The damned hot air, damp rot and isolated monotony keep the men at an African plantation either drowning in drink or at each other's throats with frayed nerves. But the tropical temperature reaches white heat when she appears. The cocoa-skinned, sarong-robed, half-caste temptress Tondelayo, indelibly personified by impossibly beautiful Hedy Lamarr in her iconic role, is a force of nature against whom red-blooded males have no chance. Despite the warnings of his brutish, cynical superior (Walter Pidgeon), the settlement's doctor (Frank Morgan) and the local missionary (Henry O'Neill), the rubber outpost's newest arrival (Richard Carlson) falls under the voluptuous siren's spell and they wed. But since, in the doctor's words, "she knows how to purr her way into your mind and scratch her way out," it becomes an unholy union headed toward a murderous end.