Nicholas runs an isolated gas station in the countryside, a quiet outpost that becomes the unlikely hub of a growing mystery. One night, he points a young woman driver toward Twin Falls, but after she leaves, he phones someone using a special telephone, as if signaling a hidden network behind the routine act of refueling. Soon after, two men, Toby and Grego, block the road with a makeshift barricade and uncover a previously hidden route; they capture the driver, and she becomes the third woman motorist reported missing on Laurel Road that month.
Across town, Hollywood screenwriter Ralph Benton rejects a suggestion from his boss that the recent disappearances could fuel a horror script—he’s about to marry and wants peace of mind. By coincidence, Ralph stops at Nicholas’s gas station, but he pulls away before the attendant can even fill the tank, only to run out of gas later. Meanwhile, another woman driver, Stella Saunders, pulls in for directions, and this time Ralph ends up hitching a ride with her. The car is inexplicably disabled, and on a television in a nearby house, Dr. Richard Marlowe watches with clinical interest as events unfold. When Ralph leaves to seek help at a distant house, Marlowe orders his men to abduct Stella, drawing Ralph further into a chilling chain of events.
Marlowe’s bizarre project unfolds as he introduces Stella to his wife, Evelyn, who has been dead for 22 years yet remains mysteriously preserved. Marlowe insists that he wants something from Stella to help his wife—“your will to live, your mind.” The confrontation and rescue attempts lead to a tense, unanswered knock on the door of Marlowe’s house, and when Ralph returns, Stella and the car are gone. The next day, Ralph learns that Stella is missing and he informs the sheriff, as the mystery deepens and the town’s fear grows.
A voodoo ceremony becomes the central ritual as Marlowe, Nicholas, and others gather Stella, Evelyn, and four women who become zombies. Marlowe attempts to transfer Stella’s mind and soul into Evelyn’s body to revive his dead wife, and the experiment appears to work—briefly. His obsession persists, and he remains determined to locate a woman with “perfect affinity.” A sheriff’s visit adds pressure, and Marlowe decides to try again with Stella, though a careless oversight by Toby leaves Stella’s cell door open, allowing her to escape, albeit in a trance-like state. The sheriff and his deputy eventually find her on the road and bring her back to the Benton apartment, where she lies under the aftermath of the ritual.
Nicholas calls Stella to him through further voodoo ritual, and Ralph and Betty confront Marlowe directly. A portrait of the dead Evelyn is shown, and when Marlowe telephones the sheriff, Evelyn briefly wanders into the room and is glimpsed by Ralph and Betty before an older woman takes her away. After Ralph and Betty depart, Marlowe wonders aloud whether Betty could possess the same “perfect affinity” he seeks for Evelyn. He orders Nicholas to summon Betty again while Ralph phones the sheriff, and Ralph heads out in pursuit, arriving in the middle of the ceremony, only to be knocked out by Grego.
The sheriff and deputy arrive as Evelyn returns briefly to life, but Marlowe is shot dead in a final, restrained moment of triumph for the law. Before dying, Marlowe tells his wife, “Soon, we will be together.” Stella and Betty emerge from their trance-like states, free from the immediate ritual hold—and yet changed by the night’s events. In the aftermath, Ralph submits a script titled “The Voodoo Man” to his boss, who asks who should star in it, and Ralph suggests Bela Lugosi as the ideal casting choice for the chilling, obsessive role that drives the film’s eerie premise.
