A young American soldier (Timothy Bottoms) is wounded by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed as a quadruple amputee who has lost his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to think, thereby reliving his life through strange dreams, memories and conversations with Jesus (Donald Sutherland), unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming.

Dalton Trumbo, author of the famous 1930's antiwar book Johnny Got His Gun wrote and directed this film adaptation. In 1947, he refused to testify before a congressional committee investigating alleged Communist infiltration of the film industry. Blacklisted for nearly a decade, he wrote numerous scripts under pseudonyms including Roman Holiday and Gun Crazy until he was finally credited for his work on Exodus and Spartacus in 1960.