Trapped in a jail cell in a troubled Central American republic, Martin Springer, an idealistic U.S. volunteer doctor, faces execution. His "crime": having witnessed the massacre of an entire village by government forces. His beautiful and determined wife, Katherine, arrives in the country with money in hand to try and save him, but she too is arrested. Her crime: Resisting the advances of General Vaca, the sadistic head of the secret police. Her punishment: imprisonment and degradation in a low-class brothel. When word of his wife's plight reaches Springer, somehow he must escape from his dungeon cell, find his wife and rescue her, and kill her tormentors—and in the process shed some of his humanitarianism and take on some of the brutality of his captors.