In 1971, American writer and reporter Hunter S. Thompson took a trip to Las Vegas with Mexican-American attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. Nobody knows, what really happened in those few days the two spent together, but whatever it was, it gave birth to Thompson's masterpiece-novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".

27 years later, in 1998, ex-Monty-Python-member Terry Gilliam took on the job of making a film of the bizarre tour de force and cast stars like Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci and Dr. Thompson himself (for a small cameo) to make one of the most exccentric, freakish, wierd and fantastic movies of the decade.

At the outset of the year 1971, two guys are jetting in a red convertible through the desert of Nevada, heading towards Las Vegas, totally stoned and halluzinating. They are Raoul Duke (played by Johnny Depp), a reporter working for the Rolling Stone, and his Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo (played by Benicio del Toro) and they are on their way to the Mint Hotel to cover the annual Mint 400 motorbike race.

Yet, this proves to be more difficult than they thought, perhaps owing to the fact that they are high on LSD, when they try to check into their Hotel rooms, with Duke having a bad trip and thinking everybody in the hotel bar to be bloodthirsty, man-eating reptiles. Also, the race itself turns out to be more of a sand storm, as the motorbikes raise up so much dust, nobody can see anything after the first ones have started.

And so Duke and Gonzo decide to spend the rest of their trip searching for the lost American Dream, paying some of the well-known and some of the not so well-known places in Las Vegas a visit, taking drugs and devastating their hotel apartement.

After some days, however, they come to realize that they have overused the room-service and crushed their hotel room so much, they would never be able to pay for all the damage, so they do, what any reasonable man would do in such a situation: They take flight, both on their own.

Yet, on his way back to California, Duke has a little run-in with a highway patrol-man, forcing him to turn and head back to Las Vegas, where he checks into another hotel, where his attorney is already awaiting him with a young woman, named Lucy, he met on his flight back to L.V. and drugged to make her "relax".

After Duke has convinced Gonzo of getting rid of Lucy, the two decide to attend the District Attourney's conference for Law Enforcement agents on the Drug Culture, so "the other side" would be represented. They do so, of course, after taking another load of drugs.

In the end, the two get away as usual. Duke drives Dr. Gonzo to the airport (not without devastating another rented convertible) and starts out on his way back to California.

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