In the 1970s England, Philip Marlowe Robert Mitchum is summoned to the grand estate of General Sternwood James Stewart, who hires him to uncover who is blackmailing him. At the mansion, the detective meets the general’s daughters: the spoiled, inquisitive Charlotte Sternwood and the wilder Camilla Sternwood Candy Clark. The case quickly broadens beyond simple blackmail as Marlowe delves into a murky circle surrounding a controversial figure, the pornographer Arthur Geiger John Justin. His pursuit of Geiger leads him to Geiger’s employee, Agnes Lazelle, and to Joe Brody Edward Fox, a man entangled with Agnes.
Back at the scene of Geiger’s murder, Camilla is found in the vicinity, having posed for nude photographs, and Marlowe safely escorts her back to a grateful Charlotte. The investigation then returns to the broader web of relationships hitting close to home: gambler Eddie Mars Oliver Reed, who owns the house where Geiger’s body was discovered, looms large, while Mars’s wife Mona Grant Diana Quick has been missing for some time and may have run off with Charlotte’s own missing husband, Rusty Regan David Savile. Charlotte’s gambling debts deepen Mars’s hold over the Sternwood family, suggesting a dangerous overlap between money, power, and romance.
Camilla tries to reclaim photographs from Joe Brody, who is now in possession of them, and Marlowe intervenes—only for Brody to be shot and killed by an unseen killer. A new lead comes when a man named Harry Jones Colin Blakely approaches Marlowe, offering information through his collaboration with Agnes. The trail thickens when Jones is poisoned by Lash Cansino [Richard Boone], a hired killer working for Eddie Mars, and Marlowe answers with relentless resolve.
Determined to uncover Mona’s whereabouts, Marlowe tracks Canino to a remote garage, where he is overpowered and taken prisoner, only to find Mars’s supposed missing wife there as well. A tense confrontation ensues, and Camilla — clearly disturbed — asks Marlowe to teach her how to wield a gun. He guides her to a wooded site atop ruins where he sets up a target: a can on a desolate Roman castle. She fires, but Marlowe has loaded blanks, a ruse meant to teach her restraint rather than to scare her. The moment collapses into chaos, and Camilla’s hysterics reveal a darker truth behind the family’s turmoil.
As the pieces fall into place, Marlowe uncovers that Camilla herself murdered her sister’s husband, Rusty Regan, with Eddie Mars’s aid, and that Charlotte had helped cover it up. With the shocking truth exposed, Marlowe urges Charlotte to have Camilla hospitalized, sparing her from further harm. He then drives away from the Sternwood estate, leaving the gravely ill General Sternwood to confront the full, painful truth as he departs, hoping the truth may never fully reach the old man.
