Max Devlin, Elliott Gould, is the shady landlord of a rundown Los Angeles slum, always skirting his tenants’ anger as they mutter that he both owns and profits from the dilapidated building. During a chaotic escape from a mob of tenants, a passing bus ends his life, and he plummets into hell, a realm that mirrors a cold, corporate headquarters. There he meets Barney Satin, the devil’s top henchman, Bill Cosby, who lays out a ruthless bargain: he will grant Max release if he can recruit three innocent souls to sell theirs in exchange for his own freedom. Max agrees, is returned to the living world, but Barney retains his own soul and forbids Max from seeing his reflection in mirrors. To help him in the quest, Barney grants Max limited magical powers and explains that the three subjects will continue to live until their natural end if the deals go through.
Back among the living, Max targets three vulnerable lives: Stella Summers, Julie Budd, a high school dropout with dreams of becoming a singer; Nerve Nordlinger, David Knell, a student who yearns for popularity; and Toby Hart, Adam Rich, a child who longs for his widowed mother Penny Hart, Susan Anspach, to find happiness again. Max begins to weave himself into their lives: he helps Stella land a recording contract, he trains Nerve as a motorbike racer after school, and he spends time with Toby while assisting Penny in running a daycare facility. As he draws closer to all three, Max finds that he’s starting to care for them—and he even falls in love with Penny. Yet the trio’s souls must be signed away, and the path to success becomes morally murky.
Stella stubbornly refuses to sign, suspicious that Max is chasing more than his 20 percent fee as her manager. Nerve too becomes more focused on his racing future, while Toby agrees to sign only if Max marries Penny. Eventually all three sign, and their personalities immediately darken in the wake of the contracts. Max and Penny wed, but Barney returns with a grim revelation: the three will die at midnight, and while Max may live to the natural end of his life, he is irrevocably damned. Enraged by the deceit, Max considers destroying the contracts, but Barney whisks him back to hell, revealing his true demonic form and threatening even greater torment if Max attempts to ruin the agreements. Believing himself doomed, Max hurls the papers into a nearby fire—and somehow returns to life.
Convinced he is still damned, Max leaves his wedding reception to bid farewell to Nerve and Stella, only to find their personalities have returned to normal. When he reappears to say goodbye to Toby and Penny, he is overjoyed to discover he can again see his reflection in a mirror, and he surmises that his self-sacrifice has redeemed him and defeated Barney. That night, he attends Stella’s concert with Penny and Toby, and, looking toward the heavens, he offers a quiet, grateful thanks.
