The power of a long-buried family secret becomes unleashed when the extreme rituals of a young punk rocker catapults his consciousness into the spirit realm in search of his Finnish father, a ship captain who drowned in the Bering Sea. His father's mother was a Sami sorceress whose shamanic powers were passed on to her grandson, powers tested as he enters the mythic dreams of his Finnish grandfather. A surrealistic fable of true love, giant hedgehogs, and the mystical depths of ancestral bonds.

Young mechanical engineer John Ashton is trying to complete the plans for a new submarine. Under pressure to meet a deadline he has been leaning on whiskey to handle the stress which his friend Robert Gray warns him against, but to no avail. His fiancée, Grace, telephones wanting him to take a break and attend a dinner party with her. Against his better judgement and still drinking he accepts but nods off while getting ready. What follows are booze infused visions of loss and degradation so horrifying that upon awaking he swears off "the devil at his elbow”!

A prospector named Rodin is blackmailed for years by Estrella, who tricks him into believing he murdered her missing husband. After meeting Alice, Rodin traps Estrella in a secret room and disposes of her trunk, leading to charges of her murder. He's acquitted on a technicality when her body isn't found. Alice admits she believes he's guilty, and Rodin, releasing her, commits suicide in his library.

When bank president Leslie Morrison dips into the till, he seeks to place the blame on bank clerk David Moulton by altering the figures in Moulton's books. He lays his plan carefully, but upon leaving the building late one night, Morrison falls into an elevator shaft and is killed. Moulton, the one man known to have been there, is charged with murder and tried by district attorney Robert Murdock. Unable to afford a competent defense, Moulton is convicted and sentenced to die in an electric chair. However, Mary Reed, a stenographer who loves Moulton, appeals as a last resort to the newly elected public defender, Arthur Nelson. Nelson investigates the case and discovers evidence on the very eve of the execution, evidence that will warrant a stay. Rescued from death in the nick of time, Moulton is granted a new trial under the supervision of the public defender and is found innocent.