Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) the chief of medicine in a New York City teaching hospital is contemplating suicide. He's impotent his wife has left him and his children aren't speaking to him. His hospital is also suffering from a recent spate of inexplicable deaths. In the midst of these setbacks Bock is romantically drawn to the much younger Barbara Drummond (Dame Diana Rigg) whose father is a patient. As Barbara restores Bock's will to live it turns out that the hospital deaths are murders.