Summaries

Synopsis

The story starts at a Far East port where a ship from Europe is unloading its cargo. Thieves move among the recently unloaded crates looking for something valuable to steal. In one large crate they are surprised to find Gwendoline (Tawny Kitaen), a beautiful, naive, young French girl who, lacking the money for a proper passenger cabin, had herself and her companion, Beth (Zabou Breitman), shipped by freight to this city. Beth, slightly older than Gwendoline and more experienced, is not in the crate, but is currently out trying to steal some food for the girls to eat.

The thieves kidnap Gwendoline and take her to a local gangster chief's office above his casino/bordello. They sell Gwendoline to him and leave. Gwendoline is then accidentally saved by Willard (Brent Huff), a local riverboat captain to whom the gangster owes $800, when Willard crashes into the gangster's office and demands his money. Gwendoline is impressed with Willard, being both handsome and capable, as he quickly incapacitates the gangster's two bodyguards and extracts his money from the gangster chief (but also mortally wounding him in the process). She begs him for further assistance, but he ignores her and heads down to the casino below.

The thieves return at this point, having captured Beth and hoping to also sell her. When they enter the office and see the gangster and his body guards incapacitated, they assume Gwendoline has bested them and the thieves flee in terror, leaving Beth behind.The girls head down to the casino and Gwendoline again seeks the assistance of Willard who is at the roulette table. She tells him she is looking for her father, an entomologist who disappeared seeking a rare butterfly in these parts. Willard and his companions scoff at the idea that anybody would waste their time searching for butterflies, but Gwendoline seizes some of his chips, places them on black and makes a bet with him that he wins, he must help them, if not, they will go away and stop bothering him.

The roulette ball lands on black and Willard agrees to help get them started with their search for Gwendoline's dad. He takes the girls to a notorious opium den to talk to an acquaintance of his that might know about her father. The girls are shocked to find the acquaintance mostly stoned with opium laying naked on a bed while a young girl pleasures him as they talk. The acquaintance informs them he had spoken to Gwendoline's father, and that he was headed to the Yik-Yak, a desert area up river and inland across the jungle. He informs them that the area is dangerous and nobody has ever returned from it.

As they leave the den, the local police chief arrests them: Willard for the gangster's murder and the girls for not having a passport. Once in a cell, Willard seizes Gwendoline and roughly kisses her, trying to get her to scream and create a diversion for their escape. Gwendoline, however, melts in his arms and he is forced to slap her on her behind to get her to yell. This brings the guard. Willard overpowers him, gets the keys and the three escape.

Willard has an agreement with a local smuggler to carry contraband up river, with the contraband delivered to his boat the next morning. The girls beg to go with him and he throws them into the river. The next morning, waking up, he is frustrated to find they are again on his boat and again he throws them into the river. The girls inform him, however, that as he slept, they took receipt of his contraband and if he wants it back, we will have to take them with him. He reluctantly agrees.

When they arrive at the trading post where Gwendoline's father must have started his inland trip, Gwendoline faints when she sees that the man that runs the outpost, Tom, is wearing her father's jacket and hat. Tom explains that he found them on a body (Gwen's father) on the bank of the river. Tom at first believed the man was a victim of the Klops, a primitive tribe that lives in the jungle between the river and the Yik-Yak, but was puzzled when the saw the man died by a bullet wound, because the Klops have no guns.

With her father dead, Willard sees no reason for Gwendoline to continue her expedition, but Gwendoline decides she has a new mission: to capture the butterfly herself and see it named after her father. Willard refuses to participate until she offers him $2,000 to help (though Beth and Willard fail to see how she will acquire that much money). Secretly she raises it by selling Willard's contraband to Tom, who is willing to risk Willard's wrath as he thinks it is unlikely that the three of them will return from the Yik-Yak.

The three head into the jungle, but after a few days are captured by the Klops and taken to their village, where they are hogtied overnight in a hut to await their fate. Gwendoline asks what will happen to them. Willard informs her that the Klops fear a deadly and putrid wind that blows in from the Yik-Yak, and when it occurs he will be scarified by being tied to scaffolding at the border of the desert to appease the wind. The girl's fate will be more immediate, however, as tomorrow they will be used for sport and the Yik-Yak will hunt them to death with their dogs.

Gwendoline laments that she will die a virgin, never having been made love to by a man. To calm her Willard describes how he would make love to her, exciting her only with words until she has an orgasm.

Over the course of the night, Beth manages to loosen Willard's bonds with her teeth, so when Gwendoline screams, bringing a guard, Willard is able to overpower him and they escape. Chased by the Klops, they flee into the Yik-Yak desert where the Klops fear to enter. That night the deadly wind comes, but the three survive it and the next day Gwendoline shouts that she has seen this place in her dreams and over the next sand dune is where the butterfly lives. Willard and Beth at first think the deadly wind has affected her mind, but soon discover she is right finding a rocky rift in the desert floor with dense vegetation at the bottom. Beth is lowered down and quickly finds and captures the rare butterfly, but before she can be brought back up, there is a scream from below, and Beth is gone.

