When he is left alone in his room, Greven opens a chest he brought from his travels, inside it there is a strange statue that he adds to his vast collection of rare works of art.

Several days pass and a worried servant (Bernhard Goetzke) informs the town's minister (Hermann Picha) about his master's melancholia.

The count confesses the minister how, during his stay in India, he had heard of a statue of Buddha that was so beautiful that it made the sick well and the sad joyous; while visiting the temple, he stole the figure and smuggled it back home.

The count tells the minister that the temple's priest swore a terrible revenge upon him for his sacrilege, and he has been living in fear of their secret powers ever since.

Looking to obtain fame, Greven researches obsessively a means to cure world hunger, but after succeeding, he capriciously destroys it, all for his amusement.

[1] As with many of Wiene's lesser known works, Fear has not been released in any format for home media, making it an obscure and rare film.

Considerable ambiguity exists whether the Indian Priest is real or simply a product of the Count's fevered imagination due to his growing madness.