Howard, Gordon Jennison Noice, is the town’s hardest hammer, a Harley-riding thug whose menace keeps the local streets in line. His wife, Loretta, Jacqueline Lovell, carries a dangerous secret of her own: an affair with Lance, Blake Adams, the kindly owner of the town diner. Howard’s suspicion simmers as he senses the strain between the couple, and the tension between loyalty, love, and danger begins to fracture the surface of small‑town life.
One night, while driving Lance home from one of his late-night flings, Lance stumbles upon something chilling: the Stackpool family, a bizarre brood living on the edge of town, dragging a man from his truck into their secluded house. From this chance encounter, Lance uncovers a terrible secret that defies ordinary explanation. The Stackpools aren’t just odd in appearance; they are quadruplets who each possess an exaggerated human faculty: one is colossal in strength, another has ultra-sharp senses, a third is stunningly attractive, and the fourth, the “head” of the family, is exceptionally intelligent. The family is overseen by Myron, a regal, oversized head perched in a wheelchair who wields psychic power over his siblings and orchestrates their strange, coordinated life.
Lance sees an opportunity and uses the Stackpools’ secret to his advantage, coercing them into doing his bidding. He presses them to eliminate Howard and to hand over a weekly fortune—two thousand dollars in cash—because the family sits on oil and coal riches that make their control lucrative. The Stackpools, however, are not merely frightened victims; they are a calculated force led by Myron, who plays a dangerous game of leverage with the outside world while constraining the fates of those who cross him.
As the plot tightens, Myron tires of Lance’s petty scheming and decides to take matters into his own hands. He captures Lance and Loretta, forcing them into a brutal game to erase the trail of their secret, aiming to snap the link between the outside world and the Stackpool power. To coerce Lance into compliance, Myron stages a grim mock trial in a basement, casting Loretta in a dangerous Joan of Arc-like scenario complete with a stake, a symbolic burning, and the looming threat of annihilation. Otis, Bob Schott, seeing a chance to intervene and protect the “pretty girl,” intervenes directly. He abducts Loretta just as danger becomes too close, and he then destroys the house to erase the evidence, burning it to ashes.
With the Stackpools and Lance dead, Loretta realizes a new truth: Otis Stackpool is the sole survivor of the family and, by that fact alone, the rightful heir to the immense fortunes the Stackpools control. She marries Otis and steps into the wealth and power of the family, becoming Loretta Stackpool. Yet the final moment of the tale leaves a chilling implication: the mastermind Myron may still be alive and quietly guiding Otis from the shadows, suggesting that the danger has not truly ended, but rather shifted its gaze to a new, unseen horizon.
