From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== Far above the Arctic Circle is based a TV channel, on which there is only one program—"No Exit". Melee and death in the air. University Professor John Stoneman is abducted be the channel owner. No way out and no chance to survive. For John Stoneman there seems to be no escape.No Exit/Fatal Combat ===== A prison bus flips on the road when it's cut off by another car. In the chaos, a man named Billy frees a man named Sam (Jean-Claude Van Damme) by taking a guard hostage. Sam and Billy escape in the car but Billy is fatally shot by a guard. Sam buys some food from a roadside store and camps near a pond. He finds the money from their heist and listens to a tape recording left by Billy before pushing the car into the pond. That night, Sam sneaks up to a nearby house and sees a woman and her two children inside. He breaks in but is nearly discovered by one of the kids; he takes a salt shaker and leaves. The next night he breaks in again; the following morning, the boy (named Mookie) finds Sam's campsite. Nearby demolition from real estate development disturbs Clydie Anderson, the owner of the home. Corrupt developer Hale seeks to drive her off the land with the help of his lackey, Mr. Dunston, and the local sheriff, Lonnie Poole, who is dating Clydie. One night, some goons attack Clydie and her children, but Sam arrives and fights them off. He claims he is camping and hunting on her land, and Clydie insinuates that he is not welcome, but offers him her barn out of gratitude. He also purchases her dead husband's old motorcycle and fixes it up with Mookie's help. Later Sam thwarts an attempt by Hale to ruin Clydie's farmland by coating it with oil. A town council meeting gets heated when another resident, Tom, refuses to sell his land to Hale. That night, his goons burn down his barn. Mookie (who discovers the fire) awakens Sam; Sam saves Tom and puts out the fire, further angering Hale. Noticing that Clydie is taking a liking to Sam, Lonnie beats him and demands he leave. While tending his wounds, Clydie and Sam have sex. Lonnie continues to grow suspicious of Sam and Clydie's relationship; he finds out Sam is a fugitive and tells Clydie, who tells him to leave. Sam returns to his camp site, but Hale enlists the sheriff's department to hunt him down. Sam leads them on a motorcycle chase and ultimately escapes, but decides to return to Clydie. Running out of time and growing desperate, Hale and Dunston go to Clydie's house with guns and force her to sign over the land. Sam arrives just in time to stop them from burning down the house and kills Dunston. The police arrive and arrest Hale (who is holding Clydie at gun point); Sam allows Lonnie to arrest him having decided to stop running but promises to return to Clydie and the kids, whom he loves. ===== St Oswald's is a long-established boys' grammar school in the North of England. A new academic year has just begun and change is afoot. Roy Straitley, the Classics master and a veteran of St Oswald's, is contemplating retirement. Increased paperwork, computers, Health & Safety and a new generation of administrators have finally persuaded him that he no longer has a place in the world of education. However, St Oswald's is about to suffer a cataclysmic upheaval. It begins with a series of small acts of mischief conducted by someone on school premises. At first, no one thinks of connecting these seemingly isolated incidents. But gradually, as the incidents become increasingly serious, it becomes clear that someone with inside knowledge is intent on causing real damage. Only Mr Straitley may have the key to the identity of the mysterious saboteur - but can he expose the enemy in time to prevent a murder? ===== Ronald Miller is a typical high school nerd living in suburban Tucson, Arizona. He has spent all summer mowing lawns to save up for a telescope. At an opportune moment, he makes a deal with next-door neighbor and popular cheerleader Cindy Mancini. She had borrowed her mother's expensive suede outfit without permission, to wear to a party, only to have wine accidentally spilled on it. Cindy reluctantly agrees to help Ronald look "cool" by posing as his girlfriend for a month for $1,000 (which was used to replace the ruined outfit), although she already has a boyfriend, Bobby, who is attending the University of Iowa. Ronald then trades his nerdy, yet loyal, friends for the popular but shallow students, and undergoes a complete clothing and hair makeover under Cindy's direction. Over time, a bond develops between them. Cindy has Ronald read a secret poem she wrote that means a great deal to her. In turn, Ronald reveals his interests in astronomy and space travel. On their last date that Ronald paid for, Cindy begins to have real feelings for him and hints that she would like to kiss him, but he misunderstands. The next day at school, they stage a breakup in front of a crowd, but Ronald takes things too far and says some hurtful things about Cindy in front of her friends. She remains calm and distant, but informs Ronald that popularity is hard work and that he needs to make sure that he "stays himself." The next day, Cindy notices him behaving arrogantly at school, and becomes jealous when she sees him flirting with her best friends Barbara and Patty. Ronald takes Patty to a school dance, where he performs a dance he learned from an African cultural show on public television he mistakenly thought was the latest dance craze performed on American Bandstand. At first, the other kids are mystified, but they soon join in, and Ronald's new "trendy" dancing further increases his popularity. On Halloween night, he and some jocks drive to the house of Kenneth, Ronald's best friend, where the jocks test his loyalty by coercing him to hurl dog feces at Kenneth's house. Kenneth is lying in wait and catches Ronald, but lets him go before his dad can call the police. Kenneth ignores him the next day at school. At a New Year's Eve party at Big John's house, Ronald starts drinking and has a romantic tryst with his date, Iris, in the bathroom. Cindy walks by and hears Ronald reciting her special poem to Iris. Devastated, Cindy starts drinking even more. Later, Cindy's boyfriend, Bobby, unexpectedly shows up at the party. After Bobby learns about Cindy's "relationship" with Ronald, he breaks up with her. Cindy tries to explain that Ronald paid her to pretend they were dating, but Bobby doesn't believe her and walks out on her. In a drunken rage, Cindy reveals the truth about her and Ronald to the partygoers, and Ronald is immediately ostracized. Dejected, he leaves and spends the night in his garage crying himself to sleep. When school resumes, he finds himself a social outcast, by both the jocks and the nerds. His attempts to reconcile with both Cindy and Kenneth are rebuffed. Ronald gets an opportunity to redeem himself at lunch when he sees Quint, a jock, bullying Kenneth after noticing Kenneth helping Patty with her math homework. Quint threatens Kenneth with physical violence if Kenneth doesn't go back to "his side of the cafeteria." Ronald intervenes, threatening to break Quint's pitching arm if he does not leave Kenneth alone. Ronald points out that the three were all friends at one time: when they were nine, Quint fell out of their treehouse and broke his arm and Kenneth and Ronald carried him twelve blocks to the hospital. Ronald confesses he was desperate to run with the popular crowd but had messed up by trying to buy his way in (unlike Kenneth, who was helping Patty out of a genuine interest in her), that the clique dynamic is "all bullshit" and that it's tough enough just being yourself, and walks away. Quint apologizes to Kenneth and they shake hands as the whole school applauds. Ronald officially redeems himself with his friends and Cindy. Recognizing Ronald's worth, Cindy chooses to spend an evening with him rather than hang out with her friends, hopping on the back of his riding lawnmower. Ronald then asks Cindy to prom, and they kiss for the first time, as the Beatles' title song plays. The new couple then ride off into the sunset on the lawnmower. ===== The experienced detective Jo has a new partner, Kang who recently graduated from the Police Academy at the top of the class. The idealistic Kang always sticks to his principles and often conflicts with Jo, an amoral cop who always tries to take advantage of his position. Kang tries to win Jo over to his side, but fails. One day, a beautiful woman who works in a bar comes to the police station for help, and Kang falls in love with her. He starts going to the bar often to see her, and begins to become more like Jo. Jo is initially pleased at this, but later begins to experience a dilemma with Kang's change in attitude. ===== As with many of Bowie's works, the song is a dystopian narrative. One strand of the story concerns a man who helped revolutionaries establish a new order by, "open[ing] doors that would have blocked their way" and "ravag[ing] at my finance." The revolutionaries, "let him use his powers," so they could "infiltrate business cesspools/Hating through our sleeves." But "now [they] are strong" while the man "sits alone growing older" having been forgotten by those he helped. The other strand of the story describes the post-revolutionary world, revealing that it is not the utopia that had been hoped for. The mottoes of the new state are, "I will kill for the good of the fight for the right to be right," and "We can force you to be free." Near the end of the song, the narrator describes what has become of the revolution: :A love machine lumbers through desolation rows :Ploughing down man, woman, listening to its command :But not hearing anymore. ===== One night when Mickey is fast asleep, he falls into a dream where a mischievous ghost traps a dream vision of himself inside a magic mirror. Stuck in an alternate universe that strangely resembles his own house, Mickey yearns to get back through the mirror to his own house and his own bed in order to wake up from this dreamlike state; however, the ghost destroys the mirror and the pieces shrink and fly off to different areas around the house, which turns the magic mirror into a normal mirror. The player must direct Mickey to outwit and pull gags in order to get past enemies, obstacles, and the aforementioned ghost and recover the twelve broken mirror pieces he needs to go home again and search for twelve magic stars (needed to pull gags) and items needed to help him throughout his quest. Whenever he finds a piece, it will fly back to the mirror, return to its normal size, and put itself back in place. After repairing the mirror, he prepares to leave, but the ghost stops him, revealing that it only brought him here so he can have someone to play with. The player could either chose to stay or go. Choosing to stay will make the ghost run off, leaving Mickey stuck in the alternate world until he reenters the mirror room where the player can choose to stay or leave again. If the player chooses to leave, Mickey says goodbye to the ghost and begins to go home, but the ghost decides to go with him (only if the player has collected all twelve mirror pieces). After Mickey wakes up, he goes downstairs to get something to eat. A model of the ghost is shown hanging on the ceiling fan and the ghost's laughter is heard. ===== Set in the seedy parts of New York City, Killer Condom follows gay Detective Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel), who has been hired to investigate a series of bizarre attacks at the Hotel Quickie in which male guests have all had their penises mysteriously bitten off. While at the crime scene, he enlists the services of a gigolo named Billy and invites him up to the crime room. Before the two men engage in sex, a carnivorous living condom interrupts them and bites off Mackeroni's right testicle. Now on a personal vendetta, Mackeroni begins his lone quest to not only bring a stop to the rash of condom attacks, but also face his true feelings toward Billy the gigolo. ===== Max Thursday is an alcoholic ex-cop. The only job he can find is as a house detective at his pal Smitty's hotel. Ex-wife Georgia comes to him in a panic. Their son Jeff is missing and so is her brother Fred. She didn't go to the police after being warned not to by Dr. Elder, a business acquaintance of Fred's. The drunken Max tries to confront Dr. Elder, but is knocked cold. He wakes up in jail to learn that Elder has been killed and he, Max, is the prime suspect. Georgia gives him an alibi, though, so Max is let out. Now sober, Max learns that the doctor was involved in a diamond smuggling operation with Varkas, a known criminal. He learns from Varkas' helpful moll, Angel, that the gangster's men are holding Fred hostage. Max is shot by Varkas' thugs. When he recovers, Varkas is dead, and Max finally realizes that it's his old friend Smitty who's behind the whole scheme. Jeff and Fred are rescued and a grateful Georgia welcomes them and Max back. ===== The film tells the story of a newly graduated Leningrad teacher, Yelena Kuzmina (played by Yelena Alexandrovna Kuzmina). She goes furniture shopping with her fiance, Petya, and in a fantasy sequence she imagines teaching a class of neat, obedient city schoolchildren. Instead, she is assigned to work in the Altai mountains of Siberia. Reluctant to leave, she appeals to remain in the city. Although her request is granted (by a faceless Nadezhda Krupskaya, seen only from behind), she is eventually spurred by the government's condemnation of 'cowards' such as her to accept the post. Yelena arrives in a remote village, where the two authority figures are the feckless representative of the Soviet and the Bey -- the local version of the kulak. The villagers live a primitive life, practicing shamanist religion (symbolised by the totem of a dead horse on a pole) and living entirely off their herd of sheep. The children become devoted to Yelena, but their education is hampered both by their primitive condition and by the insistence of the Bey that they work as shepherds rather than attending school. The representative of the Soviet refuses to help Yelena against the Bey; although he has received posters calling on people to expel the kulaks from the collective farms, his only comment is that the posters "look pretty". Undaunted, Yelena takes her lessons to the children working with the