Based on a Victor Hugo play, and scored with music from the later opera by Giuseppe Verdi, the film tells about a hunchbacked clown whose beautiful daughter falls in love with the lecherous king.
When his car breaks down out in the country, Sniffles the mouse takes shelter in an old mill, where he meets up with "Batty," a non-stop-talking little bat who later save Sniffles from a hungry cat.
Serials usually spawned feature film versions, but with this film, it was the other way around. A 1932 Buck Jones Western, White Eagle was made into a serial nine years later, again starring Jones in the title role, a (supposedly) Native American Pony Express Rider defending his people against a gang of evil Whites.