Twenty-eight-year-old Alan Swan knows he’s fine, it’s the rest of the world that is warped—deceitful and false. As soon as he’s released from the mental hospital, he starts to partially set things right by abducting the woman of his feverish dreams, twenty-year-old movie star Bliss Marshall (born Barbara Majeski), and sailing with her to his private island off the coast of Maine. There he locks her in a room and attempts to transform her into a “real” person by changing her diet, assailing her with his “advanced” ideas, and making a movie with her from a script based on his bizarre philosophy. He makes it clear that whether or not he is successful, he will never set Bliss free, and she sinks deeper and deeper into despair while those who are searching for her gradually give up hope that she is still alive.