Kinski plays a motorcycle rider whose bike breaks down in a small French village. He is helped by Madeleine (Maria Schneider), a young woman who is a social outcast from having a child out of wedlock. When news spreads that a little girl was run down by a cyclist, locals focus their blame on Kinski.
A lynch mob is formed by a truckdriver who seeks revenge on the stranger accused of the hit-and-run accident. The fascist villagers are brutally hunting the motorcyclist without any mercy and in the end he is electrocuted by these rednecks