| Director | Ted Post |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, erotic thriller, mystery film |
| Runtime | 104 min |
| Country | Germany |
| Budget | $4 million |
Kathy Atwell, an unfulfilled Phoenix, Arizona housewife, has been carrying on an affair with Steve Fulton, the assistant of her industrialist husband, Wendell. Unbeknownst to Kathy, her liaisons with Steve at her luxurious hillside home are being audio recorded. Knowing that a million dollars in cash has been stashed by Wendell in an airport locker, Steve plots behind Kathy's back to poison Wendell, then impersonate him on a scheduled flight to Washington, D.C. to make it appear that he is still alive. Kathy unwittingly witnesses the poisoning, which kills Wendell.
When Steve reveals his plot, a panicked Kathy contemplates calling the police, but is convinced by him to keep Wendell's death a secret. Steve stores Wendell's corpse in a freezer before giving Kathy the key to the locker and departing for the airport to take the scheduled flight. That night, a shaken Kathy attends a charity event where she is honored for her philanthropic efforts helping troubled adolescents. Herbert Childs, Kathy's attorney and friend, drunkenly visits her after the event, but departs when she rebuffs his romantic advances.
The following morning, Kathy is visited by Lt. Donner, who reveals that Wendell's secretary, Christine, reported him missing after he failed to phone her as planned. Kathy inspects the freezer and finds Steve's dead body inside, and Wendell's inexplicably missing. Monika, Herbert's wife, who presented Kathy with her award the previous night, later arrives, but angrily leaves after noticing evidence that Herbert visited the house, leading her to believe that he and Kathy are having an affair.
Kathy drives to an abandoned mining camp on the outskirts of the city and dumps Steve's body down a mine shaft. Donner returns that night and continues to question Kathy about Wendell's disappearance, causing her to become evasive. That evening, Kathy books a flight to Denver. In the airport, she overhears a page on the intercom for Wendell, and glimpses a man resembling him at a bar, causing her to flee. In the parking lot, she is pursued by the man, driving Wendell's Rolls-Royce. The driver chases Kathy to an isolated cement plant, where Kathy crashes and the assailant pulls her from her car, unconscious, before hiding her vehicle behind pallets of concrete cinderblocks.
Kathy awakens the following morning on her living room floor. She calls Herbert, who agrees to visit her the next day. Later that night, Kathy senses that she is not alone in the house. After finding her pet dog's severed head in a cabinet and her pet monkeys dead, she stumbles upon Wendell's corpse, posed in his desk chair. Fleeing outside, she is met by Donner, who reveals that Wendell had hired private investigator Kelly Rodriguez to place recording devices in the house in an attempt to document evidence of her and Steve's affair. Donner says that he has listened to the recordings, which serve as evidence of Kathy's culpability, and that she could be charged as an accessory to murder for her failure to report Wendell's death to authorities.
When Donner asks if Kathy has an attorney, she refers him to Herbert. Donner requests that she provide him the key to the locker, which will need to be handed over to the police. At Donner's suggestion, Kathy goes to shower before the two depart to the police station, while he feigns a call to the district attorney. Donner is in fact Kelly Rodriguez, and has used the information that he has obtained to terrorize Kathy and steal Wendell's fortune for himself.
While Kathy bathes in her shower, Rodriguez barricades her in by tying rope around the doorhandles and tampers with the water heater, causing the water to scald Kathy. After Kathy loses consciousness, Rodriguez removes her from the shower and departs for the airport. Upon retrieving the money from the locker, Rodriguez is questioned by a police officer, and claims to be Steve. The disbelieving officer relents when Rodriguez offers him hush money. While Rodriguez absconds with Wendell's fortune, a severely burned Kathy, clinging to life, manages to phone police for help.