Paul and Helen Fraser arrive at her parents’ isolated lakeside cabin for some time together, but when Paul returns to the car for cigarettes, a figure with an axe buries it in his chest. Helen comes out, sees Paul’s body, and screams. Seeing the car keys gone, she runs into the woods until she stumbles upon Odis Pickett, a hillbilly carrying a rifle. Helen tells him she needs to call the police. Insinuating more than hospitality, Odis suggests that she follow him back to his house and rest while he calls the sheriff. Inside the Pickett farm house, he introduces Helen to Emmy Pickett, his young, pregnant wife, and Sarah Pickett, his daughter by his first wife. The two women tell Helen they do not have a telephone. Moments later, Odis' simple-minded son, Bo Pickett, arrives. When Helen gets angry at Odis for luring her to his cabin, he tells her she needs a good night’s sleep and then he will walk her to the sheriff's office in the morning. Helen decides to leave, instead, but as she stands on the porch looking into the dark woods that surround the house, Odis warns her that her husband’s killer might be out there waiting for her. Also, the only neighbors are Tom Watkins and his boys a few miles away, and they are generally “liquored up” after dark and have no women around. Helen decides to wait until morning. In the woods beyond the cabin, a figure watches the house. Odis drinks moonshine liquor from a jar, while Bo skins a possum and puts it in a pot of water. Nearly fainting at the sight of the bloody carcass, Helen tells the sympathetic Emmy that seeing her husband’s bloody body unnerved her. Meanwhile, Bo tells his sister, Sarah, he is going to tell their father that she has a dollar, and also tell him how she got it with her sexual favors. Sarah puts a hex on Bo, who believes in her power because he saw Sarah kill his mother with a hex. In the other room, Helen tells Emmy she lost an earlier husband in the war, and Emmy says she had a boyfriend before Odis. The way Emmy describes the younger man, Helen realizes Emmy is still in love with him, but Emmy admits that since her father owed Odis money, she married him to pay the debt. Emmy says Odis was good to her at first, but now he gets drunk and mistreats her. She looks forward to having her baby, because things “will be different” then. Odis sends Bo outside for another jar of liquor, and suggests that maybe a “swallow” will make Helen feel better. He goes into a room where Helen is sleeping and touches her shoulder. Her screams bring Emmy and Sarah, and Sarah accuses her father of wanting to do to Helen what he has been doing to her since she was twelve. When Odis knocks Sarah down, she warns him she will castrate him if he touches Helen. Emmy tells Bo to go to the Watkins place and call the sheriff, and despite his fear of the woods at night, he succumbs to Emmy’s urging. On the trail, the mysterious figure murders Bo on a spike fence. Discovering that Bo is gone, Odis becomes enraged and gets another jar of liquor. As Helen tries to sneak out the door, she stumbles over Bo’s body on the porch. Distraught, Odis carries Bo into the house, and Sarah accuses Helen of having “kilt” Bo. When Odis tells Sarah to clean the body for tomorrow’s burial in the back yard, Sarah says that Helen should clean him up, because she brought trouble by coming to the house. Sarah tells Odis that Helen is a witch who will get them all killed unless they kill her first. Inebriated, Odis goes to rape Helen, and Emmy fends him off by offering herself, even though she’s very pregnant, but Odis threatens to kick her in the belly if she gets in his way. He chases his wife out of the room, turns out the light, and rapes Helen. In the morning, when Helen wakes up, she slips on her clothes and starts to sneak away, but Odis grabs her. When Sarah reminds Odis that Helen killed Bo, Emmy distracts him by saying they need to get the preacher before than can bury him. Odis sends Sarah to the Watkins house to call the preacher. On the trail through the woods, Sarah hears someone behind her and calls out that she is on his side and can help him get Helen. A figure approaches, and Sarah seductively invites him to consummate their new relationship, but he strangles her with barbed wire. Later, Emmy worries that Sarah has been gone a long time and suggests that Odis look for her. Odis tells her that if Helen is gone when he gets back, he will whip her with a branch. Still, after Odis leaves, Emmy tells Helen how to get to the lake. Helen wants Emmy to go with her, but Emmy says Odis needs her now more than ever. Meanwhile, Odis finds Sarah, barely alive, but when he loads his shotgun, a figure grabs it from behind and kills him. The figure goes to the house, knocks, and walks in. Helen is shocked to see Jim, her first husband. Jim tells her he was in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp and was mistakenly listed as dead, and even though Helen divorced him, she is still his wife. As he prepares to stab Helen, the mortally wounded Sarah struggles through the door, shoots Jim with Odis’s shotgun, then falls dead to the floor. Emmy tells Helen they still have each other. They sit together on the porch.