Gwendoline and Willard climb down to find Beth. They discover that adjacent to the jungle and the bottom of the rift is a partly underground city, made of white stone. Observing the inhabitants from hiding, they see that apparently the population is composed only of attractive females. They seem to be divided into three classes: the workers, who only wear only sandals and a brief thong as they work the macabre machines that seem to power the city; the warriors/guards, who wear similar thongs, but with boots, breast plates, spears and helmets; and finally the ruling class, led by the queen (Bernadette Lafont), who sport elaborate makeup and long, fancy robes that cover them to their ankles. The guards and elite use chariots to get around the city, not drawn by horses, but by the lower class women.

Gwendoline and Willard manage to get a hold of guard uniforms and disguise themselves so they can search the city (a disguise which is of limited effectiveness for Willard as the skimpy outfit does not hide his maleness very well). Willard realizes that the machines are being used to collect and process diamonds, which are probably smuggled to the outside world in order to pay for the rich ruling class's lifestyles.

The guards become suspicious of Willard and Gwendoline and they are chased about the city. They become separated and Gwen finds herself in a torture chamber where women who have defied the queen are being punished. She finds Beth there, strapped to the wall in front of a giant crossbow with a plug in her mouth. If Beth opens her mouth just a tiny bit the plug, attached to a string, will be pulled out, and this will trigger the crossbow causing her to be impaled. Gwendoline is able to free one of Beth's arms, allowing her to dodge the spear when it is released from the bow. Before they can flee, however, the Queen and her guards appear and Gwen is taken to a room where the Queen can interrogate her.

The Queen, intrigued by Gwendoline's beauty, explains the history of the city which is named Pikaho. It was located on a volcano which erupted in the 12th century, killing most of the population, and the few of the men that survived soon died of unknown causes. Since then the inhabitants have been nearly all women, with a few men brought into allow selected girls to mate and continue the population. At this point Willard arrives, trying to rescue Gwen. He is captured, and given that he appears to be a fine specimen, the Queen will allow four of her best girls to compete to mate with him.

The Queen also introduces Gwen to D'Arcy (Jean Rougerie), a male scientist from the outside world whose machines, powered by the volcano, run the city and allow them to mine the diamonds.

Gwen and Beth are chained in a room for disobedient girls, but manage to overpower the guard and escape. Gwen tries to rescue Willard resulting in a chariot race with Willard and Gwen being pursued by the guards (and all the chariots pulled by scantily clad women). The race ends in a crash, Willard is recaptured and one of the Queen's guards (who also happens to be one selected to compete to mate with Willard) traps Gwen at a cliff edge. Before the guard can spear Gwendoline, however, Beth appears and manages to crush the guard's head with a rock. Beth then tells Gwen to take the guard's helmet (which conceals her face) and spear, and push the body over the cliff. When the Queen arrives, she assumes the body at the bottom of the cliff is Gwendoline and she and sends the now disguised Gwen with D'Arcy to prepare for the contest.

D'Arcy sees through the disguise and when he is left alone with Gwendoline, he confesses to her he hates being under the Queen's thumb and plans to use his machines to create an volcanic eruption destroying the city. He begs Gwendoline to escape with him, as he lusts after her beauty, but she refuses.

Disguised as the guard, Gwen enters a fight to the death with three other girls for the right to mate with Willard. Despite not being trained for combat, she knows it is the only way for her to save his life as the woman he will mate will kill him after he gives her his seed.

Gwen avoids combat with the other three girls, letting them fight among themselves until she only has a single opponent left. At this point, girls carrying shields for the combatants enter the fight. Gwen's shield is carried by Beth, and together they manage to defeat Gwen's final opponent.

With her head still hidden by the helmet, Gwen is led to the throne room where Willard, spread eagle on his back and chained to a bed, is forced to mate with her (the actual mating hidden by a long robe Gwen's has been given). As the mating reaches its climax, the throne room is shaken by the volcano's eruption, caused by D'Arcy and his machines.

Gwen finally removes her helmet, letting the Queen see her identity. The Queen is unable to take any action against Gwen or Willard, however, as a new tremor causes her throne to collapse.

Gwen, Willard, and Beth flee the city, but as they pass the room where the diamonds were being processed, Willard declares he will not leave without getting something for all the trouble they've been put through and enters the room. Gwen begs him to come back, but a falling rock closes the path between them and the girls realize they will have to escape from the crumbling city without his help.

By the time they make it out of the crevasse, only a small hole in the sand marks where the city once stood and they seem to be the only survivors. Gwen cries, thinking Willard is dead, but looks up to find him grinning and holding the long sought after butterfly in a cage. The three of them then start their trek out of the desert and back to civilization.

The End.