Description
Two couples - Betty and Johnny (June Kenney and Robert Reed), and Jeanne and Pete (Joan Lora and Eugene Persson) - are vacationing at sea together. When the ship's captain passes out drunk, they decide to go to a nearby jungle island. As they depart, Capt. Tony (Troy Patterson) awakens and calls out, warning them not to.
As they explore the island, Johnny falls into a pit. The others start pulling him out, but look up to see Dr. Balleau (Wilton Graff) and two servants. Balleau orders the servants to help get Johnny out.
That night at his house, Balleau tells the couples that he moved to the island "after the war" to indulge his passion for hunting. Both couples want to leave, but Balleau says they can not because wild animals prowl the jungle. Ballaeu makes his wife Sandra (Lilyan Chauvin) show Betty and Jeanne to the guestroom, while Balleau's servant Jondor (Bobby Hall) escorts Johnny and Pete to their room.
A bit later, Sandra and houseguest Dean Gerard (Walter Brooke), who are lovers, discuss Dean's latest plan for their escape. Meanwhile, Johnny and Pete go to Betty and Jeanne's room to talk about their situation. They decide to poke about the house. Betty and Johnny are stopped by Sandra and Dean, who take them back to the guestroom. Jeanne and Pete find a tunnel. They hide as a servant walks into a room. When he leaves, Jeanne and Pete go in and discover a vat of bubbling acid. They hide again when the servant returns and are horrified when he reveals a woman's body floating in an aquarium. The servant leaves again. Jeanne and Pete go back to the guestroom to tell the others what they have seen.
Dean tells them his escape plan. He and Sandra will slip out of the house, steal a boat, go to the mainland and then come back with help. But as they sneak through the front gate, Balleau, toting a spear, follows.
Two days pass. No one has seen Balleau or heard from Sandra and Dean. As Betty and Johnny discuss this, a servant enters the room. They hide as the servant walks through a secret door. When he comes out, they go in. There they discover Balleau and his "trophies" - the mounted bodies of people he has hunted, Sandra and Dean among them. By way of explanation, Balleau tells Betty and Johnny that he was a sniper during the war. At first he detested sniping, he says, but then began to enjoy it, and soon the enjoyment "turned into a lust - a lust for blood!"
As Balleau tells both couples that he will hunt Johnny and Pete, Jondor comes in dragging Capt. Tony behind him. Balleau adds Tony to the hunt for failing to bring Balleau sufficient inmates from the "penal island." Balleau says he will hunt only the three men. Betty and Jeanne will stay with him and now that Sandra is dead, he is "looking forward to getting to know [them] better ... much better."
Jondor locks the girls in the guestroom. Balleau says that he will carry a crossbow and only three arrows, one for each man, To make things more "sporting", he tosses Tony a pistol and says they will find ammunition in the "Tree of Death." But they find just one bullet. Tony runs off with it, leaving Johnny and Pete to fend for themselves. When Tony attempts to shoot Balleau, the gun will not fire. Balleau has removed the firing pin. He kills Tony.
After escaping from the guestroom, Betty and Jeanne enter the tunnel Pete and Jeanne had found earlier. They go into the room with vat of acid, hoping to arm themselves with knives, but a servant comes in. He and Betty tussle and Betty, the daughter of a judo expert, judo-flips the servant into the acid, where he dissolves, screaming in agony.
The girls head into the jungle, looking for Johnny and Pete. Balleau and Jondor are still hunting the boys when Jondor falls into a leech-filled pond. Balleau leaves him to drown. Betty and Jeanne find Johnny and Pete. They head for Balleau's house, planning to use his rifles against him. They find rifles, but no ammunition. They are defenseless.
Balleau finds the couples hiding in his trophy room. Holding them at gunpoint, he poses them in the tableau they will be in after he has killed them. Suddenly, Jondor, covered with leeches, bursts in. Jondor grips Balleau in a bear hug and, as Balleau screams, impales him on a cross, killing him.
A group of teen-agers vacationing in the tropics take a boat out to a seemingly deserted island. They soon find, however, that the island is inhabited by a wealthy recluse and his staff. While their host is initially hospitable, he quickly reveals his true purpose: to hunt down and kill each of his visitors, as he has done with everyone unlucky enough to set foot on his island.
