***SPOILERS*** Tough as nails PI Mike Hammer, Stacey Keach, gets manhandled here by 6 foot five 250 pound wrestler King Steele, Lou Ferrigno, who later joins forces with him when he finds out who's behind all the killings in the movie and who's working with him. It's when convicted hoodlum Matt Rainey, John Aprea, makes his escape from right under Hammer and the police brass, in the basement of the NYC D.A's office, noses with the help of his friend the aerobatic, he likes to crash through open as we'll as closed windows, and chubby Jack Rogan, Allan Graf. It's then that Rainey took Hammer's good friend assistant D.A Dave Hunter, David Prather, hostage whom he murdered during his unsuccessful getaway. With the car Rainey driving exploding and burning Rainey to a crisp Hammer was now out to find his accomplice Rogan and bring him to justice: Dead or Alive.
The only clue to Rogan's whereabouts is a video tape, his last will & testament, that Rainey left that directs the three women in his rotten life Susan Barbara & Dail, Barbi Benton Rebecca Holden & Ann Turkle, to where he hid some 8 million smackers-dollars-for the three beauties to find. That the on the lamb and fellow hood Jack Rogan feels he was cheated out of by his partner in crime Matt Rainey. This leads to a mostly taxi car lot in Staten Island where the stolen money was hidden and where Rogan in finding it ended up being murdered!
****SPOILERS**** It was no surprise at all that Rainey faked his death and used a drunk from to Bowery, who was too drunk to know what was going on, as his double in his fatal car accident. This all came to the surface when Hammer realized that Rainey was playing him and the NYPD for suckers in tricking them, not the far more on the ball TV audience, that he was killed & whatever was left of him buried, like the late terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, at sea.! Final showdown on the Staten Island docks with Rainey's accomplice ended up at the bottom of the Staten Island Lower Bay and Rainey, in a game of chicken with Mike Hammer, not only ending up incinerated but also, before the big burn, losing his head as well!