Shanks

Malcolm, a deaf-mute puppeteer, is noticed for his skill and hired by Mr. Walker to work in a private lab at a gothic mansion. The arrangement gives him a chance to pursue his craft under medical-like experiments, while he still lives with his cruel sister and her husband. The setup marks the entry of Malcolm into a world where performance and necromancy blur together.

His sister and her alcoholic husband demand that Malcolm be the breadwinner, pushing him to keep the family afloat. They react with outrage when he secretly keeps $50 of his own pay instead of handing it over. The conflict foreshadows the control and manipulation that follow.

In Walker's lab, Malcolm starts reanimating the dead, beginning with a frog and a chicken. The work is presented as a personal puppetry project, blending stagecraft with necromancy. The puppets become vessels for controlling life after death.

Mr. Walker dies unexpectedly, and Malcolm returns home cradling Walker’s puppet like a mournful relic. The intertitles describe the act as mercy toward the dead, deepening the blend of life and performance. This moment expands the stakes of Malcolm’s experiments.

Barton smashes the head of the Walker puppet and insists Malcolm resume his duties in the lab. The household pressure combines with Malcolm’s fear of losing his chance at success. The act sets up the looming conflict between art and violence.

With Walker absent, Barton arrives in person. Malcolm uses the reanimated chicken to attack Barton, who tumbles down the stairs and dies. The act demonstrates the terrifying reach of Malcolm’s control over the dead.

Malcolm buries Mr. Walker 'out of mercy' and animates Barton, guiding him through the streets as if alive. The sight is misread by his family as drunken behavior, worsening the illusion. This sequence expands the puppet-show’s reach into everyday life.

Barton’s puppet-like movements pass for drunkenness as Mrs. Barton steps into traffic and is killed by a car. Malcolm evades a police officer by staging the family as if they are watching TV through the window. He then animates Mrs. Barton, continuing the macabre deception.

The next day the Bartons are taken to a grocery store to test their aliveness in public. Malcolm pays off the Barton's tab and the grocer lets them take goods, recognizing their living appearance; Malcolm even ensures they stock up with gin. This demonstrates his control extending into ordinary life.

Malcolm takes Celia on a picnic with the Bartons acting as servants, and she gradually learns they are dead. She is disturbed by this revelation, which Malcolm gestures as an accident. The scene deepens Celia’s unease about the strange world he has built around her.

Malcolm brings Celia to Walker’s mansion for her birthday, where she admires pictures of Walker’s wife. He adopts 19th-century attire, and a dinner is staged with the Bartons as servants. During the cake, Mrs. Barton cuts off her finger, which Malcolm hides in his lapel pocket.

Outside, a motorcycle gang arrives after a crash and one dies. The gang invades Walker’s mansion and attacks Malcolm and Celia; Goliath assaults Celia while Mata Hari drinks gin, and Einstein pushes the Bartons to perform humiliating tricks. The household descends into a nightmare of control and fear.

Celia is found dead in the yard, and Malcolm reanimates Walker from the grave to confront the intruders. The gang discards the Barton puppet controls by tossing them into a well, and Walker’s puppet leads the counterattack. The violence brings the illusion to a violent climax.

In a sepia sequence, Malcolm reanimates Celia briefly for a dance, then the film returns to the opening frame to reveal the revenge scenario exists inside Malcolm’s puppet show. Each puppet receives a curtain call as the cycle ends. The film closes with a Thackeray quote about silencing the box and the puppets.