Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott) is a prosperous local businessman in Grand Rapids, Michigan who has strong Calvinist convictions. A single parent, Van Dorn is the father of a seemingly quiet, conservative teenage girl, Kristen (Ilah Davis), who inexplicably disappears when she goes on a church-sponsored trip to Bellflower, California. Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), a strange private investigator from Los Angeles, is then hired to find her, eventually turning up an 8 mm film stag film of Van Dorn's daughter with two young men.