Years of too much drugs, alcohol, and indiscriminate sex are finally beginning to take their toll on luckless writer, Tim Madden (O'Neal). But the worst is yet to come. He is rudely awakened one day to find a woman's severed head in his marijuana stash. He attempts to solve this mystery, aided by his bartender father, Dougy. Enlisting the police chief's help is of no use as Capt. Luther Regency has an axe to grind with Tim. Capt. Regency's wife, Madeline (Rossellini), is sterile - a result of a car accident that happened when she was still Tim's girlfriend. When Tim's and Madeline's relationship is dredged from the past, a sordid underworld of partner-swapping, sexual peccadilloes, murder, and even more severed heads leave Tim racing against time to clear his name and make sense of this gruesome turn of events.