A scientist invents a serum that keeps a dog's head alive after its body dies. When the scientist dies of a heart attack, his crazed assistant cuts off his head and, using the serum, keeps the doctor's head alive and forces it to help him on an experiment to give his hunchbacked nurse assistant a new body.

During rehearsals for a provocative stage play, director Gregor clashes with young actress Dinah, who resists performing an intimate love scene. To challenge her views, he guides the cast through a series of imaginative theatrical tableaux spanning the history of love, art, and desire. As rehearsal and fantasy blur, past ideals confront modern attitudes, forcing the actors to reconsider what intimacy and morality mean both onstage and off.

The burly Abruzzo, a good-natured fellow with the temperament of a butcher's dog, has no fun under his domineering wife Martha. One day he has had enough and leaves home to lead a completely new and, above all, different life as a bandit captain. Together with two other gallows birds, the somewhat dim-witted robbers Tarta and Sigi, he forms a small gang. When two horsemen escape an ambush, the gang takes up the chase, which leads them to a nearby castle. One of the escaped horsemen, the attractive cavalry captain Philipp Weinsberg, immediately takes a liking to the beautiful lady of the castle, Isabella, who, however, is less than pleased when Abruzzo's gang of cutthroats follows him.