Upon winning a sweepstakes prize, Freddie Clegg (Terence Stamp), an inconspicuous and deeply troubled young man, spends his time capturing and cataloging butterflies. Meeting lovely art student Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar), he has now found another creature he wishes to possess. Exercising maniacal patience, Freddie manages to bag his prey using a handkerchief soaked in chloroform. He brings Miranda to his isolated farmhouse and holds her prisoner, all the while trying to convince her to love him.

This frightening tale of obsessive admiration is one of the key cinematic works in understanding the class and cultural clashes of the 1960s. Samantha Eggar's liberated woman, open about sex and knowledgeable about art, frustrates Terence Stamp's repressed captor, adding further tension to the situation. Nearing the end of a brilliant career, director William Wyler made an uncharacteristic choice to adapt John Fowles' disturbing novel as the follow-up to another bold work, his adaptation of THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (1961).