Trevor is a busboy who is so terrified of women that he takes in a young man addicted to heroin and then uses the drug to manipulate, coerce, and terrorize him into becoming "Dorothy", his twisted concept of the "ideal girlfriend."

A couple of drifters (Adam Roarke and Lou Diamond Phillips) molest Sharon (Mary Pillot). Franklin (Robert Kuhn) scares them away, but loses his son who is stabbed by one of the drifters. Franklin and Sharon commence a relationship to the chagrin of her husband (Van Brooks). Franklin's old friend August Klein (Ben Johnson) dies. What happens when murder and romance collide?