sheep. The Bey, however, has illegally sold the sheep to some sheep traders, who begin to slaughter the animals. Yelena declares that she will travel to the regional centre to find out about Soviet regulations concerning dealings in sheep, but on the way she is thrown off a sled by one of the sheep traders and becomes lost in a snowstorm. Yelena is found just in time by a rescue party from the village. They overthrow the representative of the Soviet and summon help for Yelena, who needs an emergency operation in order to survive. Telegraph messages to and from the capital result in an aeroplane being sent to rescue Yelena, who promises that she will soon return. The final shot of the film shows the aeroplane soaring above the totemic dead horse. ===== ===== The Yoshi family has just moved to the Tokyo suburbs, close to where the father Kennosuke's (Tatsuo Saitō) direct boss, Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto), is staying. Kennosuke's two young sons Keiji and Ryoichi (Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara) are supposed to be going to school, but owing to the threats of a group of neighborhood and school bullies, they decide to play truant. After the teacher speaks to their father, Keiji and Ryoichi have no choice but to go to school. They attempt to eat sparrow's eggs to get stronger so that they can get back at the boys, but an older delivery boy Kozou (Shoichi Kofujita) decides to help them out to threaten the bullies, and they emerge as the top dogs amongst the gang. One of the neighborhood kids is Taro (Seiichi Kato), whose father is Iwasaki himself. The boys argue amongst themselves who has the most powerful father. Not long after, they visit Taro's home, where the office workers have gathered under Iwasaki, who screens some home movies for the amusement of the gathering. The two brothers witness on film how their father, who to them is stern and whom they look up to, plays the buffoon before his colleagues and boss. Humiliated, they go home and decide that their father isn't such an important person after all. They throw a massive tantrum, and confront their father asking him why he has to grovel under Taro's father. Kennosuke answers that Taro's father is richer and holds a higher position than he does. Dissatisfied with this answer, the two decide to hold a hunger strike. Ryoichi gets a spanking from his father, but after the children have gone to bed, the father confides in the wife that he does not enjoy doing what he does. Both wish for a better future for their children. The next day, the children attempt a hunger strike during breakfast, but succumb to a dish of onigiri. Kennosuke manages a reconciliation with them. The children say they would like to be a lieutenant general and a general respectively. On their way to school, they see Taro's father in a car, and they urge their father to go up and greet him. As Kennosuke takes a convenient car ride to work, the brothers walk to school with Taro and the rest of the gang. ===== The novel centers upon the Ogata family of Kamakura, and its events are witnessed from the perspective of its aging patriarch, Shingo, a businessman close to retirement who works in Tokyo. Shingo is experiencing temporary lapses of memory, recalling strange and disturbing dreams upon waking, and hearing sounds, including the titular noise which awakens him from his sleep, "like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth." Shingo takes the sound to be an omen of his impending death. Shingo observes and questions his relations with his family members, his wife Yasuko, his philandering son Shuichi, his daughter-in-law Kikuko, and his married daughter Fusako, who has left her husband and returned to her family home with her two young daughters. Shingo realizes that he has not truly been an involved and loving husband and father, and perceives the marital difficulties of his adult children to be the fruit of his poor parenting. To this end, he begins to question his secretary, Tanizaki Eiko, about his son's affair, as she knows Shuichi socially and is friends with his mistress, and he quietly puts pressure upon Shuichi to quit his infidelity. At the same time, he becomes aware that he has begun to experience a fatherly yet erotic attachment to Kikuko, whose physical attractiveness, filial devotion, and quiet suffering in the face of her husband's unfaithfulness contrast strongly with the bitter resentment and homeliness of Shingo's own daughter, Fusako. Complicating matters in his own marriage is the infatuation he once possessed for Yasuko's older sister, more beautiful than Yasuko, who died as a young woman but now appears in his dreams along with other dead friends and associates. The novel can be interpreted as a meditation of aging and its attendant decline, and coming to terms with one's mortality. Even as Shingo regrets not being present for his family and blames himself for his children's failing marriages, the natural world comes alive for him in a whole new way, provoking meditations on life, love, and companionship. ===== The early 1960s: In preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy from a small Manitoba community with an overbearing family tries to navigate his coming-of-age with his family's condescension and bigotry using his sarcastic Jewish humor. The town's rabbi dies, and a subplot develops in which Max's father and grandfather (synagogue leaders) are saddled with a traditional Hassidic rabbi who sticks out like a sore thumb among the otherwise assimilated Jewish community. To make matters more difficult, Max likes a Catholic girl, whom he later duets with in a piano competition. The quirky, fun-loving rabbi tries to help him with his problems, yet harbours a secret ambition of his own. ===== In Hollywood in the late 1920s during the waning days of the industry's transition to sound film, producer and studio head Alfie Alperin (Malcolm McDowell) wants to produce an epic Western film about Wyatt Earp. Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) is cast as the great United States Marshal and the real Earp (James Garner) is on the set as a technical adviser. While Earp and Mix, the "real" and "reel" western heroes, are involved in their film adventure, they also get caught up in an actual case of murder, prostitution and corruption. Together, they try to straighten out the problems of the missing son of Earp's former girlfriend, Christina (Patricia Hodge). She is now the wife of studio boss Alfie Alperin and he is not pleased by Earp's investigation. Hostess Cheryl King (Mariel Hemingway) becomes romantically involved with Earp. Alfie's sister, Victoria Alperin (Jennifer Edwards) is dating a notorious mobster and all three were at the scene of the murder of Madam Candice Gerard. Soon Earp unveils the true sadistic character of Alfie Alperin. Two of his accomplices, studio Chief of Studio Police Dibner (M. Emmet Walsh) whose interest is in protecting Alperin and corrupt Capt. Blackworth (Richard Bradford) turn nasty. Mix and Earp get to fight a real gunfight at a real isolated ranch, with Mix telling Earp "I wish there was a camera here" before drawing a real gun. After the death of Christina, matters become personal for Earp, leading to the explosive climax between Mix, Alperin, and Earp. ===== Emily Boynton, stepmother to the three Boynton children – Lennox, Raymond, and Carol – and mother to Ginevra, blackmails the family lawyer, Jefferson Cope, into destroying a second will of her late husband that would have freed the children from her dominating influence and allowed them to inherit $200,000 each. She takes herself, the children, and her daughter-in- law serving as a nurse, Nadine on holiday to Europe and the Holy Land. In Trieste, the great detective Hercule Poirot meets up with a woman friend, Dr. Sarah King, who falls in love with Raymond Boynton to Emily's disapproval. Lady Westholme, her secretary and archaeologist, Miss Quinton and lawyer, Cope are following them too. The children discover the second will since their father told Lennox before he died and Emily succeeds in rubbing the rest the wrong way, causing much hatred towards her. At a dig, after the children go for a walk, Emily is found dead with pin marks on her wrist, suggesting she had been injected with a poison-filled syringe at the time. With the help of his old friend, Colonel Carbury, Poirot investigates and starts questioning the children, Nadine, Dr. King, Lady Westholme, Mr. Cope, and Miss Quinton. When a bottle of digitalis is found emptied and a syringe belonging to Dr. King is missing, Poirot deduces that Mrs. Boynton was injected with a high lethal dose of digitalis, corresponding to a medicine she frequently took and was given by Nadine due to her health. ===== In the town of Weaverton, signs of a circus are being posted. In Zeke MacGruder's barn, a group of boys are holding a meeting. Two brothers, Tommy (Chance Michael Corbitt) and Ben (Ryan Todd) are daring to climb Thunder Mountain, where it is said a giant lives. The boys take the dare and set out up the mountain. They get caught in a thunderstorm and barely escape getting hit by lightning (this is what gives Thunder Mountain its name). They take refuge inside a strange oversized log cabin. Whilst there, they find mysterious carved wooden figures. Suddenly, the giant returns and finds the boys hiding under a table, but they escape with one of the wooden figures and go back to town. When they reach home, they tell their family their amazing story, but no one believes them. The next morning, they set out with another boy, Zeke MacGruder Daniel Pipoly) who doubts Tommy and Ben have seen the giant. Tommy and Ben's younger sister, Amy (Noley Thornton) follows them, but almost gets caught in a bear trap. The boys tell her to leave but she persists and continues following them. The three boys watch the giant from the woods. Zeke excuses himself and runs away, but Amy steps out from the woods and introduces herself and her brothers to the giant, Eli Weaver (Richard Kiel). They help him with his chores including helping him plant young fir trees. The boys volunteer to get water for the trees and go in the cabin to fetch a bucket. When they do so they discover some of Eli's gold nuggets. Tommy puts a few in his pocket, and they go outside and fill the bucket with water. Eli's pet wolf shows up to check out the children and after this the children return to town. Amy discovers Tommy and Ben looking at the gold nuggets and they allow her to have one of them with the promise she won't tell their mother. Amy goes to the general store to buy candy, and offers to pay for the candy with the gold. Hezekiah Crow (Jack Elam) overhears Amy and says he is an expert in gauging whether a nugget is gold or not, and proclaims the nugget as being 'Fool's Gold.' But in trade he offers her tickets to his carnival, and she bargains for extra tickets. She goes to see Eli and invites him to dinner and gives him one of the carnival tickets. Eli comes to Wilson's house for dinner, and after dinner he repairs their cuckoo clock. Hezekiah Crow's circus parades through Weaverton, hosted by Zeke's father, Mr. MacGruder (Ed Williams). The circus's many performers include a juggling act, a trained lion, a boa constrictor, a long-legged clown act, a camel, a high-jumping acrobat, and two white horses. The final act arrives, a trained black bear act. This reminds Eli of the day that a giant grizzly bear (Bart the Bear) killed his parents. Amy admires a beautiful doll at a circus booth, and Eli throws balls to knock down pins. The booth is run by one of Hezekiah's sons (William Sanderson), who puts a rod through the pins so they can't be knocked over. But Eli's throw breaks the pins and he expects the carnival man to give Amy the doll, but instead he gives her an inferior doll. Amy is disappointed, and Eli grabs hold of the carnival man and lifts him in the air and then drops him on the ground. Eli hands the beautiful ceramic doll to Amy. A crowd has gathered around Eli and Amy's mother appears and scolds Amy for causing trouble. The crowd shout insults at Eli and Eli crushes the doll's head with one squeeze and warns the town to stay off Thunder Mountain. Amy tries to tell him to stay, but he says that he will not visit a town that's disrespectful to him and storms off. The next scene is at a bar, where several men (including old man Doc) are playing poker. Hezekiah and his two sons plot to go to Eli's cabin to obtain Eli's gold. Meanwhile, at his cabin, Eli burns the wooden statuette he carved of Amy. Amy goes to see Eli and says she is sorry for what happened in town, and the two are friends again. Eli and Amy go for a walk in the woods and he shows her the biggest tree in the forest 'The General.' Tommy and Ben go to find Amy and at the cabin are accosted by Hezekiah Crow and his two sons. They kidnap Ben, knock out Tommy, and take Eli's gold. Hearing the approach of a posse, they escape out a window in the back of the cabin, leaving Tommy lying unconscious on the floor. Meanwhile, in the woods, the grizzly approaches and Eli fights it and knocks it out with a tree branch. Amy runs for the cabin and Eli limps along after her. Amy arrives at the cabin and runs to her mother. The posse do not ascertain what is going on and assume Eli has taken Amy's brothers and set out to catch him. While being stalked, Eli is wounded in the leg and has to hide. He hides under a pile of leaves and surprises one of the men of the posse who has caught his leg in his own bear trap. He takes the man's gun and takes the trap off the man's leg. The posse burns Eli's cabin as revenge for their mistaken belief he kidnapped the children. Amy and her mom return to town with Tommy. The kidnappers go to the MacGruder's house to steal their belongings and Eli tracks them down and frees the MacGruder's and Ben. Hezekiah Crow tries to trick Eli and escapes out a window. Eli follows him and Hezekiah comes face to face in the dark with the true Giant of Thunder Mountain - the grizzly. Caught between Eli and the bear he surrenders to Eli and the posse. The movie concludes with the town asking Eli if he would become their sheriff, and promise to rebuild his cabin. Eli says he must return to the mountain, but leaves as their friend. ===== Scientists discover that a violent storm is heading toward New York City and begin the warning process throughout the city. They believe that something is wrong with the natural barometer patterns and that an unprecedented event is imminent. A sudden eclipse of the sun verifies their notions and it seems that global destruction is near. Telegraphs from Rome and London explain days of unending earthquakes and state "The End of the World is at Hand." Tremendous earthquakes hit the Pacific Coast, killing millions, and it is reported that the entire western coast of the US has been demolished. The earthquakes have also caused major tsunamis in the oceans and disaster is just moments away. Martin Webster (Sidney Blackmer) and his wife Helen (Lois Wilson) prepare for the oncoming disaster by gathering their children and some essentials and head for a high rock formation to escape the floods. Martin leaves Helen and goes back to the house to get more food and clothes, but the destruction of New York begins. Buildings crumble from earthquakes and tsunami waters envelop the city. Martin returns to find his wife and daughters are nowhere to be found. In the aftermath, grief-stricken Martin builds a shelter and tries to survive on his own. Surviving in a cabin in another part of the New York City outskirts, two men, Jepson (Fred Kohler) and Norwood (Ralf Harolde), find Claire (Peggy Shannon) unconscious and washed up on the shore. As she recovers, the men start feuding and become very possessive. When Claire realizes the situation, she becomes uncomfortable and flees across the water for safety as she is a world-class swimmer, leaving the men angry and vengeful. Jepson kills Norwood and begins to search for Claire, vowing to bring her back. Claire washes up on another shore, where Martin finds her this time. Martin and Claire become good friends and eventually fall in love. