Great Britain

THEY WERE POLES APART - BUT HAD VIOLENCE IN COMMON. Chas Devlin is a young villain specializing in violence and the exercise of fear. His boss, Harry Flowers, is under threat of being dragged into a High Court action by The Lawyer in order to take the heat off his client. Chas warns off lawyer and client, but subsequently incurs Harry's wrath by acting against orders and intimidating Joey Maddocks, a betting shop owner whom Harry is persuading to 'merge'. Joey seeks revenge, but in a savage fight Chas shoots him. The Flowers firm, realising they could be incriminated in a gangland killing, decide Chas must be hunted down before the police get him. On the run, Chas takes refuge in the cavernous, crumbling home of retired rock star Turner and his girl companions Pherber and Lucy, by posing as a show-biz crony of the previous tenant. Turner, at first hostile to Chas, comes to recognize in him the magnetism of violence that used to be manifested in Turner's own power as a performer. The reason for his present predicament - creative impotence becomes clearer. Seized by the notion that Chas can be made to disgorge the key to some monstrous enigma of human nature, he embarks with Pherber's connivance on dissecting this guinea-pig which the underworld has chased into his basement.