In a police station a dwarf is seated on a chair. He is photographed and then interrogated about acts of violence he committed during a revolt. The story thus turns back in time, to when the dwarfs, detained in a correction facility, took advantage of the director’s absence to rebel.

One of Werner Herzog’s earliest films—released when he was just 27!—this trippy nightmare shows just how much his sensibility had formed. His obsessive skewering of megalomania; his unique eye for strange, otherworldly locations; and a large dollop of absurd, grotesque humor: It’s all there!