Voodoo Man

After three young women disappear from their cars on Laurel Road near the town of Twin Falls, Hollywood screenwriter Ralph Dawson is assigned by the head of Banner Motion Picture Company to write a script based on the incidents. Ralph, however, is too distracted by thoughts of his impending wedding to take interest in the newspaper articles on the disappearances and heads to Twin Falls to be with his fiancée Betty. When his car runs out of gas, he hitches a ride with Stella Saunders, Betty's cousin. Stella's car mysteriously dies on Laurel Road near a detour sign, and while Ralph goes to a nearby house for help, Stella is kidnapped and taken through a subterranean tunnel by Toby and Grego, assistants of scientist Dr. Marlowe. Marlowe hypnotizes Stella and reveals that he intends to transfer her soul and her will to live into the body of his wife Evelyn, who has been dead for twenty-two years, but who still looks like a woman in her twenties. Dan, meanwhile, has had Marlowe's door slammed in his face and returns to find both Stella and the car gone. Thinking she has left him, he reaches Betty's house only to discover that Stella has not arrived there. The sheriff determines that Stella's disappearance is similar to the other women and goes to Marlowe's house to question him. Marlowe has not been successful in transferring Stella's energy to his dead wife using a ceremony performed by voodoo priest Nicholas, and decides to find yet another victim. After Marlowe feigns complete ignorance when the sheriff questions him about the missing women, Toby accidentally releases Stella, who is in a trance, from the chamber in which she is imprisoned, and she wanders through the tunnel to the outside. The sheriff and deputy encounter her wandering on the road and take her home to Betty. Later, the unsuspecting family, worried about Stella's apparent catatonic state, welcomes Marlowe when he visits. He recommends that Stella rest, but that night, lures Stella back to his house. The next day, Betty and Ralph stop by to question Marlowe, and in a moment when he is distracted, they are shocked to see his supposedly dead wife walk down the stairs wearing the same type of gown Stella wore. The housekeeper pulls the wife away, however, and Betty and Ralph go to a coffee shop to mull everything over. While Ralph makes a phone call, Betty is lured away to Marlowe's house in a trance, and Marlowe prepares her for a transfer to his wife. A man who saw Betty leave the coffee shop gives Ralph a ride to Marlowe's house, where they find Betty's car. After the man leaves to get the sheriff, Ralph finds the entrance to Marlowe's tunnel. Ralph interrupts the voodoo ceremony but Grego knocks him out. The sheriff and his deputy then stop the ceremony just after a successful transfer has taken place, but the sheriff shoots Marlowe when he threatens him. When he dies, his wife collapses and Betty, Stella and the other women revive. With the mystery resolved, Ralph turns in a completed script based on his experiences, and suggests that actor Bela Lugosi play the lead.