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, survivors have gathered together to start a new civilization. Among these survivors is Martin's wife, Helen, and their children. Tom (Matt Moore), one of the townsmen, found Helen in the aftermath, and has been taking care of her ever since. He has also fallen in love with her, but Helen is convinced that Martin is still alive. Jepson teams up with a gang of thugs who help him find Claire and Martin and eventually trap them in a mineshaft. The townspeople stumble upon the situation and save Martin and Claire and bring them back to their new found city. Once they arrive, Martin finds his children and discovers his wife is alive and well and goes to her. Claire and Tom are devastated. After the reunion, Martin explains to Claire how he is in love with both his wife and with her and that he will not choose. Helen visits Claire and they have a painful discussion in which Claire says she will not give up Martin. However, when Claire sees Martin with his wife at the town meeting her heart breaks and she runs to the ocean. She swims away as Martin is left watching her go. ===== The plot follows the protagonist, Donald Zinkoff, through his early life. When Zinkoff enters the first grade, his sloppiness and excessive enthusiasm are immediately noted by his teacher, Miss Meeks. Despite Zinkoff’s quirks, Miss Meeks works to instill confidence in him. Zinkoff’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Biswell, is more hostile towards him, and regularly scolds him for his lack of discipline. While in the second grade, Zinkoff also bonds with his father by following him on his mail route. In the fourth grade, Zinkoff estranges himself from the majority of his peers when his clumsiness causes his team to lose on Field Day. He initially struggles with being taunted and referred to as a "loser" by his classmates. Though he does eventually recover his old spirit, he develops a new maturity and becomes more self-conscious about his enthusiastic behavior. Once he is in fifth grade, Zinkoff makes a much more active effort to fit in. He briefly befriends one of his classmates, Hector Binns, but the friendship soon falls apart. He purposely avoids Field Day once it arrives, fearing that he will once again let his team down, and instead chooses to spend the day with an old woman he knows from his father’s mail route. When Zinkoff initially enters middle school, he goes largely unnoticed by his classmates. After the school year’s first snow, Zinkoff discovers that a toddler in his neighborhood, Claudia, has gone missing. Believing that she ran away, he decides to search for her. Though Claudia is found a few minutes later, Zinkoff does not notice and spends seven hours in the snow searching for Claudia. Eventually, he is found and brought home. The incident with Claudia gains Zinkoff some notoriety in middle school, and the novel closes with him being invited to play football with the other boys in the grade for the first time. ===== ===== In the south of England, at an isolated laboratory near a small village, physicist Dr. Laird (Alec Mango) is assisted by American scientist Gilbert Graham (Forrest Tucker). They are performing a series of advanced and dangerous experiments with magnetic fields, while using massive amounts of power in equipment never designed to carry such loads. An accident occurs and injures another assistant, after which a request for a replacement sent to the Ministry of Defence brings Brigadier Cartwright (Windham Goldie) down to investigate. He is accompanied by a woman computer expert, Michele Dupont (Gaby Andre), who helps to solve Laird's power problem, but not the larger risks inherent in his experiments. Cartwright is impressed when an interrupted experiment transforms several pieces of steel, not in the test chamber, into useless lumps of powder. His report convinces the Deputy Defence Minister (Geoffrey Chater) to make Laird's project a top priority. He sends down a full security team, led by counter-espionage expert Jimmy Murray (Hugh Latimer). It soon becomes clear, however, that enemy agents are the least of the dangers around Laird's project: The hyper-magnetic fields that he has generated have been affecting the ionosphere, causing unnatural weather patterns, threatening ships at sea hundreds of miles away, and also weakening the magnetic shield that protects the surface of the Earth from cosmic rays. A sudden burst of cosmic radiation from deep space causes brain damage in one local man, turning him into a homicidal maniac, while also causing the insect life to mutate in the area around the village and laboratory. In the midst of this growing threat to the world's safety, a mysterious "Mr. Smith" (Martin Benson) arrives in the village. He is well-spoken, with little knowledge of ordinary life, but a great deal of knowledge about magnetic fields, while offering strong opinions about the dangerous experiments that Dr. Laird is conducting. Murray is positive that he is a spy, but Graham and Dupont decide that there is less threat from him than from the obstinate Dr. Laird, who plans on continuing his risky work. Even with "Mr. Smith"s dire warnings, the forest adjacent to the village is soon swarming with gigantic insects and other mutated monsters. Graham's and Dupont's best efforts fail to stop Dr. Laird, and so they alert the authorities to investigate and send in the military. Later, when leaving the laboratory, Dupont is threatened by the encroaching monsters and becomes trapped in the web of a giant spider. The army arrives in time and is able to destroy all the mutations, saving her life. "Mr. Smith" reveals to Graham that he is an alien from another world (withholding its name). Later, Graham explains to Dupont, Murray, and Cartwright that "Mr. Smith" is actually an alien emissary from a "Planet X", while also informing them that Laird has gone mad and plans to continue his dangerous experiments. "Mr.Smith" explains that his mission is to warn humanity of the likelihood that Earth's orbit will be destabilized should the magnetic experiments continue. They are already a threat to "Planet X", having caused the crash on Earth of one of their flying saucers. "Mr. Smith" is asked to help stop Dr. Laird, but being an emissary, he is at first reluctant. However, now faced with a continued threat, he agrees. They quickly leave and go back to stop Dr. Laird, who has already started up his equipment. "Mr. Smith" in the meantime has summoned his flying saucer using a hand-held device, positioning it directly above the laboratory. It fires down multiple rays that obliterate the building. With the coming disaster averted, the alien says his goodbyes to Graham and Dupont and walks to the landed saucer. It quickly becomes just an oval of light ascending into the night sky. ===== The story revolves around three dancers who are forced to reconcile their differences and pasts. Travis (Swayze), Chrissa (Niemi), and Max (De La Pena) were three students of master choreographer Alex McGrath, but they had a falling out many years ago over a particularly difficult piece that Alex had choreographed specifically for them. Unexpectedly, McGrath dies. This reunites the three, who agree to attempt the dance piece once more to save his company. In the process, however, they all reopen old emotional wounds that had never properly healed. Travis and Chrissa have a daughter together, Bree. Bree wishes to follow in her mother's footsteps of dancing and even takes any opportunity to steal her mother's Pointe shoes and dance around the house in them. It is realized that Max should be the new head of the company. Travis, Chrissa and Max each want to quit for good at some point. But finally all grudgingly follow through and come full-circle as dancers. ===== Louie Kritski is a heartless slumlord who was born into money, thanks to his ruthless father, "Big Lou" (Vincent Gardenia), also a slumlord. However, the tables turn on Louie when he's threatened with prison for his failure to keep his New York City slum up to code. The judge gives him another option, which he accepts: he must live in a vacant apartment of one of his own shoddy run-down apartment blocks until he brings it up to livable standards. The sentence is an effective house arrest; Louie is not allowed to leave the apartment except for routine exercise, grocery shopping, medical emergencies and business relating to building repairs. In addition, Louie is not authorized to make any changes to the apartment he has been assigned unless all other apartments had the same upgrade beforehand. At first Louie is adamant that not one repair will be carried out, and will wait until his father bails him out. However, Louie has a change of heart after meeting and getting to know the building's residents, including a small-time hustler named Marlon (Ruben Blades), and a struggling street boy named Tito (Kenny Blank). Over time, Louie grows more sympathetic with their problems and makes amends for his greediness through actions such as donating space heaters to the tenants to help them cope with the winter. Unfortunately, Big Lou Kritski is the owner of the property in title, and he resists his son's entreaties to spend money to improve the tenements. When Louie confronts Big Lou who is about to set fire to his own tenement, all the residents appear on the roof to back up Louie. The film ends with Louie's building completely refurbished, Marlon becoming the new super, and all the tenants gathered outside to see Louie off with a gift: his Corvette—which had been completely stripped of its parts shortly after he first arrived—fully restored. A grateful Louie drives away as a large man appears and angrily demands to know who stole his car; all the tenants point in the direction in which Louie drove off in. ===== While California University of the Sciences professor Douglas McCadden explores the tomb of the ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamun, an earthquake causes a wall in the tomb to collapse, revealing a hidden chamber. Inside, Douglas finds a mummy in a sarcophagus. Unbeknownst to Douglas, the "mummy" is not the body of a dead Egyptian, but an extraterrestrial alien in suspended animation, being wrapped up and buried alive thousands of years before and covered with a dormant, green fungus. The body is brought back to California and Douglas has it examined by Dr. Ken Melrose and X-rayed by student Peter Sharpe before a big press conference about the discovery. While reviewing the X-rays, Peter notices there are five crystals around the "mummy's" head. Peter steals the crystals and makes new X-rays to cover up his theft. He sells four of the crystals to students who are unaware of their origin. The second set of X-rays overdose the body with radiation. This causes the fungus to re-activate and the alien to awaken from suspended animation. At the press conference the next day, one of the students touches the fungus on the sarcophagus, which eats away one of his fingers. The sarcophagus is then opened in front of the press to reveal that the mummy is gone. Ken and his colleague Dr. Hayworth attempt to identify the fungus and destroy it. At first, everyone assumes that the mummy's disappearance is because of a fraternity prank. However, University President Wendell Rossmore wants to pin the "theft" on Douglas, so that he can give the Egyptian department's directorship to his flunkie, Dr. Bruce Serrano. Meanwhile, the "mummy" tracks down the students who have the stolen crystals. The crystals are crucial components of an intergalactic transportation device that will allow the alien to return to its home planet. The alien violently reclaims its crystals, and, when he brutally attacks a female student, Lt. Plummer is called in to investigate the crime. As more students turn up dead or injured, Plummer believes that he is on the trail of a serial killer. While Plummer conducts his investigation, Douglas translates the hieroglyphic text from the sarcophagus. He hopes it will reveal the identity of the mummy. The text reveals that Tutankhamun found the alien in a coma-like state. Thinking that the unconscious alien was a god, Tutankhamun and his attendants touched it and were killed by its infectious fungus. The king and the alien were then buried together in the king's tomb. Douglas, having figured out that the "mummy" is an alien, makes the connection between the alien and the crystals. He then traces the stolen crystals back to Peter, who admits to the theft and gives Douglas the one crystal he kept for himself. In the end Douglas, Wendall, Bruce, two students, a security guard