Dr. Orth (as Pawel Pawloff)
Werner Krauss, who had played the deranged Dr. Caligari six years earlier, stars as a scientist who is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares (designed by Ernö Metzner and photographed by Guido Seeber in a brilliant mix of expressionism and surrealism), he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.
Untersuchungsrichter
Student Raskolnikow, who has written an article about laws and crime, proposing the thesis, that un-ordinary people can commit crimes if their actions are necessary for the benifit of mankind, murders an old woman, who operates a crooked loaning house, as well as her sister, who made the mistake of visiting her at the wrong time. He is suspected of the crime, but somebody else confesses to the murder.
Pavel, painter, hunchback
Pastor Talnoх furiously urges the flock to fight temptations, but he himself becomes a victim of temptation. In his house appears Satan, pushing the hero to theft and spiritual fall.