Adapted from a one-act Grand Guignol play based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether', the film portrays a visitor to an insane asylum where it becomes clear that the inmates have taken control. Telling the visitor that a cure for insanity has been found by cutting out an eye of the patient and then slitting his throat, the "director" hurries into another room, reemerges with blood all over his hands and, as blood seeps from beneath the door, incites other inmates who now surround the visitor.