and the alien all end up in a boiler room where the alien has set up its transportation device. The alien activates the device by placing the last recovered crystal on it; his mummy wrappings disintegrate, revealing his true form. The security guard urged by Bruce shoots at the alien, but Douglas leaps in front of the alien to protect it. As Douglas lies injured the alien takes his hand, and the two disappear. A single crystal is left where the alien stood. Bruce grabs the crystal, and the fungus begins to destroy his hand. ===== Having survived their fall at the end of the first film, Duane Bradley and his hideously deformed brother Belial are rescued from the hospital by an elderly woman named Ruth who, along with her beautiful granddaughter, are the caretakers of an extended family of similarly deformed individuals. When a snooping tabloid reporter and a sleazy photographer threaten to endanger the community's welfare, the two brothers join with the freaks to defend their privacy with a vengeance. ===== 15-year-old Genevieve Gage and her best friend Tiana Moore are typical high school students in Helverton, Colorado who spend their idle time chatting with strangers in chat rooms. After chatting with another apparent student who goes by the screen name of "Captain Howdy," Genevieve and Tiana decide to attend a party at Captain Howdy's house, which is a trap. When neither Genevieve nor Tiana returns home by the next morning, Genevieve's mother, Toni, alerts her husband, local cop Mike Gage (Kevin Gage). With the assistance of a younger cop named Steve Christian (Brett Harrelson), Gage begins searching for Genevieve and Tiana. The case takes an unexpected turn when Tiana's car is pulled out of a lake with Tiana's tortured body inside and no sign of Genevieve. Mike discovers that Captain Howdy (Dee Snider) is into "body art," including significant tattooing, piercing, branding, and scarification. But it is not until Mike's niece Angela Stravelli (Amy Smart) informs him of Genevieve's penchant for meeting strangers through the Internet that Mike gets his first lead. Meeting the Captain Howdy online, Mike attempts to get Captain Howdy to invite him to a party. Despite the plan going awry, he later figures out Captain Howdy's location and finds his torture chamber. There, Gage finds Genevieve naked and bound, with her mouth stitched shut, as well as five other teenagers who are in similar predicaments. After a brief struggle in which Captain Howdy gets shot, Mike arrests him and discovers his real name is Carlton Hendricks. Mike thinks he has closed the case. But a year later, Hendricks is declared not guilty by reason of insanity and he is put in the Meistrich Psychiatric Institute, only to be released three years later. Doctors at the Meistrich Institute state that Hendricks, who has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic with a severe chemical imbalance, is okay as long as he is on his medication. So, Hendricks moves back to his old neighborhood. While taking his medicine, Hendricks is timid and apologetic about what he did, but the memories of what Hendricks did are still fresh in the minds of Helverton's residents. Many people are not happy about Hendricks's release, especially an activist group led by Jackson Roth (Robert Englund) and Catherine "Sunny" Macintosh. One night, while Roth's teenage daughter, Kelly, is out, a fearful Roth jumps to the conclusion that Hendricks has taken her. Roth calls Catherine and several others and they kidnap Hendricks. During this, Hendricks accidentally drops his medicine bottle, and it is run over by a car. Roth and the group then beat Hendricks and hang him from a tree. As Roth, Catherine, and the others leave, it starts raining and the rope, which turns out to be weak, snaps, saving Hendricks's life. However, the near-death experience, something he had mentioned hoping to attain earlier on in the film, reverts him to being Captain Howdy, this time with revenge on his mind. After recovering, Hendricks kills Roth's wife Madeline in front of Roth before knocking him unconscious and then kidnapping him. Hendricks also kidnaps Catherine before contacting Mike at the police station. After hanging up with Mike, Hendricks brutally tortures Roth and Catherine. The next day, Toni calls Mike and tells him that Genevieve is missing. When Mike gets home with Steve, Hendricks's face is on Toni's computer screen. Hendricks has Genevieve and her mouth is stitched shut again. Hendricks tortures Genevieve while Mike and Toni watch the screen. After Hendricks disconnects, Genevieve, Roth, Catherine and a few other victims are soon found alive, but brutally tortured, by officers responding to a call. That night, after leaving the torture scene, Mike tracks Hendricks back to the club Xibalba. After a long struggle, Hendricks stands ready to kill Mike with a large meat hook chained to the ceiling. However, Mike sinks the hook into Hendricks's back, slams Hendricks into a wall, and then uses the hook to lift Hendricks off the floor. After Hendricks taunts Mike, Mike pours a flammable liquid on Hendricks, and presumably kills Hendricks by setting him on fire. ===== Peter Piper, a photographer, visits a laboratory where a spider plant with teeth has been created. Piper attempts to take a picture, but is bitten on the bottom by a plant coming down from the ceiling. Piper leaves the lab via a back door, sits in a dark alley, sweating, and begins to turn green. His molecular structure is shown to be changing with the text "This means something very nasty is happening". When he wakes up, he finds that when he stretches, plants shoot from his arms. He is also able to climb walls. Suddenly, a sweeper, who is also crawling on the wall and cleaning the walls, appears there. Piper is then shown sitting on a roof, when he sees that Jane-Mary is getting mugged. He goes to save her, but he realizes that he needs a costume. He appears in the alley in a Red Indian costume, a fairy costume and eventually in his green Spider-Plant suit. He saves Jane-Mary, who falls in love with him. He suggests to her that he might be Peter Piper, only to be told that Piper is a loser and a creep. Later Spider-Plant man is seen saving the day around London including helping to retrieve Demo song tapes for the singer and reality TV star Peter Andre. Spider-Plant Man is then shown landing in an alley late at night where another man says he is his enemy. Peter guesses that he is the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Itchy Skull, or The Human Man, but it appears to be Batman. The Caped Crusader tells him that he is really angry that no one cares about him anymore and that everyone only wants spiders nowadays. He no longer has the Batmobile, owning only a dilapidated "Bat-Clio". Even Robin has abandoned him. "Apparently he was only in it for the money." Piper tries to help Batman but tells him he has much more important things to do. Suddenly Batman tells Piper that he has kidnapped Jane-Mary and demands him to give up being a Super Hero or she will die but luckily Piper quickly guesses that Batman has trapped her on top of the Tower Bridge and rushes off to save her. Spider-Plant Man swings through London, wondering where Tower Bridge is, while Batman, who couldn't get his Bat-Clio to start, takes the Underground to Tower Bridge. Jane Mary is bound to a flag on Tower Bridge by Batman. Spider-Plant Man and Batman begin to fight, where they are mistaken by a reporter for Fathers 4 Justice activists. Peter fires a spider plant at him, followed by Batman throwing his Batarang and the battle goes on. Batman's sidekick Robin (played by Tony Robinson) arrives, and makes a deal with Batman for 20% of the profits on Batman products and a Robinmobile and starts attacking Piper. Whilst hanging from Tower Bridge, Spider-Plant Man makes a deal with Robin for 25% on all pajama sales and his own cereal brand with real marshmallows, Robin switches sides and attacks Batman. Batman is punched off the tower and lands on the reporter. He then punches a Fathers 4 Justice supporter and hijacks a little kid's scooter and gets away. Spider-Plant Man and Jane-Mary start to kiss. Robin tells Peter it's time to go and moments later Peter punches him. He then asks Jane-Mary whether she will marry him, and she responds, "Who's asking me, Spider-Plant Man or the man behind the spandex?" He replies, "You choose". Jane-Mary is then shown lying in the sun on a beach, next to Piper who is still in his Spider-Plant suit. Piper then turns to the audience, smiling as then a web shoots out with the words "END" ===== Trust concerns the unusual romance between two young misfits wandering the same Long Island town. When Maria (Shelly), a recent high school dropout, announces her unplanned pregnancy to her family, her father dies of heart failure, her mother immediately evicts her from the household and her boyfriend breaks up with her. Lonely and with nowhere to go, Maria wanders her town in search of a place to stay. Along the way, she meets Matthew (Donovan), a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust. ===== The player characters go on a quest to find the fabled Soul Gem, a legendary artifact of great power. They must gather the four parts of a key granting them entrance to the Ghost Tower. Inverness was the fortress of the great wizard Galap-Dreidel, whose magic raised a great stone tower within a formidable keep. The tower was built to house Galap-Dreidel’s most prized possession, an eldritch jewel called the Soul Gem, which could steal life from any creature. The monsters and magic of the tower kept the gem safe for many years, but when Galap-Dreidel vanished, Inverness was seized and its tower was destroyed. No sign of the Soul Gem was ever found, but local folk talk of seeing a ghostly vision of the tower of Inverness on fog-shrouded nights. Seeking to discover where the Soul Gem was hidden, the characters descend beneath the ruined tower, discovering four pieces of magical metal that bond together to form a key. The key opens the doors to the central chamber beneath the tower, which holds a time portal that takes the characters back to the age when the tower of Inverness was still standing. Each level of the tower is a deadly gauntlet meant to destroy intruders. Passing through levels of air, earth, fire, and water (the latter featuring reversed gravity) eventually leads he characters to the top of the tower. The Soul Gem is there, but its magic tries to steal the souls of the characters even as they try to claim it. ===== White Plume Mountain is set in the World of Greyhawk, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. The module is a dungeon crawl, precipitated by the theft of three magical, sentient weapons: a trident named Wave, a war hammer named Whelm, and a sword named Blackrazor (all three were introduced in this adventure). The weapons' former owners each received a copy of a taunting poem, instructing them that the weapons are located in White Plume Mountain. The poem is signed by the wizard Keraptis, who thirteen hundred years ago descended into the volcanic mountain with a company of gnomes and disappeared. The player characters' goal is to follow the same path and retrieve the weapons from Keraptis' lair. The adventure is divided into 27 encounters across a 16-page module. Encounters are varied and each presents its own challenges. Encounter seven necessitates characters jumping from platform to platform above a sea of hot mud whilst evading erupting geysers; this in turn leads to encounter eight and a room of permanent darkness where a vampire guards Whelm. Encounter 17 occurs in a giant but fragile bubble located above a boiling lake, with the players needing to defeat a giant crab and retrieve Wave without damaging the bubble. Encounter 26 involves negotiating a magical ziggurat populated by various monsters (including sea lions, giant crayfish, giant scorpions, and manticores) before encounter 28, a battle against an ogre mage who possesses Blackrazor. A final challenge on departing is an encounter with two to four efreet if the characters have succeeded in taking two or three of the magical weapons. ===== On the day before Valentine's Day, Bree enjoys a quiet dinner in an Italian restaurant. After the meal, she listens to the opera music provided and gets emotional when the waiter asks her if everything is all right. Bree continues to order wine in the hopes of becoming very drunk. When she is ready to leave, the waiter offers to call her a cab since she should not drive in the state she is. When she arrives home, Bree collapses on the front lawn and falls asleep only to be discovered by Mrs. McCluskey the following morning. Andrew then wakes his mother up by turning on the sprinkler system. Bree wakes up instantly and has a hangover from the evening before. Meanwhile, Susan is planning her secret wedding to Karl. During breakfast, Karl warns her and Julie that they cannot tell anyone that they are getting married since they are committing insurance fraud. When Karl asks where Susan's wedding ring is, Susan tells him that she threw it out of her car on a dirt road not knowing that it was a family heirloom. Karl then makes Susan go searching through Route 7 until they find the ring. Later, Edie finds a pre-nup and Susan's ring in Karl's briefcase. Edie takes this as proof that Karl is going to propose that evening. At the restaurant, Edie thinks Karl ordering souffle is proof of the proposal since he could put the ring in the cake. Edie then spots Susan and Dr. Ron eating at another table and drags Susan into the restroom with her. She tells Susan that she may be getting engaged and Susan tries to talk her down which causes Edie to leave the restroom still hopeful about what she thinks will happen. As the souffles arrive, Edie sticks her hand in it and Karl asks her what she is doing. Edie finds no ring in the cake and leaves the restaurant in an angry mood. That evening, Susan meets Karl on the street where she starts to reconsider their deal since she doesn't want anyone to get hurt. Karl assures her that everything will be fine but that he still plans to marry Edie. The following day, Karl and Susan are married (for the second time) at the courthouse. As this is going on, Mike Delfino visits Paul Young and warns Paul and Zach to leave town since Detective Sullivan will be arriving shortly to get Zach. Paul