Jake Speed

In Paris, Maureen Winston (Becca C. Ashley) and her friends are enjoying a trip to Paris. However, all is not well. Two thugs have been tracking her and a girlfriend, and when they return to their hotel room, the thugs strike. Maureen takes off running, but it is no use... She and her friend are kidnapped.

Back in America, her father is heaping loads of guilt onto her sister Margaret (Karen Kopins), since she encouraged her to travel and see new places. Grandpa (Leon Ames) won't stand for this, and as the police are doing jack shit, he offers a solution: "There are a few, a very few men. Remo. Mack Bolan. Jake Speed. In this case, I think Jake Speed's the man for the job."

Jake Speed (Wayne Crawford) is a man of action, an adventurer with no equal; especially when it comes to weaponry (he posesses a seemingly magical shotgun called "The Kid."), and especially with twin revolver-toting sidekick Desmond Floyd (Dennis Christopher) by his side. As Pop puts it to a disbelieving family member, "They defeat evil where it exists, pinhead!"

There's only one minor snag: Jake doesn't exist. Jake is the hero of a series of Doc Savage-style pulp action novels. All seems lost.

However, someone leaves Maggie a note to meet a party in a tough Paris bar. That someone turns out to be Jake and Des, in the flesh.

As it turns out, Jake and Des do not work for money (as Jake puts it, "If all this were about money, I'd be working for the wrong side most of the time."). Nope, it turns out that Jake and Des write the novels themselves (under the name Reno Mellon: Jake's favorite town and Des' favorite breakfast food) based off of the adventures they have, seeing it as their reward. They reveal that Maureen has been kidnapped by white slavers and has been taken to an unnamed African country. The trio fly there to root out the leader and rescue Maureen.

Jake turns out to be the golden-boy hero he is in the books, the last of the original nice guys, and Maggie soon finds herself falling for him (despite his habit of doing things the hard way beacuse "it reads better."). After a few twists and turns (and a blown plan or two), the gang wind up in the clutches of Jake's archenemy Sid (a wonderfully over-the-top John Hurt), the ringleader of the slavery ring. He takes Maggie and plans to sell her just like the other girls... but not if Jake and Des (with a little help from their combination assault vehicle/30's roadster H.A.R.V.) have anything to say about it.

Can Jake and Des foil Sid's plan, rescue the girls, and put out another best-seller? All of that can be answered with just a turn of the page.