Hideous

Martin, a water sanitation worker, finds a strange, fleshy organism in a water treatment tank. He contacts Belinda Yost, a seller of oddities, to report the unusual specimen. Yost becomes excited and informs her colleagues about the find, initiating the intrigue around the creature.

Belinda Yost arranges a meeting with Mr. Napoleon Lazar to sell the specimen. She prepares to secure a financial deal, aiming for a large sum and a long-term contract. Her assistant, Elvina Shaw, helps coordinate the plans, though she also contacts Dr. Emilio Lorca secretly.

Dr. Emilio Lorca, an oddities buyer, receives secret information about Yost’s specimen. He conspires with his assistant Sheila to steal it, sending Sheila in a gorilla mask to ambush Lazar and retrieve the organism secretly. She returns it to Lorca’s castle for further examination.

Lorca places the stolen organism into a jar filled with preservative liquid. It joins three other grotesque specimens in his collection, among many other strange creatures stored in jars. Sheila destroys evidence by disposing of the original specimens in an acid bath trapdoor.

While Lorca naps, the newest specimen reanimates the other three creatures, which include a deformed human-head organism, a large blob with a face, a muscular hairless ape-like creature, and a skeletal creature with porcupine-like spines. The reanimated creatures become a threat.

Lazar, Yost, and Elvina approach PI Leonard Kantor to investigate the theft. They reveal that Elvina informed Lorca about the sale. Lorca then tries to impress Lazar with his collection to keep the specimens, but finds them missing when they arrive at his castle.

Lorca's security system reveals that the specimens are stolen, with tracks leading to a vent shaft. Lorca locks down the castle while Sheila holds the remaining specimens at gunpoint, as the truth about the theft is uncovered. The broken jars show the specimens have been taken.

The prisoners, including Yost and the others, communicate through a tapping on the wall, guiding Lorca’s reanimated specimens out of hiding. The creatures are finally revealed when the wall is pried open, exposing their grotesque forms.

Yost, while trying to gather the specimens, falls onto the skeletal creature and gets entangled. The hairless ape attacks Sheila. The blob fires a gun, and the creatures cause chaos, barricading themselves in a room as the humans attempt to regain control.

Elvina witnesses the chaos and attempts to escape, but she is attacked by the hairless ape creature, which sneaks under her blanket and begins feeding on her. She panics, trips, and falls from a balcony to her death in the castle courtyard.

Lorca and Lazar go below the castle seeking the creatures. They fight each other, causing the fight to spill over the acid bath trapdoor. Yost triggers a trap, resulting in herself being impaled and both men falling into the acid bath, dissolving the creatures' threat.

Sheila uses the castle’s security override to herd the remaining creatures onto a carpet. She then sweeps them into the acid bath, attempting to eliminate the threat. Consequently, she and Kantor escape in his car, unaware of the creatures watching through a keyhole.