British expatriate Dennis Barlow is an aspiring poet who composes by day and works by night at the Happier Hunting Ground, a local pet cemetery. By chance he is called on to arrange a funeral for a fellow Brit (a victim of the movie industry) at the respendent Whispering Glades Cemetery, where he meets Aimée Thanatogenos, the beautiful junior cosmetician, and Mr Joyboy, the senior mortician, and the plot shifts into hilarious high gear.