- Two years ago, a young woman named Valerie was burned after entering a tanning salon. Now, her twin sister, Rhonda, runs a local gym where, all of a sudden, people are being murdered.
- After the horrible tanning bed incident that ruined her reputation, fitness fanatic Rhonda Johnson, the co-owner of Rhonda's Workout Fitness Club in Los Angeles, tries to find her feet. Having devoted herself to shaping perfect bodies, Rhonda gets back to square one when a stealthy serial killer on the loose targets the health spa's unsuspecting customers. And as Rhonda's members die left and right, questions arise. Who is behind the outburst of Lycra violence? Can hard-boiled Detective Morgan stop the psychopath before more innocents die?—Nick Riganas
- Aerobics dance instructor Valerie arrives home and checks her answering machine to learn that she has gotten a modeling job for the cover of a magazine. She heads to the Second Sun tanning salon for some tanning, but her tanning bed short circuits and flames burn her.
At Rhonda's Work-Out, the owner and manager Rhonda Johnson (Marica Karr) is teaching Jaimy's (Teresa Vander Woude) class. Afterwords, Jimmy (Fritz Matthews) asks Rhonda out on a date and she turns him down. Rhonda then angrily tells Jaimy to stop arriving late. In the women's locker room, Rachel (Teresa Truesdale) stays in the showers after everyone else leaves, and the lights are suddenly turned off. An unseen person wearing all black clothing enters and stabs Rhonda to death with a large safety pin. Jaimy almost walks into the locker room, but decides to go into the men's locker room, where she checks out the jockstraps. Rhonda walks in and laughs at Jaimy. Jaimy then goes into the women's locker room to clean up. After being frightened by an artificial arm falling from one locker, she is startled by Rachel's dead body falling from another.
LAPD officers soon arrive and investigate the scene. The detective in charge of the investigation, Lieutenant Morgan (David James Campbell), finds a bloody knitting needle inside the locker-coffin. He goes to Rhonda and Jaimy and asks them about Diane Matthews, who's locker was the storage area of the corpse.
The next day, a couple of weightlifters are talking about Rachel's murder, but they quickly shut up when Rhonda scolds them. Rhonda next tells Jaimy to teach her class and stop "showing off". Rhonda finds Chuck Dawson (Ted Prior) in her office, looking through her files. He says that Rhonda's "senior partner", Mr. Erickson, has hired Chuck.
Outside, Jimmy tells Chuck to stay away from Rhonda, and the two men fight. Debbie, clearly impressed by Chuck's combat skills, offers the man a ride, and they drive to Debbie's house, where Chuck asks for Jimmy's home address. While Debbie is inside, Chuck calls Mr. Erickson and tells him he is "working on it". Debbie gives Chuck the address and the two of them kiss.
A little later, Jimmy is watching some aerobics classes as Diane (Laurel Monk) eyes him. She asks him out, and Jimmy declines. Diane walks home and she is followed by someone in a car (who checks on a gun in the glove compartment). Diane gets home, and Morgan is outside by his own car. He knocks on her door, but she backs away, too frightened to answer. However, the unseen killer is inside. Diane is stabbed to death with the large safety pin. Morgan bursts inside as the killer jumps out a window and runs away. The lieutenant returns to his car to report it, and he is told that the knitting needle belonged to Diane, but is not the murder weapon, a fact which Morgan recently surmised.
The next day, Rhonda is surprised by Jimmy showing up at the gym. He tells her: "Just relax, I'm not some kind of crazy killer."
That evening, Debbie, Marsha, and Curtis deface the gym's front windows with spray paint (painting "Aerobicide" and "Death Spa") and they run away. While in the back of the gym, Curtis is attacked and stabbed in the neck by the killer with a large knife. Marsha goes looking for him when the killer grabs her too and slices her throat open. Debbie finds Curtis' dead body and runs back to her car. The killer jumps on top of the convertible roof and stabs through the fabric roof until one blow finally hits Debbie and kills her.
