In 1940s England, Dr. Rossiter (Anton Diffring) is a plastic surgery wanted by the police after an operation goes hideously wrong. However, believing himself to have brilliant abilities as a surgeon, he and his assistants (Kenneth Griffith and Jane Hylton) evade capture and escape to the Continent. There Rossiter changes his name to Schüler, and befriends a circus owner (Donald Pleasence) on whose deformed daughter Nicole (played by Carla Challoner as a child, Yvonne Monlaur as an adult) he operates.