Penniless, Baron Frankenstein, accompanied by his eager assistant Hans, arrives at his family castle near the town of Karlstaad, vowing to continue his experiments in the creation of life. Fortuitously finding the creature he was previously working on, he brings it back to a semblance of life but requires the services of a mesmerist, Zoltan, to successfully animate it. The greedy and vengeful Zoltan secretly sends the monster into town to steal gold and 'punish' the burgomaster and the chief of police, which acts lead to a violent confrontation between the baron and the townspeople.

Baron Frankenstein returns with his young assistant, Hans, to his ancestral castle in Karlstaad, Yugoslavia, from which he had fled years earlier after angry villagers drove Frankenstein's monster into the mountains. While following a mute beggar into a cave, the two men discover the monster, preserved in the ice of a glacier. They thaw it out and revive it electrically but learn that its brain has been damaged. The Baron persuades Zoltan, a mesmerist appearing at a local carnival, to reactivate the brain through hypnosis, but Zoltan's treatment causes the monster to obey only him. Zoltan orders the monster to steal all the gold it can find and to punish two of his enemies, but it murders the two men; the Baron, furious at the hypnotist's misuse of the creature, throws him out. Zoltan then commands the monster to kill the Baron, but it kills him instead and wanders into the mountains. The Baron is jailed, but he escapes, while Hans and a beggar girl follow the monster and bring it back to the castle. When the Baron reaches his laboratory, he finds the monster drunk on brandy and starting to drink chloroform. In the process, the monster accidentally sets the laboratory on fire; Hans and the girl escape, but Frankenstein and his creation are still inside when the entire castle explodes.