warns Mike that if they leave it is permanent and that he will never see his boy again. Zach listens happily to this after discovering that Mike is his biological father. Gabrielle arrives home to find her mother Lucia and Carlos standing next to each other in her bedroom. While Lucia gets settled, Gabrielle asks her mother about her sudden visit. Lucia then explains to Gabrielle that her boyfriend left her and she needed a place to stay. When Gabrielle finds out that she may not be able to get pregnant, Lucia happily agrees to be their surrogate. Immediately, Gabrielle feels very uncomfortable with the idea, while Carlos believes it is a wonderful suggestion. Later, Gabrielle tells her mother she would be happy to have her as the surrogate and the two go out for a lunch at a nearby hotel. As they approach the hotel, Gabrielle kicks Lucia out of the car, telling her to get a room and to leave her alone and drives off. At home, Carlos tells Gabrielle that it wasn't a smart idea to do that. Gabrielle insists that because there has been awkwardness since Gabrielle ran away from home some 15 years ago that her mother would not understand. Carlos then tries to smooth things over by going to Lucia's hotel room to tell her that she can still be the surrogate but that she needs to understand why Gabrielle left. Lucia says that she knows Gabrielle left because she purposely slept with Alejandro, her second husband to get her jealous and that she has forgiven her. Carlos does not believe this and hands Lucia her luggage. Carlos then goes home and suggests to Gabrielle that they adopt. Seeing as she has sabotaged her visit with her daughter, Lucia decides to phone her Aunt Inez who is recovering from an illness and "is willing to stay for however long it takes". As Bree tries to get her bearings, Lynette arrives asking her to babysit the twins and Penny. Bree hesitantly accepts and soon begins drinking again when the twins become out of control. She falls asleep which causes the twins to pack up Penny and go searching for their parents' office. When she wakes up, Bree begins looking frantically for the children but they have already left. Lynette then receives a phone call from a beauty shop owner claiming she has their children there. Lynette and Tom rush over where the beauty shop owner scolds them for abandoning their children with a bad babysitter. Lynette thanks the woman for finding her kids and leaves. When they arrive home, Lynette asks Bree what happened and Bree lies saying the children left without her knowing. The twins say she is lying which causes Lynette to punish them. Later, Mrs. McCluskey tells Lynette she saw Bree drunk and that if she was the babysitter she would never be drunk while watching someone else's children. Lynette refuses to believe this but goes to talk to Bree about it, just in case. Bree tries to brush off the accusations, once again denying that she was drunk. However, Lynette hears a clinking sound when Bree puts down her garbage bags. Lynette asks Bree if she has a drinking problem, which Bree denies. After Bree leaves, Lynette opens Bree's garbage bags, looking for bottles of alcohol. When Bree comes out, she finds a neatly stacked line of 12 wine bottles on her porch. A scrolled message lies on top of one of the bottles, reading: "Do you still think you don't have a problem?" Bree and Lynette stare at each other, neither one of them saying a word. ===== The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is set in the World of Greyhawk. This adventure starts with an incident from The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. (preview) The player characters (PCs) follow a band of marauding norkers from the caverns, discovering the temple along the way. They must search through the dangerous mountain passes to find the norker lair inside the temple. The adventurers are drawn into the story by a gnomish community and travel to the temple. After battling their way in, the PCs explore the temple chambers, which contain mundane creatures and new monsters from the Fiend Folio supplement. During their exploration, the characters may reach chambers of the temple in which religious rituals were performed, and risk insanity and death as they encounter remnants of worshipers of the imprisoned god Tharizdun. To progress further, the characters must enact portions of the rituals of worship of Tharizdun, traveling into an underground sub-temple, and magically opening an inner sanctum called the Black Cyst. Having advanced this far, the characters are likely to be driven insane, killed outright, or permanently trapped within the underground temple. ===== In this scenario, the player characters travel to a prehistoric island where they encounter a gargantuan ape. The module includes two new spells, and uses rules from Unearthed Arcana. According to From the Ashes, this adventure was set in a demiplane accessed via Castle Tenser. ===== Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure is a three-level dungeon scenario for high- level characters, and features appearances of characters from Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign. The module begins when the players are informed that a pair of impassable doors has been discovered under the abandoned Maure Castle. Suspecting that these iron doors lead to fantastic treasures, many have tried to gain access, and all have failed. The adventure is broken up into physical "levels", the first is entered through the doors. Once the players find a means of bypassing the doors, they are presented with a fairly open dungeon with several rooms placed throughout. Each area includes its own challenge, ranging from images that come to life and attack to pools of dangerous fish to a climactic encounter with an iron golem. On the second level, the party encounters the first modern occupant, Hubehn and his guards, and eventually his master, Eli Tomorast. Eli is an insane mage, bent on the collection of arcane knowledge at all costs. He is in these dungeons to study them and the treasures which they contain. The final level is populated by worshipers of a demon named Kerzit, which Tomorast had set up as a false god. These worshipers include a band of gnolls, a group of mages (one of whom is surprisingly trigger-happy) and a pair of torturers. The climax of the module is an encounter with the demon Kerzit himself. ===== This is a suspenseful novel set in Brooklyn around the time of the end of World War I. It continues the story of Roger Mifflin, the book seller in Parnassus on Wheels. It also details an adventure of Miss Titania Chapman and a young advertising man named Aubrey Gilbert. ===== The narrative begins with a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, stopping by a bookstore named "The Haunted Bookshop" in the hopes of finding a new client. Gilbert meets the proprietor, Roger Mifflin. Gilbert does not succeed in selling advertising copy, but is intrigued by Mifflin and his conviction concerning the value books and booksellers have to the world. Additionally, Gilbert is intrigued by the fact that his firm's biggest client, Mr. Chapman, is a friend of Mifflin and has asked Mifflin to undertake the education of his daughter, Titania Chapman, by hiring her as an assistant. Gilbert returns to the book store, meets Titania, and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, mysterious things start to happen: a copy of Thomas Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell disappears and reappears, Gilbert is attacked as he travels home, a pharmacist neighbor of Mifflin is observed skulking in the alley behind the bookstore at night speaking to someone in German, and an assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel has posted an ad in the New York Times promising a reward for a lost copy of Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Gilbert starts to sense that something nefarious is afoot. He suspects that the gregarious Mifflin is involved in a plot to kidnap Titania, and he assigns himself the job of protecting her. Meanwhile, Mifflin begins to train Titania in the booksellers' trade. His focus is so centered on books and their content that he fails to note the unusual things that are occurring. Gilbert takes a room across from the bookstore in order to keep eye on things, and believes his suspicions confirmed when he sees the pharmacist let himself into the bookshop with his own key late at night. Gilbert breaks into the bookshop in an effort to find evidence to prove his suspicions, but only manages to frighten and anger Titania. Gilbert learns that Mifflin is to take a day trip to Philadelphia, and follows him in the belief that the trip is a part of the "kidnapping" plot. In Philadelphia Gilbert confronts Mifflin with his suspicions, telling him of all the things that have occurred. The two realize that a third party had lured Mifflin away from the shop. They call the bookshop and learn that the pharmacist has left a suitcase of books there for someone else to pick up. Mifflin tells Titania to hold on to the case until he returns. Mifflin and Gilbert return to the bookshop and find it locked. Inside, the pharmacist and an associate of his have tied up Mrs. Mifflin and are menacing Titania with a gun. A fight ensues, part of the bookstore is destroyed by a bomb, and the pharmacist escapes. The only casualties of the bomb are the pharmacist's partner and Mifflin's dog, Bock. Mifflin even affects to be pleased as the blast knocked down books he'd forgotten he had. In the final chapter of the book Gilbert and Mifflin learn what the true plot was: The pharmacist was a German spy who had been using the bookshop as a drop-off point. He was a specialist in making bombs, and had hidden a bomb in one of President Woodrow Wilson's favorite books. The pharmacist's co-conspirator was the assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel. He was to be part of the crew on the ship Wilson was to travel on to peace talks in Europe, and was to plant the bomb in Wilson's cabin in an assassination plot. The pharmacist was captured by police, and killed himself. ===== Mr. Green awakes to find that his girlfriend, Lara Morgan, has left their apartment. He battles a hangover to find a cryptic note left by her, dispensing little but a warning against entering certain "significant" doors and nonsensical instructions for leaving them if passed through. Green immediately leaves to search for the woman, whom he has known for only a few days but has already grown to love. His quest takes him through one such door to an alternate world, made apparent to Green by conspicuous elements such as its unusual currency. An accident lands Green in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a radical from his world using the name William North (a patient), a boxer named Joe Joeseph and his manager Eddie Walsh (also a patient). North organizes an escape from the Hospital, accompanied by Green and exploited by Walsh, who makes his own escape. The two take refuge at the Grand Hotel in the outskirts of the city, while Green begins to realize what a dangerous man he has been indebted to. North brings him to a play accompanied by members of his revolutionary group which is raided by police. Green and North narrowly escape capture and death, though they lose each other. Green returns to his hotel paranoid of capture by the police. He finds that the doctor he consults for minor burns suffered during the raid and subsequent fire at the theater, the waitress at the hotel restaurant, and even the stylist at the hair salon beneath it all seem to work for the police organization that is tracking him. He leaves the hotel hoping to learn more, but is locked out upon his return and must accept a car ride from the waitress, Fanny. They go to an Italian restaurant which Green recognizes as being from his world. He and Fanny discuss the little they know about North's gang, the two worlds, and Lara. The alternate world is nearly identical to his, the one of contemporary America, save for a few societal and physical disparities. The people from "There" (as Green comes to think of it) are physically identical to those from Here, but for that the men naturally die from sex. Technology seems to be generally inferior There, although some anomalies such as seemingly magical and remarkably articulate robotic dolls exist, perhaps invented to suit matriarchal needs. Roads and buildings seem to be in similar places, though occupied by different establishments and patrons. Time passes much more quickly Here, although they both seem to be in the same general era. There is no indication when passing between the worlds, though the doors between them seem to be accessible only to certain people and those who they know. Objects can accompany people between the worlds, though they may eventually filter themselves back to the world of their origin. When they leave the restaurant, Green returns to his own world through its door, but Fanny inadvertently follows Lara's aforementioned instructions and remains in her own. Green finds that, though he had only been in the alternate world for perhaps four days, he has been missing from his own for over a month. He is told that he must receive a medical checkup before he can return to work, and in doing so it is revealed that he has now made eight visits to a psychiatrist for a "breakdown". He is hospitalized, but released after admitting that the alternate world was most likely a dream. Over the next few years he returns to his previous life as a salesman, forgetting about Lara and There. He is briefly returned to the other world while shopping and is reminded of its existence. Shortly after returning to his world he is contacted by Lara. They meet at the Italian restaurant and, after some coaxing, she reveals more to him about herself and the other world. Throughout the story Green had been exposed to hints that his girlfriend exists in both worlds. She had appeared as a doll he found in the other world, on his television at the first hospital, stepdaughter of Klamm (presidential cabinet member searching for North), as a famous actress and model There, and was also referred to There as 'the goddess'. Now she had taken the alias of receptionist Lora Masterman at his psychiatrist's office. She admits to being an immortal being from the other world, occasionally joining his world to enjoy relationships with men