Maurice Renard's little known but delightfully bizarre tale of mad science run amok owes much to H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau while also forging its own path by taking Wells' plot as a starting point and pushing it to ridiculous extremes. When a young man named Nicholas goes to visit his beloved scientist uncle Dr. Lerne in a remote French chateau, he is immediately put on his guard by his uncle's strange behavior, the mysterious Germans who now work with his uncle in a secret laboratory on the premises, on the strange noises he hears in the night... But Nicholas' desire to discover what his uncle's secret experiments are truly all about coupled with his strong desire for the young woman Emma who is staying with his uncle may soon find Nicholas in a greater peril that he ever possibly could have dreamed. - Summary by Ben Tucker