It is 1935, the city of Shanghai, China. Seated around a table at the exotic, smoke-filled Club Obi Wan, local crime lord Lao Che and his henchmen are watching the beautiful American cabaret singer Willie Scott captivate her audience. But Lao Che isn't here for the entertainment. He has an appointment to keep and, very soon, Indiana Jones - in full evening dress - joins the party.

Indy has with him something Lao greatly covets - a jade urn containing the ashes of Lao's royal ancestor Nurhachi. After Indy trades the ashes for a fabulous diamond, Lao tries a double-cross. His son slips poison into Indy's champagne and the fiendish gangster demands the diamond back - in exchange for the antidote.

Bullets are flying and the situation is out of control as Indy grabs Willie, who has missed the diamond and snatched the antidote, and the pair escapes behind a giant, rolling gong. They flee through the narrow streets of Shanghai in a powerful car driven by Indy's "bodyguard", Short Round - an 11-year-old Chinese orphan whom Jones has befriended. With Lao and his thugs in hot pursuit they arrive at Nang Tao airfield where a small trimotor plane is rewing its engines ready to take them to Siam. They've made it!

Unknown to them, however, the airfreight company and the pilots are his paid hoods. Once airborne, the pilots empty the fuel tanks of the plane and bail out with the only parachutes on board. Undaunted, Indy inflates a rubber life raft and, the trimotor skims low over a snowy mountainside just before crashing, exits on the raft through the cargo hatch with Willie and Short Round holding on for dear life.

After a nerve-shattering "bobsled" ride down the mountainside, over a bluff and into terrifying white water rapids, the raft floats to a gentle stop at the base of the Mayapore hills. They have arrived in India.

They are met by a native shaman, a holy man, who leads the bewildered party to a nearby village. The shaman informs Indy that the village is under a curse. The village's sacred stone, kept in a shrine, has been stolen by the Maharajah of Pankot. Since its disappearance, the crops have withered, the animals have died and the children mysteriously vanished. Indy is intrigued and sympathetic but is anxious to get to Delhi where he can take a flight home to America. However, the sudden appearance of one of the village children who has escaped from Pankot, clutching a tattered fragment of cloth, changes Indiana's archaeological mind.

Despite Willie's protests, the three companions travel by elephant to Pankot Palace and meet the maharajah who turns out to be a 13-year-old boy. They are also introduced to the maharajah's advisors and to Captain Blumburtt of the British cavalry, who is visiting the palace on a routine inspection tour. Following an elaborate but nauseating banquet, the simmering romance between Indiana Jones and Willie Scott begins to boil. Their flirtation is interrupted, however, by an assassin who attempts to strangle Indy in his suite. Dispensing with the assassin, Indy searches for his means of entry and discovers an inscription that matches the fragment of cloth he has brought from the village. A sliding door reveals a secret passage.

Indy and Short Round walk through the tunnel, which is inhabited by millions of hideous insects, and accidentally trigger a booby trap in a small chamber at the end. Lethal spikes from the ceiling and floor egin closing in on them. Their yells for help bring Willie to their aid. Goaded by Indy's desperate urging, she plunges her hand into a hole in the wall literally crawling with insects, and flips a lever which deactivates the spikes and opens the door to the chamber. Indiana, Short Round and Willie make their way from the chamber along a wind tunnel, through which a roaring gale howls eerily, until at last they are staring down into a colossal subterranean temple, the Temple of Doom!

They have arrived in time to witness a terrifying Thuggee ceremony. Mola Ram, High Priest of the evil cult, leads a throng of chanting worshippers in a ritual sacrifice to their bloodthirsty goddess, Kali, whose giant statue looms above them all. After the ceremony, in which Mola Ram pierces the chest of a sacrificial victim and has him lowered into a pit of boiling lava, Indy descends into the silent temple. He is determined to retrieve the three strange, glowing stones placed by the priests under the statue of Kali. Indy knows that these are three of the five Sankara Stones which radiate intense light when brought together and, according to legend, give their possessor supernatural powers.

Indy has barely grasped the treasure when he is captured by Thuggee guards working in the underground mines beneath the palace. Short Round, too, is overpowered and thrown into the same cell. Dr. Jones is brought before the evil Mola Ram who unveils his incredible plans. Enslaved children are toiling in the mines searching for the last two Sankara Stones. When they are found, their terrible power will be unleashed; Mola Ram's followers will expand their evil influence until Kali rules the world! As the full horror of it begins to penetrate Indiana's mind, he is forced to drink "the blood of Kali" from a skull-shaped bowl. He falls under the evil spell and when Willie is brought to the temple as an intended victim, he ignores her pleas and assists in the preparation for ritual sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Short Round has been forced to work in the mine with the other slave children. Here he discovers that intense pain from fire can cause a person to "wake up" from the nightmare trance. He makes a brave and daring escape and reaches the scene of Willie's impending doom. Shorty thrusts a burning torch into his hero's side; Indy springs back to life and saves Willie from certain death in the lava pit.

Once more in possession of the Sankara Stones, Indy and his companions help free the slave children and begin a hair-raising journey to the surface. On the way, they release the young maharajah from his trance and His Highness races off to get help from the British forces. Indy, Shorty and Willie are engaged in a desperate flight through the mine tunnels, riding roller coaster style in empty mine cars, pursued by Mola Ram's Thuggee guards. Other guards demolish the supports of an enormous underground cistern, releasing a monster tidal wave that crashes through the mine tunnels and threatens to sweep Indy, Willie and as Thuggee guards close in, Short Round in its path.

In the nick of time, they exit from a tunnel on the side of a mountain, just barely ahead of the booming water. They are on a ledge hundreds of feet above a crocodile-infested river gorge. Only a rickety rope bridge will lead them to freedom. A rope bridge fiercely guarded by Mola Ram's waiting Thuggees! Indiana Jones must now fight the fight of his life in order to save himself and his two companions and return the sacred stone to Mayapore... and perhaps save the world from the evil Kali...Can he do it? TRUST HIM