****SPOILERS**** Hospitalized for a combination of shell shock and mental illness whacked out Korean War .Sgt. Sandford "Sandy" Lufton,Charles Aidman, has been going nuts in the thought that he leaving his unit in Korea in 1950 to go on a hot date, in the dead of winter, with a pretty US Army WAC lead to all the men in his unit to be rubbed out by a Communist Chines human wave attack across the Yalu River. Now 16 years later-1966-and while being treated for mental illness Lufton escapes from the veterans hospital looking for his lost date and do her in for letting his fellow GI's down by deserting them when they, in him being the unit's top gun, needed him most!
Not really thinking right Lufton spots housewife Sue Bradley, Jan Shutan, hanging up her laundry outside her house and mistakes her for the hot date that stood him up back in 1950 and decides to have her pay for it as the men she caused to end up getting killed. As crazy as he can get Sue just goes along with Lufton's sick fantasy in being taken hostage by him until the Felony Squad, who got word that he's a nut on the loose, headed by Det. Sgt. Sam Stone, Howard Duff, and his assistant Desk Sgt. Dan Briggs, Ben Alexander, can come to her rescue. At what turned out to be a sea-idea fun house where Lupton took, against her will, Sue to have a "good" time.
****SPOILERS**** With Sgt. Stone confronting the by now completely crazed Sanford Lufton in the fun house's house of horrors he tries to get him to give himself up without any feather trouble. This leads to Lufton after he almost had Sgt. Stone on the ropes and ready to finish him off to come to his senses and realize just how crazy and out of touch, with reality, he really is. It's after Lufton gave himself up it's found out that the whole insane episode he had about a pretty WAC causing his unit to be wiped out by the Communist Chinese was all a figment of his imagination. He in fact deserted his unit on his own for the local Army PX to get a bottle, tax free, of Johnny Walker Red to warm himself up in the freezing cold. And for the last 15 or so years made up this BS story that some blond sexy WAC was responsible for what he, in letting his men down, actually did!