****SPOILERS**** This religiously inspired psycho former mental patient Martin Novack played by future "Rich Man Poor Man"-take your pick-star Peter Strauss has been going around the city of San Francisco knocking off priests using the church's confession booth in doing it. Why would this nut confess that he committed sins and then kill the very person to whom he's confessing them to? It all has to do with a friend of his Joe Shay, James Gregory,a father figure that he met in the Pacific State Mental hospital who's been kicked out of the priesthood because it was decided by a number of priests in his his church that he wasn't quit up to the job or have what it takes to be a man of the cloth.
It was Shay who got Novack started on his mission of righting the wrongs of the church by telling him how he was treated by the church or better yet those that ran it that he was assigned to. It turned out that the three priests that Novack murdered were members of the committee who had Shay kicked out! Feeling that Shay got a raw deal in all this Novack was now determined to make those who did his friend in and had him kicked out of the priesthood pay with their very lives!
***SPOILERS*** Casing out his next victim Father Henry Driscoll, Leif Erickson, Novack can't quite find a photo of the guy whom he plans to murder which has Det. Let. Mike Stone, Karl Malden, go undercover as a priest impersonating him. It's Stone's partner Inspector Steve Keller, Michael Douglas,who figured out who Novack was through a police sketch of him and had Father Driscoll's church & confession booth covered when and if Novack showed up to whack the undercover Det. Let. Stone. Whom the by then confused Novack was still not certain who exactly he was! This all came to a head when Novack called out the name Father Driscoll and the real Father Driscoll answered! That not only blew Det. Let. Stone's cover but almost had him blown, by the confused Novack, away as well by taking a bullet that was meant for Father Driscoll!
Somewhat ridicules ending with a wounded and his hand in a sling Det. Let. Stone literally single-handily capturing the fleeing Martin Novack in a hijacked school-bus as his partner Inspector Keller and a squad of the SFPD come, which he really didn't need, to his rescue! Even though Joe Shay had nothing against those priests who kicked him out of the priesthood, in in fact liked it at the mental hospital watering his plants and doing crossword puzzles, it was the mentally unstable Novack who took his ouster seriously and in his own crazy way felt inspired by God to set things straight!
