In an unidentified locale, art student and model Daisy Allen [Marissa Mathes] leaves a club after an argument with her beatnik boyfriend Max [Karl Schanzer]. Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi [William Campbell], who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his “lost children.” After a friendly conversation, they return to Sordi's studio in a room beneath an old bell tower, where Sordi convinces the young woman to pose for him. There, however, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver, then lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling substance.
In vampiric form, Sordi has already killed a lone woman in the town square, then takes her to a nearby car and feigns kissing her so that a pair of oncoming pedestrians assume they are just lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax. Because his vampiric self looks nothing like Sordi, facially, no one connects him with the rash of murders.
Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. After recognizing her as the model in Sordi's painting of her, which is now on display at a local beatnik cafe, he goes to see her sister Donna Allen [Sandra Knight]. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th-century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas and being a vampire. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, Sordi follows Donna through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel.
The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian [Lori Saunders], an avant-garde ballerina, Daisy's former roommate and a lookalike for both Donna and Melizza. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of himself after murdering Daisy. But one day at the beach, she reveals her attraction to him and asks him to make love to her. He panics and runs away. As Dorian leaves the beach, she is approached by the vampiric Sordi, who chases her back to town, where she is rescued by Max and two of his beatnik friends. They pursue the vampire while Dorian, shaken, and unaware the vampire is really Sordi, proceeds to the bell tower to try to get understanding why he fled from her.
Sordi returns and finds Dorian in his studio. He madly enmeshes her in some netting, then comes at her with a knife, apparently believing she is really Melizza [Lori Saunders]. But before he can harm her, numerous wax figures on the floor of the studio begin to move, come alive, and kill him. Max and his friends arrive, break in, and free Dorian.
