Description
At Weston Hills Sanitarium in rural Ohio, psychiatric patient Dickie Cavanaugh commits suicide by hanging himself. Cavanaugh's sister gives permission to two gravediggers to bury the body. While the two men are digging the hole for Cavanaugh's body, they are attacked and murdered by an unseen killer who throws their corpses into the burial plot.
Meanwhile, at nearby DeWitt University, the basketball team wins a championship game, and as a result, an all-night scavenger hunt will take place the next evening for the female students. Lynn and her boyfriend-star player Teddy Ratliff celebrate the victory at the campus diner, and the waitress Barney is thrilled for the team. Lynn, Teddy, and other students attend a party that evening, where the story of Dickie circulates among freshmen who are unaware of his recent death; they are told that Cavanaugh murdered his girlfriend Patty in a jealous rage and is locked away in the sanitarium. Lynn becomes jealous over Teddy's attraction to Dawn Sorenson and misfit Mike Pryor gets into a fight with his girlfriend Sheila. Soon, school mascot Michael Benson is stabbed in his dorm room after arriving back from the party, and his bear mascot costume is stolen by the killer.
The following day, Mike Pryor is questioned by campus security officer Jim MacVey over the fight with his girlfriend; MacVey's daughter Patty was Dickie Cavanaugh's girlfriend. Later that evening, the campus radio DJ broadcasts the clues to the scavenger hunt, which are received by the girls on their portable radios. Meanwhile, the killer who is dressed in the bear costume, is armed with serrated knives mimicking bear claws.
Jane enters the girls' locker room and locates the first item of the hunt, only to be attacked from behind by the killer, who brutally slashes her throat while calling her misogynistic slurs. Shortly after, Kathy discovers Jane's body crudely strung up in the locker room showers. Kathy tries to flee before also having her throat slashed. The DJ at the radio station begins receiving phone calls from the killer, who tallies his victims; the killer also calls officer MacVey and claims to be Dickie Cavanaugh. Sheila goes down to the pond to search for another item and runs into the bear-clad killer, whom she believes to be Benson. Teasing him, she goes into an abandoned shed by the pond. While inside the shed, the killer smashes their hand through the window, slashing Sheila's throat.
Meanwhile, Lynn continues searching for items on the scavenger hunt, while Teddy visits Dawn at her apartment, where the two have sex. Lynn's friend Leslie goes to search for an item in the attic of the old chapel, where she is murdered and her body is discovered by Lynn. After calling, the police arrive and find all of the bodies, where they are suspicious of Mike Pryor and question several of the students. Dawn gets into an argument with her boyfriend, who kicks her out of their house after he tells her he knows about her affair with Teddy. Officer MacVey studies the phone calls placed to the radio station as well as files and photographs of Dickie Cavanaugh, whose death he became aware of by Dickie's doctor.
On her way home, Dawn senses that someone is following her and makes a call from the cafeteria payphone to Teddy's house, where he is consoling Lynn. Teddy leaves Lynn to get Dawn, and finds her bloodily wounded in the cafeteria. As Teddy is comforting her, he is stabbed by Barney, who reveals herself as the killer. Officer MacVey enters the cafeteria and confronts Barney, whom he addresses as Dickie's twin sister, Katie Cavanaugh. Katie, apparently suffering from dissociative identity disorder, responds to MacVey in alternating voices, claiming to be Dickie. After MacVey tells Katie that Dickie is dead, she reverts, and calmly tells him that Dickie is not dead, and that she brought him home from the hospital. She opens the freezer, displaying Dickie's frozen body clothed in a wheelchair and with the bear-claw weapon in his hand.
