Following the death of a friend, poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering into the artifical Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates,death, American-style,is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There,Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimee,the naive Californian corpse beautician,and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art..