When country girl Lily (Marlene Dietrich) moves to Berlin, she becomes putty in the hands of a sculptor (Brian Aherne). Obsessed with her statuesque figure, Baron von Merzbach (a deliciously decadent Lionel Atwill) proposes to Lily, but life in his household soon transforms the naive peasant into a woman of the world.

Coquettish Spanish vixen Concha (Marlene Dietrich) toys with long-suffering lover "Pasqualito" (Lionel Atwill, in a surprisingly sympathetic role) while entertaining the advances of hot-blooded revolutionary Cesar Romero, in what would prove to be the last of the Dietrich/Von Sternberg films. Von Sternberg also worked as cinematographer here (with uncredited help from Lucien Ballard), and the images are among the most insanely baroque in the entire cycle.

In one of his first horror roles, Lon Chaney Jr. plays a man whose immunity to electrocution attracts the interest of two scientists - one of whom (Lionel Atwill) hopes to use the discovery to create an army of electrified killers. A shockingly effective B-movie!