she could sleep with without killing, such as Green, Klamm, and a 19th-century sea captain. Lara flees Green through the restaurant's door and they reenter the alternate world. They reunite at a boxing match where Joe is attempting to take the heavyweight title and North is using as a political publicity stunt. North interrupts the fight with gunshots, perhaps attempting to kill Green, but is subdued by Joe after a brief brawl. Green is taken to a hospital for injuries sustained and reunites with Fanny. She is instructed to keep watch of him, but he escapes her vise. The novel ends with Green exiting the city in a cab, still in the alternate world, eager to start a new life devoid of the burdens of his old. ===== Belu (Baby Naaz) and Bhola (Ratan Kumar) are left in the care of their wicked aunt Kamla, a prostitute, (Chand Burque) after their mother dies. She forces them to beg on the streets and takes the whole collection at night, often by beating them brutally. A bootlegger and neighbour of Kamla, named John uncle (David Abraham) teach them self-respect and to work for a living instead of begging. Both kids start saving from their begging money by giving lesser paise to Kamla, so they can buy a shoe-polish kit and begin shining shoes. The dual manages to buy a shoe-polish kit and starts the business. But when Kamla discovers this, she beats them and kicks them out of the house. Meanwhile, John discovers that Belu wants a new frock and Bhola needs a new shirt as their current rags are torn and worn out. Overwhelmed by the emotions to help Belu and Bhola, John Chacha decided to sell unauthorized liquor and gets arrested by the police. The children, on the other hand, are left to fend for themselves. When it rains, and people stop having their shoes polished, the children are in danger of starving. Bhola wishes never to beg again and rejects a coin tossed to him on a rainy night. When Belu takes it out of hunger, Bhola slaps her, and she drops it. When the police come, intent on taking the children, Belu escapes onto a train, but Bhola is arrested. On board the train, Belu is adopted by a wealthy family, and she is sad for her brother. Bhola searches for Belu after getting out of custody but cannot find her. After running away from an orphanage, he is unable to find work and extremely hungry and resorts to begging. He encounters Belu while begging at the railway station where Belu and her adopted family are boarding a train for vacation. Humiliated, Bhola runs away, but his sister pursues him. John Chacha has also come to the station to say goodbye and joins the chase, but he falls and is injured. Bhola stops running, and Belu and Bhola are reunited. The wealthy family adopts Bhola also, and they live happily ever after. ===== In fact, it retains virtually all of the original text of the story. Maslennikov does everything possible to create a “realistic” version of the tale, using costumes which accurately reflect the period, filming exclusively in Sankt-Petersburg, and even limiting his soundtrack to period music (compositions of Dmitry Bortniansky). Even the epigraphs at the beginning of each brief chapter are printed on the screen. In order to hold to Pushkin's text, a narrator (played by Alla Demidova) appears in the streets and salons of St. Petersburg, convincingly telling the story in Pushkin's words. She begins narrating as she opens the door to the dining room of Narumov (played by Konstantin Grigoriev), where several aristocratic guards officers have been playing cards all night. Their game is observed by Hermann/Germann (played by Viktor Proskurin), an officer of the corps of engineers (and thus not of the high aristocratic class of the other officers). He seems fascinated by the card game, and is very attentive to the conversations of the guards officers. Germann is an ethnic German, and seems to fit the Russian stereotype of a thrifty German: he does not gamble because he is not willing to risk losing “that which is necessary in order to gain that which is superfluous.” As the night is coming to an end, one of the officers, Count Pavel (“Paul”) Tomsky (played by Vitaly Solomin) tells a story from the youth of his now aged grandmother, who once gained a huge gambling debt in France, and supposedly approached the mysterious Count Saint-Germain for help. Tomsky goes on to state that the Count gave her a winning card combination, and she won back enough to pay off her gambling debt. Tomsky further states that his grandmother, now in her eighties, refuses to share the secret with anyone in his family. Tomsky gets a bit carried away with his story, saying that Cardinal Richelieu had been madly in love with his grandmother. The famous Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) was before his grandmother's time, so we can only assume he was referring to the less celebrated Louis-François-Armand du Pless Richelieu (1696-1788), a French marshal and grand-nephew to the renowned Cardinal and statesman. Also, the mention of Count Saint Germain (1710-1784), a mysterious character associated with the occult, makes the story seem a bit fantastic, and the other officers may have taken note of this, but Germann takes the story quite literally. The elderly countess Anna Fedotovna (played by Elena Gogoleva) is attended by a young companion (a “ward,” probably an impoverished distant relative) called Lizaveta Ivanovna (played by Irina Dymchenko), and Germann begins to seek a way to initiate a romance with Lizaveta in order to gain access to the elderly countess and her secret. After negligently causing the death of the countess, Germann is visited by her ghost, who tells him the secret of the 3 cards. Germann is now confidant that he can use the secret to win a fortune. He uses his contacts among the guards officers to gain entrance to the elite card game of Chekalinsky (played by Innokenty Smoktonovsky), where he risks his modest fortune in an attempt to gain fantastic wealth. The German stereotype has been turned inside out - Germann has gone from being sober, hard-working and thrifty to being obsessed with gaining a quick and easy fortune, and this proves to be his undoing. ===== The story of Saladin (Ahmed Mazhar) portrays the title character, ruler of the kingdoms surrounding Jerusalem, during the events of the Third Crusade. The film starts with Jerusalem, which is under the authority of the Christians of Europe, having its Muslim pilgrims slaughtered by the Christians in the holy lands. Saladin upon hearing this news seeks the reclamation of the holy lands in a short, almost impossible campaign. He succeeds in taking back Jerusalem, which leads the powers of Europe to organize the Third Crusade with the combined forces of the French king (Omar El-Hariri) and German emperor under the leadership of Richard the Lionheart of England. Saladin succeeds in preventing the recapture of Jerusalem, and in the end negotiations between himself and Richard (whom Saladin admires as the only honorable infidel leader) leave the Holy Land in Muslim hands. The movie also has a subplot involving the Christian Issa (Salah Zulfikar), and the Crusader Louisa (Nadia Lutfi). At the beginning, both first meet when Issa accidentally comes upon her when she's taking a bath, and after he turns away waiting for her to get dressed before he takes her prisoner due to being a Crusader, she shoots an arrow at him and escapes. Eventually, after Issa in turns spares her life twice, Louisa chooses to give up her arms as a Crusader and becomes a nurse. This leads to the two falling in love and marrying each other, with Louisa choosing to remain in Jerusalem with him. ===== Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old- fashioned orphanage. The children were completely dependent on charity and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual first name was selected by the matron from a gravestone (she hates it and uses "Judy" instead), while her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 17, she finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories at the institution where she was brought up. One day, after the asylum's trustees have made their monthly visit, Judy is informed by the asylum's dour matron that one of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to her former teachers and thinks she has potential to become an excellent writer. He will pay her tuition and give her a generous monthly allowance. Judy must write him a monthly letter because he believes that letter-writing is important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his identity; she must address the letters to Mr. John Smith, and he never will reply. Judy catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy-Long-Legs. She attends a "girls college" on the East Coast. She illustrates her letters with childlike line drawings, also created by Jean Webster. The book chronicles Judy's educational, personal, and social growth. One of the first things she does at college is to change her name to Judy. She designs a rigorous reading program for herself and struggles to gain the basic cultural knowledge to which she, growing up in the bleak environment of the orphanage, never was exposed. During her stay, she befriends Sallie McBride (the most entertaining person in the world) and Julia Rutledge Pendleton (the least so) and sups with them and Leonora Fenton. At the end of the book, the identity of Daddy-Long-Legs is revealed as Jervis Pendleton, whom she had met and fallen in love with while she was still unaware that he was Daddy-Long-Legs. ===== Ukridge is introduced to the reader as a childhood friend of the narrator, later revealed to be James "Corky" Corcoran, who having been expelled from school for sneaking out of the school grounds to attend a fair has travelled the world undertaking all manner of enterprises. He is now, much to Corky's surprise, living with his wealthy aunt near Wimbledon Common and dressing smartly. All this soon ends, however, when Ukridge appears in Corky's London apartment, dressed after the old manner and accompanied by half-a-dozen Pekingese dogs. He announces to Corky that he plans to run a school for dogs, training them up as performers for the music hall, and promptly departs for Sheep's Cray in Kent. Some weeks later, Corky receives an urgent telegram from Ukridge, and travels to Kent. There he finds Ukridge in his usual state of financial embarrassment and returns to London to ask mutual friend George Tupper for the necessary funds. Tupper coughs up happily and forms a plan to approach Ukridge's Aunt Julia in order to gain capital to fund Ukridge's scheme. Corky returns to Kent, where he finds Ukrdige enraged that his landlord, angered at not being paid, has kidnapped Ukridge's dogs. They visit the landlord, and pay him the money, but he finds the dogs have escaped, and in his contrition at having ruined Ukridge's business, agrees to refund Ukridge's rent and pay his remaining debts to local tradesmen. Ukridge and Corky return to Ukridge's house, where they find the dogs, Ukridge having secretly retrieved them overnight. They are about to decamp when Corky breaks the news about Tupper's plan, at which Ukridge quivers with shock: the dogs were in fact purloined from Aunt Julia. Upon hearing Aunt Julia's voice inside Ukridge's cottage, Corky slips away and leaves Ukridge to face the music alone. ===== Opening on the train to Kyoto, the narrative, in characteristic Kawabata fashion, subtly brings up issues of tradition and modernity as it explores writer Oki Toshio's reunion with a young lover from his past, Otoko Ueno, who is now a famous artist and recluse. Ueno is now living with her protégée and a jealous lover, Keiko Sakami, and the unfolding relationships between Oki, Otoko, and Keiko form the plot of the novel. Keiko states several times that she will avenge Otoko for Oki's abandonment, and the story coalesces into a climactic ending. ===== The story is told in flashback as Ukridge and his friend James Corcoran stand outside the wedding of one Teddy Weeks, a successful movie star. The tale begins some years earlier, when Weeks was a struggling actor who believed all he needed to get his breakthrough role was a decent wardrobe. Ukridge, Corcoran, Weeks and others are dining at their regular haunt when one of their number reveals he has acquired accident insurance as a bonus for subscribing to a magazine, and has subsequently received five pounds after a minor cycling accident. Ukridge is inspired by this, and persuades his comrades to form a syndicate, subscribing to all magazines offering this free insurance, arranging an "accident" and splitting the insurance monies. Lots are drawn, and Weeks is selected as the one to be insured and to suffer the accident. Time passes and Weeks shows no sign of taking any damage. Despite much cajoling, pointing out of appropriate taxi cabs and even the placing of dangerous dogs in his rooms, he remains unhurt. Finally, he agrees that he will do the honourable thing, on condition that he is first primed with a fine dinner and champagne. The syndicate scrape together the necessary funds, and watch glumly as Weeks dines and guzzles the pricey drink, abusing his friends roundly as he grows inebriated. After the feast, he laughs at his friends, tells them he had no intention of having his accident despite their generosity, and promptly slips in front of a passing truck. Visiting Weeks in hospital, he claims to have no memory of events, stymieing any attempt to retrieve the funds. Instead he spends the cash on fine clothes, and kick-starts his career in the movies. Returning to the present, Ukridge bribes a passing vagrant (with a shilling borrowed from Corky) to throw a tomato at Weeks as he leaves the church to face the waiting throng of photographers; the good man's aim is true, and justice is restored. ===== J. G. Anderson, owner of the Hotel Washington in Bessemer, Ohio and the Lakeside Inn near Skeewassett, Maine, is staying at the Lakeside Inn. He is angered after a hotel guest, the famous but obnoxious actor Mervyn Potter, and Anderson's desk clerk, amiable and impressionable Cyril "Barmy" Fotheringay-Phipps, wake him at 3 a.m. to give him a frog. Anderson intends to fire Barmy, but instead decides to sell the Hotel Washington to Barmy after Potter mentions that Barmy has inherited a fortune. It is also mentioned that, before leaving London two years prior, Barmy