Peter Mandrake, a North-American photojournalist becomes embroiled in South America's dangerous underworld of pimps, drug gangs and arms smugglers when he sets out to find the killer of a local call girl.

When Cunda, a man living deep in the Brazilian rainforest, is bitten by a snake, he has a hallucination of four chimpanzees. Once he recovers, he is shocked to find the four chimpanzees waiting for him at home, and, believing them to be special, decides to take them to the city in order to sell them.