In the
Mojave Desert, a policeman pulls over a 1964
Chevrolet Malibu driven by J. Frank Parnell. The policeman opens the trunk, sees a blinding flash of white light, and instantly vaporizes, leaving only his boots behind. Otto Maddox, a young punk rocker in L.A., is fired from his job as a supermarket stock clerk. His girlfriend leaves him for his best friend. Depressed and broke, Otto is wandering the streets when a man named Bud drives up and offers him $25 to drive a car out of the neighborhood, supposedly for his wife. Otto follows Bud in the car to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, where he learns the car he drove was being repossessed. He refuses to join Bud as a "repo man" and goes to see his parents. After learning that his burned-out ex-hippie parents have donated the money they promised to reward him for graduating from college to a
televangelist, he takes the repo job. After repossessing a flashy red Cadillac, Otto sees a woman named Leila running down the street. He gives her a ride to her workplace, the United Fruitcake Outlet. On the way, she shows him pictures of aliens that she says are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. She says they are dangerous due to the radiation they emit. Meanwhile, Helping Hand is offered a $20,000 bounty notice for the Malibu. Most assume that the repossession is drug-related because the bounty is far above the value of the car. Parnell arrives in L.A. driving the Malibu but cannot meet his waiting UFO compatriots because of a team of government agents led by a woman with a metal hand. When Parnell pulls into a gas station, Helping Hand's competitors, the Rodriguez brothers, take the Malibu. They stop for sodas because the car's trunk is hot. While they are out of the car, a trio of Otto's punk friends, who are on a crime spree, steal it. After visiting a nightclub, Parnell appears and tricks the punks into opening the trunk, killing one of them and scaring the other two away. Later, he picks up Otto and drives aimlessly before collapsing and dying from radiation. After surviving a convenience store shootout with the punks that leaves Bud wounded and punk Duke dead, Otto takes the Malibu back to Helping Hand and leaves it in the lot. The car is stolen again, and a chase ensues. By this time, the car is glowing bright green. Eventually, the Malibu reappears at the Helping Hand lot with Bud behind the wheel, but he ends up being shot. The various groups trying to acquire the car soon show up: government agents, the UFO scientists, and the televangelist. Anyone who approaches it bursts into flames, even those in flame-retardant suits. Only Miller, an eccentric mechanic at Helping Hand who had explained earlier to Otto that aliens exist and can
travel through time in their spaceships, can enter the car. He slides behind the wheel and beckons Otto into the Malibu. After Otto settles into the passenger seat, it lifts straight into the air. It flies away through the city's skyline (Miller telling Otto what Bud had said earlier, "The life of a repo man is ALWAYS intense.") and later into space. == Cast ==