The unseen killer returns to the gym where a weight lifter is working on a weight machine that has been loosened, and he is hit and falls to the floor. The killer is waiting to whack him in the face with a weight. The man's weightlifting friend finds him dead and he too is subsequently stabbed in the head with the pin. Tommy walks in and finds both men dead. Jaimy sees him by the bodies and screams. Chuck runs in and, mistakenly thinking that Tommy is the killer, beats him up. Later the police arrive and take the two latest dead victims away. Lt. Morgan mentions the coincidence that Chuck began work at soon as the killing started and that he "took Tommy out like a pro". Tommy, in handcuffs and waiting alone in the mens locker room, is also murdered by the real killer. His body is taken away too as one of the paramedics says: "See you tomorrow Lieutenant." Morgan tells Chuck that things have "picked up" sine has been there.
The next morning, Morgan visits Rhonda in her office and after pointing out that she seems "handy" with a letter opener. He tells her he has several suspects but needs a motive. Meanwhile, Chuck snoops around Jimmy's house and discovers an assortment of guns as well as many pictures of Rhonda. Later, goes to Rhonda's place here Jimmy starts another fistfight with him. Chuck is finally kicked into the swimming pool and Jimmy leaves. Chuck comes around in Rhonda's house, and Morgan is there. The police lieutenant says that he knows that Chuck is really a private investigator and Chuck tells him that he was hired by Mr. Erickson and tells him about Jimmy's place and his locker. Earlier, Rhonda had asked Chuck at what kind of pictures he had. Morgan tells Chuck to get out of town and leave the investigation of Rhonda and of her connection to the murders to the police.
Cathy cleans out her locker and tells Rhonda that she is leaving. She goes to say good-bye to Jaimy and finds her dead. Cathy runs but the still unseen killer catches her. Later, Officer Peterson arrives and finds both women dead. Morgan then gets a call from some who has made a background check on Rhonda.
Chuck is leaving from the back of the gym when Jimmy runs him down with his car. Jimmy gets out and finishes Chuck off by stabbing him with a knife.
Morgan then goes to see Rhonda (who has just put on a wig over her scarred bald head). Morgan tells her that he made a background check on her and knows that she is formerly Valerie (the aerobics instructor from the opening scene who was burned at the tanning salon five years ago). Morgan then arrests her, thinking that she killed all those people out of jealousy that they were beautiful to her while she is forced to hide her burn scars over her layers of clothing. In the car on their way to the station, Morgan is informed that Chuck was killed and witnesses saw Jimmy do it.
Morgan chases Jimmy down, and he says he knows that he did not kill anybody, suggesting that Rhonda did it all. Jimmy hits the officer, leaving to see Rhonda. He turns the lights on in the locker room and reacts to Rhonda's nude, badly burnt body. She gets a gun out of her locker and shoots him. Dying, Jimmy tells Rhonda that he loves her and did not want to see her get caught. Rhonda thanks him and then finished him off by shooting him again.
A few days later, Morgan takes Rhonda to a secluded area. He tells her about his law enforcing father and the mysterious disappearance of a guilty man who the courts let go on a legal technicality. Morgan gets out his gun and points it at Rhonda, aware that she really did kill all those 12 people and that Jimmy protected her out of love. Morgan points out that he would be "crossing the line" by killing her in a cold-blooded vigilante murder, but that it must be done. He forces her to dig a hole in the ground as her own grave. Rhonda quickly grabs the shovel and pounds the lieutenant on his head, killing him. She then buries his body in the freshly dug grave.
In the final scene, a few days later, Rhonda is back in her office at her workout gym where her new assistant reads to her the latest advertisement for Rhonda's Work Out and is assured that the gym will be "packed with gorgeous bodies." Rhonda tells her that she is counting on it. When she is alone, Rhonda brings out from her desk her key chain... which has the large safety pin on it.
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