A warlock burned at the stake comes back and takes over the body of his great grandson to take his revenge on the descendents of the villages that burned him.
Nerdy Walter Paisley, a maladroit busboy at a beatnik café who doesn't fit in with the cool scene around him, attempts to woo his beautiful co-worker, Carla, by making a bust of her. When his klutziness results in the death of his landlady's cat, he panics and hides its body under a layer of plaster. But when Carla and her friends enthuse over the resulting artwork, Walter decides to create some bigger and more elaborate pieces using the same artistic process.
An artist grows distant from his new wife as an irrational horror of premature burial consumes him.
