Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.
Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he kills a man and then flees.
Two noblemen live in one castle, which they both own half of. After a wall dividing both halves of the castle gets damaged they start an intense rivalry.
Young forester Sixt is wounded one night. Smuggling in the mountains is the reason. By day, the brothers Benno and Simon Schaidler are respectable citizens - by night, they are smugglers and poachers.
A mad doctor uses patients at his isolated psychiatric institute as subjects in his attempts to create longevity by surgically installing an artificial gland in their skulls.
A young street vendor who is a cockfighting aficionado, attracted by the image of one of them, settles on the ranch of its owner where he falls in love with the foreman's daughter.