Pilgrim Corporation has leased Choke Canyon to research physicist David Lowell for 99 years. Lowell has built an impressive research laboratory there. When Pilgrim suddenly needs Choke Canyon for toxic waste storage, they resort to violence to force out the renitent Lowell. However, Pilgrim Corportation vastly underestimates Lowell, who is a tenacious, principled, and ingenious man.

Ernest, a lovable loser who works as a summer camp handyman and dreams of becoming a guidance counselor, must find a way to inspire a group of juvenile delinquents while stopping a shady strip mining company from closing the camp as well.

When a dispute occurs between a logging operation and a nearby Native American tribe, Dr. Robert Verne and his wife, Maggie, are sent in to mediate. Chief John Hawks insists the loggers are poisoning the water supply, and, though company man Isley denies it, the Vernes can't ignore the strangely mutated wildlife roaming the woods. Robert captures a bear cub for testing and soon finds himself the target of an angry mutant grizzly.