***SPOILERS*** Just released from the Cogswell Sanitarium after recovering from a nervous breakdown fun house operator Max Evar, Nehemiah Persoff, is determined to make advertising executive Norman "Norm" Garry's, Leslie Nielson, life anything but normal. Evar hounding the poor man unrelentingly in his responsibility in the deaths of Evar's wife & daughter in a fire that he, In Evar's mind, set to his printing business, to collect insurance money, adjacent to the Evar house. Going to the police to get protection from this lunatic all Garry is told is there's nothing they can do until he Evar does something criminal or illegal like murdering him as he's planning to do.
It's the kind sensitive and feeling for all living creatures Det. Adam Flint, Paul Burke, who takes on the case in trying to get both Garry & Evar to bury the hatchet and forget the past by going out to a local bar and having a couple of drinks together. Of course Det. Flint's plan backfired with Evar getting so under Garry's skin that he, as well as Det. Flint, fell right into his trap:The fun house that he manages across the river in New Jersey!
***SPOILERS*** As it soon turned out Norman Garry was the firebug that Evar accused him of in setting fire to his printing plant that killed his wife & daughter by setting Evar's fun house on fire as well. With his conciseness finally getting to him in the fun house Garry freaked out and went bananas wrecking and shooting up the joint and setting it on fire to cover his tracks. Det. Flint, good man as he is, completely underestimated Garry's motives and almost ended up getting fried himself together with Evar, whom Garry knocked out, as the fire that Garry set consumed the entire fun house. As for Garry the flames that he in fact started ended up finishing him off as he flew, in flames, out the the fun house window landing on his head and cracking it!