In this highly symbolic political allegory, Averill is traveling through a troubled countryside amid rumors of war to visit his father. He reaches a train station in a city which is paralyzed by a transportation strike and is forced to take lodgings in a bizarre, unattractive town populated by seemingly malformed individuals. After a while, he begins to try to woo a much older woman, and symbolic images of entrapment, imprisonment and erotic enticement mark his adventures in this regard.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser (Bruno S.), who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.