saw a fortune teller in Wimbledon named Gypsy Sybil who predicted that Barmy would take a long journey, meet a fair girl, have some trouble with a dark man, and acquire a lot of money. Barmy, who has taken the long journey and got the money, now looks forward to meeting the fair girl, and is not worried about the dark man. Potter tells Barmy that he should not buy the hotel but instead invest in an upcoming Lehmac Productions play that Potter is starring in. Anderson offers to sell Barmy the hotel for a hundred thousand dollars, but Barmy only has about twenty thousand. Anderson fires Barmy and Barmy goes to New York to invest in the play. There, Barmy sees a fair girl, Eileen "Dinty" Moore, looking longingly through a shop window at a fancy hat, and instantly falls in love with her. He tosses his cigar away, only for it to burn the old hat she is currently wearing. He buys the fancy hat for her to replace it. Dinty thanks Barmy before leaving. Barmy fears he will never see her again. Barmy spends the evening in town with Potter, though Potter is drunk and domineering. He takes Barmy to see his fiancée Hermione (or Heloise) Brimble at her home in King's Point, Long Island, and makes Barmy break into the house. The Brimbles' butler hears him and fires off a revolver, causing Barmy to hide in a tree. Hermione comes upon the scene and sees Potter drunk. She declares that their engagement will be over if he ever drinks alcohol again. At the office of Lehmac Productions, business partners Joe Lehman and Jack McClure desperately need an investor (or "angel") and deceive Barmy about their play's chance of success. The play, titled Sacrifice, has a somewhat incoherent plot, but is essentially about a man who chooses to take the blame for a crime committed by the brother of the woman he loves. Barmy agrees to invest ten thousand dollars when he sees that Dinty is Lehman's secretary. Barmy gets carried away and kisses her; she slaps him and he apologizes. He explains that he was going to ask her to marry him and invested half of his money in the play to be near her, which amazes Dinty. Just before the play opens in the try-out town of Syracuse, Potter gets drunk and leaves the troupe. He is distraught because his fiancée found out he had tried to drink in secret and ended their engagement. His understudy takes his place. The show goes badly, and after the performance, a long disorderly conference ensues in Barmy's hotel room in which the members of the troupe argue about how to improve the play. Barmy tries to speak, but is shouted down by Lehman. Dinty defends Barmy, and Barmy, who starts talking with the same assertive language and slang used by Lehman, swiftly makes a deal to buy out Lehman and McClure with the rest of his inheritance. Dinty confesses that she loves Barmy. Together, they convince the assistant manager of their hotel, Oscar Fritchie, to invest in the play. Mervyn Potter returns, having realized that he is better off without his ex- fiancée. He suggests turning the play into a farcical comedy. The play is now a hit and opens on Broadway. However, a dark lawyer appears with proof that Sacrifice has been plagiarized. He says that the play will be closed unless Barmy agrees to give up most of the profits. Dinty convinces the lawyer to leave for half an hour. While the lawyer is out, Lehman and McClure return, intending to take over the now-successful play again. Barmy sells it to them for a hundred thousand dollars. Barmy cheerfully sets off with Dinty to marry her and buy Anderson's hotel, where Fritchie will be the manager. ===== According to the opening demo: This implies that the game takes place after the events of Robotron: 2084. However, aside from a few oversized G.R.U.N.T. robots in the first stage, none of the Robotron characters make an appearance in Blaster. ===== The film opens with a large bat flying into a medieval castle. The bat circles the room, before suddenly changing into the Devil. Mephistopheles produces a cauldron and an assistant, who helps him conjure a woman from the cauldron. The room is cleared shortly before two cavaliers enter. The devil's assistant pokes their backs before instantaneously transporting to different areas of the room, confusing the pair and causing one to flee. The second stays and has several other tricks played on him, such as furniture being moved around and the sudden appearance of a skeleton. The cavalier is unfazed, using a sword to attack the skeleton, which then turns into a bat, then into Mephistopheles, who conjures four spectres to subdue the man. Recovering from the spectres' attack, the man is visibly dazed and is brought the woman from the cauldron, who impresses him with her beauty. Mephistopheles then turns her into a withered old crone in front of the man's eyes, then again into the four spectres. The second cavalier returns and after a brief show of bravery, flees again, this time by leaping over the balcony's edge. After the spectres disappear, the cavalier is confronted face-to-face by the Devil before reaching for and brandishing a large crucifix, which causes the devil to vanish. ===== Okuyama's face was disfigured in an industrial accident, and his face is completely covered in burns; he wears bandages to cover them. He visits Dr. Hira, a psychiatrist who is able to fashion a "mask" for Okuyama to wear which is indistinguishable from the face on which it is modeled. Hira and Okuyama pay a man 10,000 yen to serve as the model for the mask, and the mask is built and fitted onto Okuyama. Hira cautions Okuyama that the mask may change his behavior and personality so much that he will cease to be the same person that he was. Hira believes that this disassociation with his identity will cause Okuyama to lose his sense of morality if he is not careful. Okuyama tells no one that he has received the mask, and simply lives as a new man, telling his wife that he is traveling on business while he rents an apartment nearby. While continuing to dismiss Hira's fears, he decides to seduce his wife using his new identity. When he obtains this too easily, full of rage, he reveals himself to her, who in turn said she had known from the first moment. Their roles are now swapped, as Okuyama tries to persuade her to give their relation another chance and she leaves disappointed. In the final scenes he is seen attempting to rape a woman on the street, claiming to be nobody when arrested. He is then freed thanks to Hira who, called by the police who found his business card in Okuyama's pocket, claims he is one of his patients, despite Okuyama's protest. In the last scene, Hira, who has just witnessed his nightmare become a reality, sees everyone around him wearing a mask, as a fulfillment of his prophecy. At first he asks Okuyama for the mask back, then lets him keep it as he is a free man, but, as they are parting ways, Okuyama stabs him. Interleaved throughout the film is a separate tale (present in Abe's original novel in the form of a movie the protagonist watches at a cinema and then recounts) of a young woman whose otherwise beautiful face suffered a severe disfigurement on the right cheek, and right side of the neck. She works in a home for World War II veterans and lives with her brother. The imagery of the film, as well as her obsessive worry about the coming of another war, and her asking her brother if he still remembers the sea at Nagasaki (presumably from their childhood there), all suggest that her scars came as a result of the atomic bombing of that city.James Quandt, Video Essay included on the Criterion Collection DVD release of The Face of Another. Like Okuyama, she is embarrassed by her disfigurement. ===== The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is split into four distinct parts, or story arcs, each loosely based on different Oz books originally written by L. Frank Baum. ===== Camane, a Vestal Virgin, is the only one of her order to see visions of the future. Desperate to avoid the carnage she foresees, Camane sneaks out of the temple to warn Julius Caesar, his sister Atia, and nephew Octavius. Ignoring Atia and Octavius's pleas to heed the warning, Caesar returns to the Senate, and is murdered by his conspiring fellow senators, who fear his increasing power and popularity amongst the citizens of Rome. In the process, the conspirators lose the support of Mark Antony, who is appalled at their violent treachery. The assassination is able to happen because Tyrannus, a former gladiator who serves as Caesar's bodyguard, was distracted by the kidnapping of his young son Piso by a group of hired assassins. Tyrannus manages to rescue Piso, but returns to a fatally wounded Caesar; however, Caesar remains alive long enough to tell him that Octavius is his chosen successor and orders Tyrannus to protect him. Tyrannus sends his wife and son away and then leaves Rome with Octavius to protect him from assassination. Outside Rome they begin to seek allies who are willing to overthrow the senate. To Octavius, Mark Antony appears a willing and eager supporter of his cause and the two quickly become close allies. Antony verbally agrees to join Octavius and even signs a document stating that Octavius has the support of his troops should he die; however, Octavius makes the naïve mistake of offering Antony leadership if he himself should perish. It is after this agreement that Antony's true intentions are made known when he attempts to have Octavius killed. Antony almost succeeds, but the weak and poisoned Octavius is saved by a young Marcus Agrippa. Camane, having seen the danger in her visions, arrives and saves Octavius' life by getting the poison out of him. It is then revealed that Camane has fallen in love with Octavius through her visions. Once recovered, Octavius, Agrippa, and a few companions make for Gaul, where Octavius aims to enlist the help of his uncle's former Third Legion. According to the story, the Third Legion was disgraced in battle, and Julius Caesar had one in every ten men killed (decimation). The survivors have remained in the Italian hinterlands ever since, living as bandits, and are collectively known as the ‘Lost Legion’. At first these men want to avenge themselves by killing Octavius, but Octavius manages to win their support with the help of Cicero. Meanwhile, Tyrannus' wife has died and Piso has been adopted by a noble family on the island to which they fled. Thinking Octavius dead and desiring to be able to afford the opportunity to raise his son, Tyrannus joins with Mark Antony as a centurion. As a centurion Tyrannus has the means to educate and raise his son as a nobleman, but finds the soldiers under his command to be suspicious of him and upset at being subordinant to this low-born gladiator. After he saves one of his men from being killed, an act that nearly costs him his own life, Tyrannus earns the respect of his men. Mark Antony, having now allied himself with the Senate, hears of Octavius's survival and moves quickly to intercept him before he can gain too large a following. Antony's army is superior in size to that of Octavius, and it includes the men under command of Tyrannus. In the ensuing battle, Octavius rallies his troops, despite being heavily outnumbered. Nevertheless, they begin to lose ground, and Antony appears to have won. At that moment Tyrannus and his men change sides and turn the tide of battle. As the conflict closes Mark Antony is disarmed, but Octavius shows him mercy and does not kill him. For her assistance, Octavius appoints Camane matriarch of the order of Vesta, and she cries as she realized that she shall never be with him. Octavius appears unmoved. The saddened Camane relates that Tyrannus vanished from the pages of history, having given up a life of renewed glory at Octavius's side to raise Piso and live a normal life. ===== The MySpace Movie explores the basics of life as well as disputed territories located within the Myspace site in a humorous and parodic fashion. Themes of this movie include: *Capturing profile images. *Dating on Myspace. *Excessive chain bulletins. *MySpace's "Top 8" feature. *A humorous portrayal of Tom Anderson, the "creator" of Myspace. ===== In June 1959, Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), a Los Angeles private investigator more interested in generating an income than in devotion to his clients, is spying on the wife of a man named Chester Sinclair to find if she is cheating. On a visit to his own ex-wife Laurie, Simo learns that his son is upset over the recent death of actor George Reeves, who played Superman on television. Reeves was found dead inside his Beverly Hills home with a gunshot wound to the head, which the police ruled as a suicide. Simo learns from a former police colleague that the Reeves suicide has aspects that the cops do not want to touch. Sensing the potential for making a name for himself, Simo begins investigating and notes several apparent conflicts with the official version of Reeves' death. He also bickers with Laurie over his failures as a father, particularly now when his son seems so troubled. Years before, in 1951, Reeves (Ben Affleck), whose acting career has stalled since appearing in Gone with the Wind, catches the eye of a beautiful woman and they end the night in each other's arms. In the morning, a newspaper photo reveals to Reeves that the woman is Toni Mannix, the wife of Eddie Mannix, the general manager of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer. Frightened that an affair with a studio boss's wife will destroy what is left of his career, Reeves is angry that Toni did not tell him. She claims to have an open relationship with Mannix and tells him not to worry. The much wealthier Toni begins to buy Reeves expensive gifts such as a house, a car and jewelry. Reeves lands the starring role in the television series Adventures of Superman, based on the comic book hero. The role makes Reeves famous and gives him a steady income, but he longs for more "serious" work and is uncomfortable with the public's stereotype of him as Superman, resulting in snickers from the audience when he is seen on screen in a sneak preview of the war film From Here to Eternity. After film executives attending the preview heard the snickers, his formerly prominent role in the film was drastically reduced. As the years pass, Reeves becomes bitter at being a kept man and at Toni for not using her clout to help out his career. He