bodyguard Earl,Dale Van Sickle, who at first were at the receiving end of Hammer fury as well as fists & kicks when they mistook him for Tyler, in attempting to work him over, at his beauty salon.
Hammer more then determent to catch Edie's attacker soon found out that he was a lot closer to her as well as him then he could have possibly imagined! It was Edie's next door neighbor Mrs. Armstrong, Rachel Ames, who gave Hammer the clue to who Edie's attacker,who had already murdered three women, is. Setting the stage for Mrs. Armstrong to identify the assailant, by his voice, the truth to his identity came out with shattering results.
The fired up Hammer who you wound have imagined would have worked Edie's attacker over to within an inch of his life instead showed unusual sympathy towards him in what a sorry a** piece of crap he turned out to be. But Edie's fiancé Tyler didn't feel that way who had to be restrained by a now peace making Mike Hammer from beating him unconscious. Hammer despite his brutal tactics realized what a sick man Edie's attacker was which brought his humanistic side out of him. And rightly decided to refrain from violence and let the courts as well as psychiatric help do the job far less violently then he would have done on him. Actress Rachel Ames who played Mrs. Armstrong has the distinction of being a cast member of the TV show, "General Hospital", for a record, since 1964, 50 years.