Myrtle Kane, Lynn Redgrave and Jeb Stuart Thorington, James Coburn, arrive on The Rube Benedict Show where the eponymous host Reggie King selects them and another couple as contestants. Despite not knowing each other, the pair wins the competition and agrees to a single condition: their marriage must be ordained by a minister on set. They decide to use the prize check to restore Waverley Plantation, a decaying mansion their family has owned since 1840, located about 100 miles upstream from New Orleans.
Upon reaching the plantation, Myrtle is introduced to Jeb’s multiracial half-brother, Chicken, Robert Hooks. Chicken earned his nickname for hoarding chickens on the rooftop during childhood. Myrtle reveals her own background in show business, explaining that she was the last surviving member of an Alabama female quintet known as the Mobile Hot-Shots.
Tensions flare as Jeb and Chicken spar over ownership of the mansion. Jeb asserts his right to the house, while Chicken contends that, once Jeb dies of terminal lung cancer, he will become the rightful owner as next of kin. In a series of flashbacks, Jeb confesses he was discharged from the army and frames his history as a kind of personal war with Chicken, ordering his half-brother to leave. Chicken, however, returns to sign an agreement that would name him the next owner of the property.
During a dinner, Myrtle grows wary of her brother-in-law’s pressure, and Jeb orders Myrtle to retrieve the agreement from Chicken’s back pocket. She struggles to accomplish this task, and the moment spirals into danger as Jeb commands her to kill Chicken with a hammer and not to come back upstairs without the document. When Myrtle goes downstairs again, she engages in a tense conversation that leads to the revelation that she never married Jeb.
Chicken refuses to believe the claim and demands the marriage license. Myrtle returns upstairs and then produces the license, causing further conflict. The tense situation gives way to an affair between Myrtle and Chicken, even as Jeb—haunted by memories of his mother and his own past escapades with prostitutes—grows increasingly furious that Myrtle has not secured the document.
Armed with a pistol, Jeb descends to confront the crisis and ultimately burns the agreement. In a startling turn, Chicken reveals that he is, in fact, the plantation’s heir—his claim resting on his mother rather than on any “mistake” from an interracial affair alleged by Jeb’s father, who died in World War II. The discovery devastates Jeb, who collapses and dies.
As the story moves toward its dark conclusion, a cataclysmic flood breaks the levee. Chicken and Myrtle scramble to the rooftop to escape the rising waters, where they seek shelter and, in a final, defiant moment, a sense of refuge and sexual fulfillment amidst the chaos.
