In a film that explicitly describes itself as "a grim fairy tale" (in intertitles), Malcolm Shanks (Marceau) is a deaf (but expert lip reader), mute puppeteer who lives with his cruel sister (Tsilla Chelton) and her alcoholic husband, Mr. Barton (Philippe Clay).

Barton's marionette-like movements can pass for drunkenness, and his wife runs out into the street where she is struck and killed by a car.

He again encounters Celia, whose mother gives her permission to go with Malcolm on a picnic where he demonstrates all he can do with the Bartons, although she becomes very disturbed when she learns they are dead, which he gestures was the result of a car accident, implicitly for both.

Celia is enchanted by pictures of Mr. Walker's beautiful wife (unseen by the audience), who predeceased him, finds one of her dresses, and reverently puts it on.

The gang carries him into the perpetually unlocked mansion and lays him on the table, sending the cake and other objects to the floor.

Another gang member, Einstein (Calfa), becomes interested in Walker's experiments and makes the Bartons do tricks more humiliating than Malcolm would have considered.

Malcolm finds Celia lying dead in the yard, and animates Walker out of the grave to fight the gang after they throw the Barton controls into the well.

Director William Castle took an interest in him after watching him perform the pantomime "Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death" and approached him with the script for Shanks, saying it dealt with similar themes.

Shanks just had too slight of a story and it was too poorly paced to be much more than a freaky chiller that held my attention because it was so genuinely goofy.