Loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and incorporating a main character inspired by the Marquis de Sade, Lunacy is, literally and figuratively, about the inmates taking over the asylum. Though it attempts to explore the question of whether society benefits more from free will or strict rule, its answer—if it even has one—is all obscured by the film's cluttered mayhem. As well, the movie's "through the looking glass" style subverts the concept of good and evil in ways that are more tiring than intriguing. It also limits our ability to identify with the beleaguered main character, Jean Berlot (Pavel Liska), a naïve, questionably sane young man traumatized by his mother's recent death. This is one film that really needed a hero to guide us through all its muck and mire, but Jean is just too vague and victimized for that.

En route to the insane asylum where his mother has died, the nightmare-plagued Jean meets up with a bizarre fellow traveler known only as the Marquis (Jan Triska), who invites the clearly needy fellow to spend the night at his country castle. Once there, Jean beholds a shocking, chapel-set orgy whose sexual sacrilege makes Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video look Vatican-approved. As if Jean's not wigged out enough, he later witnesses the Marquis choking to death on a banana (oh, the symbolism!), after which Jean and the Marquis' tongueless manservant, Dominic (Pavel Novy), bury the old man in a crypt. This would be okay if he was actually dead, but, no surprise here, he's not. It's simply a case of what the Marquis calls "purgative therapy," or confronting your worst fear head-on—the Marquis is terrified of being buried alive, so he powers through it. He then suggests the unstable Jean, who's haunted by going mad like his mother, check into a nuthouse and see how it goes. Fun stuff.

The rest of the film takes place in said institution, which, as Jean soon discovers, is being "run" by its crazed, mutinous patients. Jean finds an ally in the pretty, compliant Charlotte (Anna Geislerova), who's stuck "working" for (and occasionally mounting) inmate-turned-director Dr. Murlloppe (Jaroslav Dusek). Though Charlotte may or may not be a loony nympho, Jean become smitten and, with the redhead's help, tries to free the asylum's real staff, who've been locked in the basement for a year, and tarred and feathered, no less. Of course, as fate would have it in this topsy-turvy universe, doing something good may just lead to Jean's ultimate downfall.

As if Lunacy isn't grim and oppressive enough, Svankmajer punctuates the action with a disgusting series of stop motion animation sequences involving raw meat, animal entrails, and various other slithering body parts. Like the rest of the events in this off-putting movie, whatever they're meant to represent isn't worth the suffering it takes to get there.