Having fled New Orleans to avoid arrest, Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier (Val), a trouble-prone, guitar-playing drifter, wanders into a small Mississippi town aiming to go straight and lead a quiet, simple life. He gets a job in the dry goods store owned by a sexually frustrated middle-aged woman named Lady Torrance, whose sadistic elderly husband, Jabe, is dying. With an obscure past and passions of her own, Lady finds herself attracted to Val, pulsating with passion anew, as he presents an arousing antidote to her bitter marriage and small-town humdrum life. Also vying for Val's attention are the alcoholic, sex-crazed Carol Cutrere and the unhappily married Vee Talbot. Each brings her share of problems into Val's plans, himself equally tempted by these women, though he succumbs to the charms of Lady. But the jealous Jabe is friends with Sheriff Talbot, Vee's husband, and things can't possibly end well for Val and Lady. The screenplay by Meade Roberts and Tennessee Williams is based on Williams' own 1957 play, "Orpheus Descending".