A caboclo's soul wanders through purgatory (or hell), visiting many places until he boards a ship whose destination is unknown.

Dr. Brochard, the owner of the massage clinic "Academia Mãos de Ouro" in Rio de Janeiro, fires two employees for prostituting themselves on the side to the customers. In their place he hires two virgins, Virgem and Berta who are both immediately set upon by the womanizing driver Duda de Almeida.

In a movie studio, the actors are getting made up and the crew is waiting to begin shooting the film. Grande Otelo, the bungling "king of the deck", and Marta Anderson, the blond and provocative star of the show, recite in the historical scenario of the chanchadas, the abandoned studios of Cinédia. "The photography is splendid, it is a sort of parallel song, of critique, of parody, of understanding of a certain light typical of Brazilian cinema of the times, already re-created, already stylized. And with the older actors, Otelo, Lewgoy and the others, something very important happened in the artistic perception, seeing again, doing again, it was already a concrete metalanguage" (J. Bressane).

A plane crashes in the Amazon jungle, and its passengers must battle their way through cannibals, slave traders, wild animals and murderous piranha fish to safety.