Kim Basinger stars as Della, a housewife who has twin children (Terri and Tammi-played by Luke Gair and Erika-Shaye Gair) and an abusive jerk for a husband (Kenneth), played by Craig Sheffer.
The movie opens on Christmas Eve. Kenneth is on his way home from work, driving a nice car too I might add. He is on his cellphone arguing with a business partner I would assume. When he gets home, he sees that the floor is a mess with shoes and toys spread all about. This angers him even more and he takes up with his wife, Della, asking her why the house is always a mess. He pins her up against the wall. The twin's watch from the stairs. He punches the wall, leaving a hole in it and walks away. She tends to the children, trying to comfort them. After that is all said in done, she needs to go to the mall to do some last minute shopping and because she is out of wrapping paper. She gets there and the parking lot is full because there is a lot of last minute shoppers there. While she is looking for a parking space, she notices a car taking up two spaces and this irks her. She finally finds a spot to park, makes her way over to the hoggish car and leaves a note under the wiper calling the owner a "selfish jerk". Then she goes in the mall to do her last minute shopping.
When she finally does leave the mall, it is closing and many people have left already. Not the owner of the car she left the note on however and she notices this on the way to her vehicle. She also notices that the note she left under the wiper is no longer there. Odd. When she gets to her vehicle, she gets in to start it up. She notices a car coming up behind her and it blocks her from backing up. She gets out of the car only to be confronted by the owner of the car (Chuckie-played by Lukas Haas) she left the note on and a posse of his thug friends. Yelling ensues and a mall cop (no, not Paul Blart) makes his way over to them to see what the problem is, only to have his brains blown out of his head by Chuckie. While this happens, Della jumps in her vehicle, starts it and drives over the median in front of her. Chuckie and his posse hop in his car and give chase. Della ends up crashing her vehicle into a log pile at a housing development but she is unharmed. She manages to make it to the back of her vehicle, open up the hatchback and grab a toolbox before the thugs get there.
With that, Della spends the rest of the night trying to outrun and out wit the thugs armed with only the tools that she has in her toolbox as weapons. The first kill, in my opinion, is the best. The first kill that Della performs anyway. The last one was probably the weakest and it should of been the best considering that this was the main bad guy she was offing.
I will admit that there will be some that are put off buy the ending and I was let down a bit myself. As a whole though it was a fun flick and moves along nicely at it's 1 hour and 20 minute run time.

Although the movie takes place at an "Ivy League" college, it was in fact shot entirely in Northern Arizona, mostly at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff in the fall of 1976. I was involved in the theater department there, and most of the extras in the film are then-members of the theater department.
There is an absolutely ludicrous scene in this film (if you know your Arizona geography) that shows several cast members riding bikes from the college to a creek. We NAU'ers know that the campus and said creek (Actually Oak Creek Canyon) are about 35 miles apart, and while the trip there is all downhill, it would be literally IMPOSSIBLE to ride a bike back UP that same road!