The story, told partly in flashback to 1968, concerns a clique of English public schoolboys who bully and humiliate an unpopular younger pupil (Cox) who is 'bad at games'.
A lift technician finds himself drawn into a web of mystery and peril as he investigates the perplexing deadly accidents occurring in the elevators of a new office building.
Mary Ocky, a beautiful girl from Mondonedo, Ohio, comes to seek the help of the famous PI Philip Marlboro in order to find her boyfriend Macho Jim who went missing three months earlier under obscure circumstances.
The film is inspired by the Mário de Sá-Carneiro short story, where the narration is made by Professor Antena's assistant who walks by his side when he is run over in a perhaps enigmatic way.
Traveling through villages along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, the filmmakers document the impact of the covert war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, featuring interviews with mercenaries, soldiers, spies and civilian victims.