Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, [Richard Burton], a once-respected Episcopal clergyman, endures a nervous breakdown after being ostracized by his congregation and defrocked due to an alleged relationship with a very young Sunday school teacher. Two years pass, and he now works as a tour guide for Blake's Tours, leading a group of Baptist schoolteachers toward Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where a fragile balance between duty and desire will be tested in a place that promises sun and trouble in equal measure.
Miss Judith Fellowes, [Grayson Hall], is the group’s stern, exacting chaperone, entrusted with watching over Charlotte Goodall, [Sue Lyon], a 16-year-old who seems almost provocatively drawn to Shannon. When Charlotte slips into Shannon’s hotel room in the middle of the night, Shannon—mindful of his past scandals—urges her to leave. Yet Charlotte resists, and Fellowes’s vigilance quickly shifts from protective concern to accusation, as she declares that Shannon’s behavior could ruin them all and vows to report the scene to Blake’s Tours.
On approach to the hotel, Shannon makes a dangerous, impulsive choice: he diverts the bus and drives the terrified passengers to a cheap Costa Verde hotel in Mismaloya, later removing the distributor cap so no one can call for help. The hotel is now run by the widow Maxine Faulk, [Ava Gardner], a bawdy, flamboyant presence who has inherited the place after Fred’s death. Shannon convinces Maxine to let the group stay, thinking they’ll be cut off from outside contact and phones, while he works with her to calm Miss Fellowes, whom they privately suspect harbors a lustful obsession with Charlotte.
Another visitor arrives: Hannah Jelkes, [Deborah Kerr], a striking, chaste itinerant painter from Nantucket, traveling with her 96-year-old poet grandfather, Nonno, [Cyril Delevanti]. They’re short of funds, so Shannon negotiates a room for them as well. Over a long, uneasy night, Shannon faces his own temptations—desire, alcohol, and self-doubt—while Charlotte stokes trouble with Hank Prosner, [Skip Ward], and Fellowes refuses to let Shannon escape the consequences of his actions. As the night deepens, Shannon finds himself “at the end of his rope.”
To illustrate that moment of crisis, the film surrounds him with intimate acts of care: Hannah offers spiritual counsel and a soothing cup of poppy-seed tea, and the cabana boys restrain him in a hammock when his impulses threaten to overwhelm him. In a quiet act of mercy and restraint, Hannah’s presence becomes a counterweight to Shannon’s fragility, and he begins to regain a fragile sense of rationality. In a surprising, almost symbolic gesture, he frees the iguana that Maxine has kept tied, signaling a small victory over the forces that have kept him immobilized.
The elder poet, Nonno, spends his final days laboring to complete a poem about having heart in a corrupt world, and then dies, leaving the others to confront the wreckage of their lives. The event nudges the remaining characters toward a choice about what they want from life in a place that has already stripped them of most pretensions. Perceiving a warmth blossoming between Shannon and Hannah, Maxine offers to step aside and let them take over the hotel, on the condition that Shannon stay to legitimise the arrangement. Yet Hannah recognizes the impracticality of that plan and chooses her own path, leaving to find a life of her own.
In the end, Shannon and Maxine acknowledge a mutual attraction and decide to run the hotel together, a partnership born from hard-won honesty and a shared sense that, in a world shadowed by pain and judgment, their bond offers a difficult but possible way forward. The film closes on a note of tempered equality and quiet hope, with each character choosing a path that preserves dignity in a landscape where sympathy is scarce and impulses are fragile.
The film also features the rest of the company in supporting roles: the barkeeper, Emilio Fernández (uncredited), the Teacher, Eloise Hardt (uncredited), Miss Peebles, Mary Boylan, and Mlle Dexter, Gladys Hill (uncredited), each adding texture to a story of temptation, mercy, and resilience set against a sultry Mexican coastline.
