A wax museum curator, Martin Balsam, who is distraught when his museum is shut down and its "Murderers' Row" exhibit is to be demolished. He takes the life-size wax figures of famous killers like Jack the Ripper into his home basement, much to his wife's dismay. His obsession with preserving them leads to him keeping them at his house, and he begins to treat them as if they were alive.
