DEATH NURSE

From their suburban home, Doctor Gordon Mortley and his sister Nurse Edith run Shady Palms Clinic, a facility that takes in physically- or mentally-ill indigents sent to them by the county. In reality, the Mortleys are con artists who murder their patients, usually during "surgeries" performed on them by Gordon, and continue to bill the state for their care afterward. The only permanent resident of the clinic is the alcoholic Louise Kagel. One day, social services worker Faith Chandler drops off John Davis, a man afflicted with tuberculosis. Edith smothers John and Gordon buries his body, though he is later forced to dig it up and crudely puppeteer it to create the illusion that Davis is still alive when Faith asks to check in on him after bringing Charles Bedowski, who has a heart condition, to Shady Palms.

After Faith's visit, Edith and Gordon kill Bedowski while attempting to replace his heart with a dead dog's. The procedure is interrupted by the Mortley family cat, who grabs the heart. Gordon and Edith chase the cat and deem the transplant a failure. Gordon buries Bedowski's remains, and Edith feeds pieces of him to the rats that live in the garage. The infestation of vermin does not go unnoticed by the authorities, and when Mr. Smith, an environmental health officer, threatens to shut down the clinic, Edith stabs him to death.

Faith herself checks into Shady Palms and grows suspicious of the facility, which causes Edith to knife her after feeding her cooked rats for lunch. Louise witnesses Faith's murder, so Edith kills her with a syringe despite Gordon's fondness for her. Edith has Gordon place the bodies of Smith, Faith, and Louise in the garage, from which their smell attracts the attention of a police lieutenant who had stopped by to visit Charles Bedowski. Observing from a window as the lieutenant opens the garage and discovers what is inside it, a dejected Edith sits on a sofa with Gordon, and the film ends.

The Mortleys' crimes are exposed when a police lieutenant discovers the bodies of their victims in the garage, leaving Edith and Gordon despondent as the authorities close in.

The film concludes with the Mortleys’ murderous enterprise finally unraveling under the scrutiny of law enforcement. Their resigned reaction—sitting together as their deeds come to light—underscores the grim futility of their scheme and offers a bleakly comic take on justice. The ending punctuates the film's satire of institutional neglect and criminal incompetence.