It is loosely based on real-life serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli, who killed three women between 1939 and 1940, and turned their bodies into soap and teacakes.

[4] It stars Shelley Winters, Max von Sydow, Renato Pozzetto and Alberto Lionello, with the latter three in a dual role as both the victims of the killer, in drag, and those who apprehend her.

Lea, a mature Neapolitan woman who runs a lotto [it] box office in a northern Italian city, had thirteen children, but all but one died from abortion or after a few months of life.

Her only surviving child, Michele, receives Lea's morbid affection: she is convinced that she has stolen him from Death by negotiating with it, so she is not willing to sell him either to the army or to another woman.

The call to military service arrives for her son: to make him return home, Lea would like to multiply her sacrificial rites, targeting, this time, a mute servant and Michele's hated girlfriend.