movie starts with band performing inside cage

"This Is Spinal Tap" shines a light on the self-contained universe of a metal band struggling to get back on the charts, including everything from its complicated history of ups and downs, gold albums, name changes and undersold concert dates, along with the full host of requisite groupies, promoters, hangers-on and historians, sessions, release events and those special behind-the-scenes moments that keep it all real.

Six actors are about to present their one of its kind thriller theater, where they will perform in a gigantic locked cage on stage. On its premiere, the first character to be killed in the story unexpectedly died for real on stage. Desperate to escape from the cage, the remaining actors cried for help from the crew and audience, only to be responded by a thunderous applause. They now realize that they have fallen into a secretly well planned trap by organizational psychopath murderers. In order to survive, they must continue to perform according to the plot until they find the murderer hidden among them.

A fiery, lithe dancer is stripping in a cage on a jungle set, scored to intense crime jazz.

A soundless film starts in a studio: an artist sits, a nude stands; a page burns, paper cutouts appear, images are distorted. The artist removes his eye; it falls from his hand, seeing images spin as it rolls. A man falls, objects in the studio falls on him, he's not the artist. A woman gets help from a man in a lab coat; he and the man on the floor fight over a shotgun. Outside, in the city, people and cars move backwards. On the street, those from the studio chase a woman who's stolen leeks. In the backward cityscape, they move forward. They run toward a seaside amusement park. The artist follows, his head in a bird cage. He ends up with the woman who went for help; or does he?

Finished shooting in 1962, the movie’s cast was almost the same as its crew. With a bunch of experimental symbols such as skinny human body, clock and goat flow from one scene to another, the film explores the question of whether a man is a prisoner of time.