A prisoner sailing home to an island where the sun never sets falls in love with a woman who vanishes before reaching port. His sister runs an ostrich farm and loves a vain, manipulative doctor who unearths a mysterious statue of Venus.

TWILIGHT OF THE ICE NYMPHS (1997) is the work of Guy Maddin, the Winnipeg filmmaker who makes delirious dreams pitched somewhere between silent-era melodrama and a half-remembered nightmare. This is his lushest and strangest: a saturated hallucination of painted skies and impossible colors.

Shelley Duvall is the ostrich farmer. Frank Gorshin, television's Riddler, plays her farmhand, credited with a little question mark beside his name.

The hero, played physically by Nigel Whitmey, was dubbed by another actor after a backstage fight led Whitmey to take his name off the film.