Tycoon Byron Trumbo is the owner of the Mauna Pele, a luxurious Hawaiian resort, and he's got a problem: guests have been disappearing, and now 500 five-star rooms are standing empty. Determined to sell the resort to Japanese investors, Trumbo invites them to the Mauna Pele to finalise the sale, refusing to allow anything to stand in the way of his deal. Not even when giant beasts capable of human speech are spotted, visitors turn up dead and dismembered, and volcanic eruptions fill the sky with smoke and flames as fast-moving lava flows inexorably towards the resort.