Brother and sister Bob and Queenie live with their reclusive aged Uncle Andy, a former Mississippi River steamboat captain, in New Orleans, they who have to sneak out of the house in always feeling the need to be at home with him because of his "spells": he believes he is living his life from sixty years ago, forcing Bob and Queenie to live life inside the house like it's 1874, the last time he stepped foot outside that house. When Bob invites his girlfriend Julie home for the first time in taking a break from Mardi Gras festivities, Julie, who had always had in the back of her mind that Bob was hiding another girl hence his need always to get home, accepts in wanting to meet his family. Upon setting eyes on Julie, Uncle Andy believes she is Emmy Lou, a girl with who he had a doomed love affair sixty years ago. Upon discovering Uncle Andy's story and why he hasn't left the house in all that time, Julie, in relation to Mardi Gras, believes she has a way for him to enter the twentieth century and thus release Bob and Queenie from their nineteenth century prison within that house.
—Huggo