The action of the film occurs over a five-day period, from a Friday through a Tuesday morning.[Friday]The story officially begins in downtown San Francisco with a view of a cable car, as an attractive, elegantly-dressed (obviously rich) and coiffed, high-heeled blonde woman with a black suit crosses the street at Union Square.Plot SynopsisThe film opens with its most famous sequence.It""s an audacious, incredible, breathtaking, three-minute, uninterrupted crane tracking shot under the credits (appearing superimposed on he left of the screen).After methodically washing his hands, Szell repeatedly and calmly asks he baffling question: "Is it safe?"Before oral surgery, he painfully digs around with an implement in Babe""s mouth, then plugs in his loud-sounding, whirring drill (the horror is accentuated by POV shots).She called the room "purgatory" -- where the "twisted, lonely" and worst of the criminally insane had been locked up like animals.