American Strays 1996

It's a time-honored tradition in the American West that madness and malevolence fit into normal, everyday life, along with big guns, big cars and the open road. American Strays is made up of three stories related by time, place, and attitude. In one story, Dwayne, a vacuum cleaner salesman leaves a trail of dead customers across the Southwest. Could he have met his match in Patty Mae, a vixen who collects vacuum cleaners and then bumps off their hapless salesmen? In another, Johnny is an inept milquetoast who is so depressed and beaten down that he can't even manage to kill himself. Desperate to end it all, he hires an eager psychopathic hit man who helps people commit suicide and in the process finds his soul. The third story gathers a twisted, but curiously likable collection of misfits criss-cross on the desert floor, spiraling ever-closer to their final destination, Red's Desert Oasis Diner, where passion, frustration, perversion and dementia explode into a fiery free for all.