Description
Rick Turner (Robert Alda) has a problem. He awakens night after night seeing visions of a beautiful woman in a negligee dancing in the clouds. The visions disturb him. One night he gets up, goes walking and is drawn to a doll shop. In the window he sees a doll that is the exact image of the woman in his visions. He takes his girlfriend Donna Trent (Ariadna Welter) there the next day. To his surprise the doll shop owner, Frank Lamont (Neil Hamilton), not only knows his name but insists that he ordered the doll, a likeness of Bianca Milan (Linda Christian), whom Rick has never met.
Donna spots a doll that looks just like her. Frank refuses to sell it. As Rick and Donna leave, Frank takes the doll into his oddly-decorated back room - curtains, open-flame lamps, an altar, a statue of the Buddha - and stabs it with a long pin. Donna suddenly collapses in pain. Rick takes her to hospital, where a doctor (Roy Wright) tells him that she has had a "spasm of the heart" and needs complete bed rest.
Rick has another vision of Bianca. He tells Donna that he's going to deliver the Bianca doll to Bianca "to get this thing off my back." When Rick returns to the doll shop, Frank hands over the doll, insisting that Rick had paid for it in advance. Perplexed, Rick goes to Bianca's luxurious apartment and is entranced by her beauty. They become lovers that night. Bianca explains that his visions are a "simple process of thought projection or thought transference," which she learned as a member of the cult of Gamba, the Great Devil God. She makes Rick accompany her right then to a cult meeting so that he can be inducted. The meeting is held in the oddly-decorated room at the doll shop, for Frank is the High Executioner of the Gamba cult.
At the meeting, Bianca explains that a human sacrifice ceremony is to be held. A young woman is laid on the altar; above her a wheel studded with knives is spun. As it lowers, Gamba decides if the sacrifice lives or dies. Frank goes behind the lectern and steps on a foot pedal, making it unclear whether he or Gamba controls the wheel. The knife blade that strikes the sacrifice is rubber. She survives unhurt. A man in the cult covertly snaps a photo of the event.
Later, at the doll shop, Rick spots the Donna doll, pinned to the wall through the heart, but he can't remove the pin without being seen. He goes to the hospital and tells Donna that she will be completely cured at midnight that night.
Donna is in fact cured at midnight and discharged. Mary (Gene Craft), a cultist and nurse at the hospital, calls Bianca to report the sudden turn of events. When Rick arrives at Bianca's apartment, she tells him that they must attend an emergency meeting of the cult at 10:30 that night. During the meeting, Frank says that one of them is an "intruder" and will die at midnight, then adjourns until 12:30 am. At the stroke of midnight, Frank grabs the doll of the man who took the photo - an undercover reporter - and jams a pin through its head. The reporter, who is driving, screams and clutches his forehead. His car plunges down a hillside and as Frank burns the doll, the wreckage bursts into flame.
At the 12:30 meeting, Frank announces that Rick's loyalty is now to be tested, and Donna is brought in as a sacrifice. Frank makes Rick spin the wheel, but as it drops, Rick pulls Donna to safety. A fight breaks out. The wheel falls on Frank, killing him. The room catches fire. Rick and Donna escape. Bianca picks up her doll. Everyone else apparently dies.
With fire department sirens wailing, Rick and Donna, a romantic pair again, drive away. "That's the end to it," says Rick. Then Bianca, once again among the clouds, gets in the last word, smiling and saying, "That's what he thinks!"
