Morris "Mud" Himmel has a problem: his parents want to send him away to a summer Tech camp. He hates going to summer camp, and would do anything to get out of it. Talking to his friends, he realizes that they are all facing the same sentence of going to a boring summer camp. Together with them, he hatches a plan to create their own summer camp with no parents, no School counselors, and no rules. Word gets out and other kids want to join the made up summer camp. Mud decides to blackmail former drama teacher Dennis Van Welker into helping; he had bought an AMC Gremlin and failed to make most of the payments and is being pursued by soon-to-retire collector T.R. Polk, and agrees to help them in return for $1,000 and after they threaten to turn him in if he doesn't help.