[4] The film follows a woman and her stepdaughter who come to suspect a handyman they have recently hired is responsible for a rash of violent murders in their small mountain community.

When she orders the man—who has playfully dressed himself with a Charlie Chaplin mask from the home, obscuring his face—to leave, he brutally stabs her to death.

Meanwhile, teenage Christine "Chris" Miller is recovering from a nervous breakdown she suffered following a violent rape, the trauma of which was only compounded after her father abandoned her and her American stepmother, Ruth.

Barney witnesses one of Chris's flashbacks in the basement of the home during a rainstorm, and observes her as she goes into an incoherent state, lashing out violently with a knife.

Shortly after, a mysterious man arrives at the farm of a nearby family, dressed in a black rain shawl, and steals a sickle from the barn.

The man proceeds to hack the family to death one by one, first the parents, then the youngest boy's teenage brother and sister, before ultimately killing the young child as well.

A short time later, while Ruth and Chris lounge by the swimming pool, the construction crew notice a sinkhole in the road, and begin digging it up.

[6] It later opened in New York City under its original The Corruption of Chris Miller title on 30 November 1979,[7] three months after Jean Seberg's death.