It starts off conventional enough. After episode seven of some two fisted spy serial (which concluded with a car being run off the road while the hero struggles with that gun waving nazi in the front seat) and a couple of wartime anti-Jap newsreels, we settle into the movie proper. Set in a San Francisco naval base known as Treasure Island, two Mamet-esque codebreakers are sifting through spy messages from the Japanese. Everyone has to do their part, even in these last days of the war.
Our two heroes, the rough and rugged Samuel (Nick Offerman) and the mousy, slightly off-kilter Frank (Lance Baker) are handed a bizarre assignment: they are to create a false identity for a dead infantry man (Jonah Blechman), place false letters on his person to mislead the Japs, and drop him in the Pacific. This shall all be done in the hopes that his body will be found by the enemy and potentially turn the course of the war.
Samuel and Frank will create these letters from scratch. Up until this point, we're in familiar spy movie territory. Things take an odd turn when the dead body shows up in their office, locked up in a steel coffin. We gradually learn more information about our two protagonists, who project their own fears and closet desires on this dead man.
Frank, for instance, has a problem. He likes sleeping with women, but can only do so after they have been bound by matrimony. He has two secret marriages, one to a Japanese refugee and another to a woman with unexplained medical problems (her body is contorted with bruises.) Poor Frank has the hots for a new girl and rabidly pursues her, but he insists that they get married before proceeding.
Meanwhile, Samuel has a bizarre arrangement with his wife. He'll take her from behind while she goes down on a third man. They repeat this procedure throughout the film as a means for Samuel to fulfil his closet homosexuality. Things are going just fine until he starts seeing the dead man from the fabricated letters, taunting his so-called male bravado. When Frank starts to see visions of the dead man also, they know they're suddenly in over their heads.
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