Following her husband Arthur's mysterious death, Rachel Baxley packs up her life as a State Department wife in Hong Kong and boards a freighter along with her husband's casket bound for the U.S. She begins to regret this decision when she meets one of the crew members, a handsome rogue named Jake Fontaine - who has smuggled his liquor above in Arthur's coffin! Suddenly, a typhoon hits and the freighter breaks apart. Marooned on a desert island with Jake they fall in love. Shortly thereafter, Jake comes to suspect that Rachel's "late" husband Arthur might not be dead at all. Rachel is stunned when Arthur arrives on the island with his heroin smuggling partners. In the ensuing chaos, Jake overcomes each of the smugglers and heroically rescues his new love, Rachel.
Susan Shelley is released from an asylum where she's been confined to after the shock suffered over the fiery death of her mother. Her father has a new wife, who has only married him for the money left to him by his dead wife. Susan is still haunted by her mother's memory, and her step-mother is conspiring with her lover to get the troubled girl to lead them to her mother's missing diamond necklace.
One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.