Summaries

Synopsis

A helicopter lands at an African horse ranch. Inside are Count Lorenzo Borgia (Christopher Lee) and his sidekick Feodor Gomez (Hamilton Camp); they have come to race the count's two cars in the 5th African International Rally and meet movie stunt driver Eddie Miles (David Carradine), who will drive the second car. Eddie wants to get down to business and the two drivers take a competitive turn around the ranch. Eddie swerves and causes Borgia to go off the road and wreck a fountain. Insulted, Borgia warns Eddie about the reputation of his family, but decides to show mercy and merely fire him; Eddie says he plans to enter the rally himself.

Meanwhile, a photojournalist for Playboy magazine named J.J. Dalton (Stockard Channing) surprises her boss with an idea for an article: a friend, Freddie Selkirk (Ian Yule) is in the race and wants her to navigate the course for him. At first he is reluctant to give her the assignment as she gets too deeply involved in her work and into trouble as a result (for an article on prostitution, she posed as one and got arrested), but she mentions that she will be 13,000 miles away for the article, so he happily agrees.

She calls Freddie when she gets to the hotel, but he is in the middle of fighting off invaders during a regional battle, the car they planned to race in is bombed and he is beheaded by an insurgent. J.J. proceeds to get a second-rate jalopy at a used car dealer, determined to enter the race somehow, and ends up paired with Eddie when he can't find a navigator. He demonstrates his talent for driving using her rental car, and it puts up with the abuse of stunt driving long enough for them to return it to the rental shop before it falls apart. Her "race car" is nearly useless without a proper engine, so he suggests she dress in something nice and wrangle an interview with Count Borgia while he steals the engine from the second car to put in their own. At the hotel J.J. interviews the count while a cheetah named Caligula relaxes nearby. When Feodor drops the count's gift for J.J. in a wine glass, Borgia orders him to jump from the hotel balcony, which he reluctantly does. In a panic, J.J. excuses herself and races downstairs to the lobby to tell the desk clerk what happened, not knowing that Feodor had a parachute. As she tries to explain he re-enters the lobby trailing the chute.

The next day is the start of the race. Teams include Britons and Australians, a team of housewives, a French team and others from around the world. J.J. and Eddie get assigned the last number, 91. As they get to know each other on the course, J.J. makes a remark that she is his navigator, not his wife, and he says not to use that four-letter word. He divorced on grounds of sexual perversion (hers, not his), but he won't say any more on the subject, even when J.J. admits she has done some raunchy things in her life (and won't say what)..

Borgia stops at a bridge and orders Feodor to blow it up to eliminate most of the competition. Feodor assures his boss they are standing in a safe spot, having reviewed explosions and the resulting "angle of debris," but some of the fallout from the blast hits the branch on which they're standing and propels them into the lake. When Eddie and J.J. reach the bridge, Eddie angles the car to ride two tires on the railing and avoid the blown-out planks.

When they enter a village and accidentally strike a goat in the road, the natives are angry and won't let them leave until Eddie passes them J.J.'s camera. Moving on, J.J. is annoyed and asks Eddie to respect what she does for a living as she does for him, and to ask the next time he decides to deprive her of $800 worth of equipment. Suddenly a baby baboon appears in the car. It seems to have gotten lost and wound up in their back seat. She refuses to throw him out, to Eddie's dismay: she says she is already riding with a big baboon, and they laugh at their situation as three baboons for the road. Borgia notes the presence of baboons on the road, and Feodor begins to construct a song from that idea. At the hotel checkpoint, only one room is left, so J.J. and Eddie have to share. She sneaks the baboon into the room, claims the bed and orders Eddie to shower before they go to dinner at the hotel restaurant. At the bar, Feodor plays his "Baboons on the Road" song on guitar for Borgia, and the count calls him a putz.

Back on the road on a rainy start to day two of the race, the car becomes stuck in mud, and J.J. manages to get it out with Eddie pushing from the rear, but he also loses his balance and falls into the muck. When she tries to help, he pulls her down into the mud for laughing at him and the tension breaks: they kiss and eventually cool off together, nude, in a waterfall. Resuming the race, they encounter a massive bull elephant, and pass two teams whose cars got submerged during the rainstorm. A tire blows, and as Eddie changes it, J.J. goes off to take some pictures. As she runs back to avoid a moving herd of elephants, she gasps at Eddie that he has his back turned to a pride of lions. He slowly moves away and they get into the car with their new tire installed, and one lion makes off with the flat one as a toy.

The count and Feodor discuss famous Borgias from the past who have traded on the name, such as "Victor Borgia" (Borge) and "Ernest Borgia" (Borgnine). At a crossroads the count orders Feodor to change a road sign showing the ways to the villages of Bomosa and Chipago. When they arrive at the sign, Eddie is not certain of J.J.'s map, so they follow the sign instead and find themselves in a village run by natives happy to get a fast buck from lost racers. A villager tosses a frozen chicken in front of the team's car so they drive over it, he then orders Eddie and J.J. to stand trial for hitting the bird. The " judge" sits on a "bench" constructed on an auto repair hydraulic lift, while burning torches and eerie organ music adds to the atmosphere. They have a choice of being fined $500 or they can elect to be cooked in a pot, but they are out of money. Eddie asks J.J.'s permission to hand over her second camera to pay the fine and they are set free.

During an attempt to navigate to the checkpoint in the dark, all the remaining drivers appear to be lost in the dense fog. Nearby is a camp where Brigadier Hawthorne (Hugh Rouse) is regaling (or rather, boring) his wife Victoria (Mary Ann Berold) and hunter Stewart Simmons (Peter J. Elliott) with self-aggrandizing stale war stories. She pours coffee and whispers to Simmons that she simply must see him: later in his tent, he confesses that he is not the stereotypical bold hunter and has never been with a woman. She has already begun undressing herself and him. The brigadier continues his story, ignorant of the goings on until the cars arrive through the fog and take out the tent. Still, Victoria and Simmons grab sheets and manage to escape without her husband seeing them. At the checkpoint at last, J.J. and Eddie find that only Count Borgia has arrived before them. In the hotel room, they decide the race does not have to be the end of their relationship.

The count bribes a tribe with $500 to attack Eddie and J.J., and Feodor supplies them with the car's number, but hands it to them upside down (it reads "16" in one direction and "91" in the other), so the natives see the number 16 car as the one to attack. As the final race day arrives, the tribe launches a massive assault and pelt Borgia's car with spears. Deciding to no longer be "Mr. Nice Guy," Borgia hits the road with a vengeance, takes out several remaining team cars from France, England and Australia, catches up with Eddie and J.J. and forces them off the road and a cliff, into the river. The car, for all its faults, manages not to sink, and a tribe in canoes helps them cross the water to the opposite bank, which saves them considerable drive time and puts them ahead of Borgia. J.J. repays their kindness by surrendering her last camera. With a push from the natives, they re-enter the race and, though Borgia tries to catch them, the car coasts to a win. Because he didn't answer her questions about his divorce, she asks again what his ex-wife did, and he whispers it to her: she replies she might be in big trouble. . . .