Unsuccessful detective story novelist Dan Dark lies in a hospital bed, covered with a visibly painful, devastating psoriasis. His diseased skin mirrors his inner world where his tortured childhood, career disappointments, and failing marriage have brought him to the brink.

Is his wife cheating on him with a strange figure from his childhood and plotting to steal the script he wrote and tucked away? Are the doctors that encircle him, poking and prodding truly as mad as they seem when they suddenly burst into musical numbers, or is their wild behavior a function of Dark's tormented psyche? It seems as though only the sweet nurse and the eccentric Dr. Gibbon can rescue him from his own sardonic ranting, from the memories of his difficult childhood, and from slipping into fantasy where gangsters follow him through noir landscapes.