barbecues his Superman costume to "celebrate" the program's cancellation in 1958. He also meets a young woman in New York City, actress Leonore Lemmon, and leaves Toni for her. Toni is broken-hearted and furious and seethes at her "mistreatment" by Reeves. Simo initially suspects that Leonore might have accidentally shot Reeves during an argument and imagines how the scenario might have played out. Simo is beaten at his home by thugs, apparently working for Mannix, who are trying to scare him off the case. This, and other evidence, leads Simo to suspect that Mannix was the one who had Reeves murdered. Simo has a vision of how that killing would have occurred. Sinclair murders his wife, having grown impatient waiting for Simo's report. A guilt- plagued Simo gets drunk, then visits his son's school, where his inebriation scares the boy. Simo visits Reeves' manager, Arthur Weissman, who has a home movie that Reeves shot in order to promote some wrestling work. Reeves' sadness and disappointment with his life are evident in the footage. Simo's final imagined variation on Reeves' death concludes with the actor shooting himself. This is the most vivid of the three scenarios, and Simo imagines himself in the upstairs bedroom, watching the suicide. Each of the scenes imagined by Simo begins with Reeves playing a guitar and singing "Green Eyes (Aquellos Ojos Verdes)" in Spanish for his house guests. After each of the three imagined renditions, Reeves says "Good night" to his guests, then retires to his bedroom upstairs, just before the gunshot. Reeves' quest for success and Simo's realization of parallels to his own existence cause the detective to re-evaluate his life. Simo watches another home movie, this one of himself and Laurie and their son in happier days. He goes to Laurie's house wearing a suit and tie, greeting his son hopefully. ===== Misterjaw (voiced by Arte Johnson) was a blue-colored great white shark (who wore a purple vest with white collar, a black bow tie and black top hat) who liked to leap out of the water and shout "HEEGotcha!" or "Gotcha!" at unsuspecting folks who would run off in terror. He spoke with a German accent and was known to mispronounce words, such as "knucklehead" pronounced as "ka-nucklehead". He also had a sidekick, a green-scaled, brown bowler hatted Brooklyn-accented catfish named Catfish (voiced by Arnold Stang) who usually referred to Misterjaw as "Boss" or "Chief"; Misterjaw usually called Catfish either "pal-ly", "fella" or "sonny" when in a good mood, or names like "dumbkoff", "ka-nucklehead" or "macaroni brain" when irritated. At times, Misterjaw would mistakenly address his sidekick as "Dogfish", only to correct himself a split second later by saying "I mean, Catfish." The primary goal of Misterjaw and Catfish was to catch Harry Halibut (voiced by Bob Ogle). In several instances, the duo were pursued by Fearless Freddy the Shark Hunter (voiced by Paul Winchell) in Merry Sharkman, Merry Sharkman and To Catch a Halibut. All entries were directed by Robert McKimson (who died suddenly after production was completed) with co- direction from Sid Marcus and produced by David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng. The music and score for the series were composed by Doug Goodwin. A brief version of the John Williams Jaws theme was used with the variation of the two-note theme. None of the shorts contained any credit information; only the series title, episode title, 1976 copyright and end titles were shown. All episodes include a laugh track. ===== The game takes place on a "steampunk" type of world. The Dark Acolytes, a mysterious organization of cyborgs and robots, is trying to find the five legendary Sacred Flames, and bring chaos to the World in the process. Meis, a womanizing "Spirit Blacksmith" with the ability to make magical weapons, finds himself chosen to find the flames before the Dark Acolytes do. However, to increase the power of his weapons, Meis must have the help of a woman, and must increase his 'intimacy level' with her by going out on dates. Along his journey, he meets a colorful cast of characters, including girls to date and allies to join his party. ===== A new King of Fighters tournament is announced, though the letters of invitation sent out to the fighters are no longer sent by Rugal Bernstein. There are many changes in the tournament's approach. Since the previous year, the tournament's fame has grown immensely, turning it into a major international event. Huge corporations transform the King of Fighters tournament into something widely televised, commercialized, and celebrated, drawing in many crowds from around the world. The tournament is now held by Chizuru Kagura, a descendant of the ancient Yata Clan responsible for sealing the Orochi demon along with the Kusanagi and Yasanaki clans (the clans from Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, respectively). Chizuru uses the tournament in hopes of finding and recruiting Kyo and Iori in order to stop the upcoming Orochi threat, but Kyo and Iori aren't willing to work together on friendly terms. The character roster underwent major changes since the previous game. The Rival Team was disbanded, with only Iori Yagami returning, while Heidern and Takuma Sakazaki retired from the tournament. Takumas spot in the Art of Fighting Team is taken by his daughter Yuri Sakazaki, formerly with the Women Fighters Team. New characters include Kasumi Todoh from Art of Fighting 3, who takes Yuris place in the Women Fighters Team; Leona, who joins the Ikari Team in place of her mentor and adoptive father, Heidern; Mature and Vice, two of Rugal's assistants who join Iori Yagami as members of the new Yagami Team; and the Boss Team, composed of Geese Howard, Wolfgang Krauser, and Mr. Big, all villains from the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series. The new boss character is Goenitz, a servant from Orochi who wants to stop Chizuru's plans of sealing his master. ===== One year after both the conclusion of the World Heroes Battle Fest and the defeat of Zeus, invitations has been sent to the 16 fighters by Dr. Brown, informing them of a new World Heroes tournament that will help finally settle the question of who is the strongest fighter in history. With the 16 fighters preparing themselves in order to finally determine who is the strongest fighter in history, Zeus seeks to gain his revenge against those who had caused his downfall, but little does Zeus and the rest of the fighters know and realize that an old enemy from the past is also back and that he too has his own personal desire for revenge as well. ===== One year has passed since most of South Town was decimated by the now-destroyed Zero Cannon. Another KOF tournament is being held and this time, it's hosted by the NESTS cartel, the group of antagonists behind the events of the previous two games. K′ and Maxima return to put an end to NESTS once and for all. They are now joined by former Ikari Warriors Team member Whip and the assassin Lin formerly from Benimaru's Team, both of whom are seeking the destruction of NESTS as well. NESTS sends their own team to compete in the tournament, composed of NESTS agents Kula Diamond, K9999, Foxy, and Angel. Kyo Kusanagi joins his former teammates of Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon, reuniting the original Japan Team along with Shingo Yabuki, while Iori Yagami joins a team composed of agents Seth, Vanessa, and Ramon. Yuri Sakazaki rejoins the Art of Fighting Team, while King and Mai Shiranui once again lead the Women Fighters Team along with the returning Li Xiangfei and Hinako Shijo. Heidern also makes his KOF return, taking Whip's place in the Ikari Warriors Team, while Kim Kaphwans young student May Lee takes over Jhun Hoon's place in the Korea Justice Team, the latter being unable to compete due to an injury. ===== After an incident at the previous tournament, the commander of the Ikari Warriors Team, Heidern, is determined to investigate the objective of the NESTS cartel and stop it from achieving its ruthless ambition. Ling, a fellow commander and long-time friend of Heidern, tells him that K′ and Maxima were once NESTS operatives and that they may hold the key to locating the whereabouts of the mysterious organization. Using this information, Heidern decides to focus his efforts into using the next KOF tournament to lure both K′ and Maxima out of hiding so that they can be captured and interrogated by him for crucial and critical information about the NESTS cartel. Depending on the player's performance during the tournament, Kula Diamond might appear to eliminate K', but fails from within her mission. Shortly afterwards, Ling and a couple of his associates suddenly attack and betray Heidern near the end of the tournament, the former revealing himself to be a clone of the real Ling who was murdered in the past and being replaced via the machinations of a high- ranking NESTS member named Zero, who seeks to destroy NESTS itself and create a new world order under his own rule. Through the accumulated fighting power he had gathered during the tournament, Zero initiates and utilizes a space- based satellite weapon named the "Zero Cannon", with which he sends a powerful energy blast from it straight towards Earth, destroying most of South Town via the energy blast's explosive impact upon it. After Zero's defeat in combat, he attempts but fails to use the cannon again while Heidern swiftly and forcibly removes the clone Ling's remote control of the cannon while dispatching him in the process. If the player defeats Kula previously, her supporters Diana and Foxy stop Zero while Kula destroys the Zero Cannon herself. Hero Team *K' *Maxima *Vanessa *Ramon Benimaru Team *Benimaru Nikaido *Shingo Yabuki *Seth *Lin Fatal Fury Team *Terry Bogard *Andy Bogard *Joe Higashi *Blue Mary Art of Fighting Team *Ryo Sakazaki *Robert Garcia *Takuma Sakazaki *King Women Fighters Team *Mai Shiranui *Yuri Sakazaki *Kasumi Todoh *Hinako Shijo Ikari Warriors Team *Ralf Jones *Clark Still *Leona *Whip Psycho Soldier Team *Athena Asamiya *Sie Kensou *Chin Gentsai *Bao Korea Justice Team *Kim Kaphwan *Chang Koehan *Choi Bounge *Jhun Hoon Single Entry *Kyo Kusanagi *Iori Yagami *Kula Diamond Mid-Boss *Kula Diamond Final Boss *Zero ===== Pud Pud is trapped in Weird World and needs to escape. He must explore Weird World looking for ten puddings and avoiding the deadly kiss of Mrs Pud Pud. ===== Directed and written by Matt Nix, this short film follows the life of unnervingly happy-go-lucky Citizen 43275-B (played by Michael Naughton), who despite the oppressive totalitarian regime and Thought Police looks ever forward to returning home and telling 'The Big Guy' (played by Dan Kern) on the telescreen about his work-day. In much the same manner as an imaginary friend acts, 'The Big Guy' never responds until he finally becomes fed up with Citizen 43275-B and declares that he does not like being called 'The Big Guy' - but this intervention serves only to worsen Big Brother's predicament, as 43275-B enthusiastically hugs the telescreen and goes on to "amuse" him through a variety of ways: sock puppets, Boggle, hide and seek, one-sided pillow fights, and knock-knock jokes. As this further frustrates him, Big Brother finally announces the true nature of himself and society by telling 43275-B: Big Brother eventually shuts off the telescreen in disgust and frustration. After several minutes, Citizen 43275-B realizes that the telescreen is not coming back on. He then retrieves a hidden cache of a notebook, pen and reading glasses, and begins to write his own guide to revolution. The appearance in the opening scenes of a volume entitled "RE-EDUCATION MANUAL" on 43275-B's bookshelf, references to "re-education lectures", and the fact that he has a diary already set aside, all imply that this is not his first attempt, and suggests his behavior was deliberate. ===== The game revolves around The King of Fighters, an elite fighting tournament. The tournament at the center of the game is sponsored by an unknown patron, whose identity becomes a matter of public interest in the country. The narrative is divided when the player faces a single fighter named Kusanagi, a clone of the returning warrior Kyo Kusanagi. From one path, following Kusanagi's defeat, the player faces a young man named Adelheid who is accompanied by his sister Rose. Once Adelheid is defeated, Rose threatens the winner with locking him in the area. In other alternative road, it is revealed that Kusanagi was created by Chizuru Kagura as an attempt to test the winner. Chizuru and her undead sister Maki challenge the player to a boss fight. Following the Kagura sisters' defeat, a woman named Botan reveals herself as the true mastermind behind the 2003 tournament, having brainwashed Chizuru. Botan's partner, Mukai, becomes the final boss and despite being defeated, claims success for his superior, having weakened the seal of the ancient demon Orochi. ===== Set in the late 1960s, the film is about Shantha, an impoverished Malaysian Tamil girl, and her family. They all live together on a family estate, in an area where higher education for women is almost impossible. Shantha, a girl of many aspirations, wants to leave the estate and further her studies, however the financial hardships that will result make her dreams nearly impossible to achieve. ===== Ukridge, observing the wealth displayed by a prominent boxing manager, resolves to get in on the game himself, and thus make his fortune. By good fortune, an old acquaintance of his from his world-roaming days, an enormous and powerful sailor named Billson, famed for his ability to mop up stevedores by the dozen in bar fights, has landed in England and is looking for shore work, having fallen for a barmaid named Flossie. Ukridge scoops him up, and the two visit James Corcoran prior to heading to the training ground. Arriving at his first fight, Billson (now dubbed "Battling Billson") meets his opponent, and is touched by the man's life story. In the ring, this sentimentality affects his performance, until a few strong blows enrage him; he is, however, hesitant, and is knocked out when distracted. Ukridge hears that the champion, Tod Bingham, is offering substantial prizes to anyone who can go two rounds with him; he puts his man forward. To ensure Billson's fighting instinct is not weakened by the man's reputation for kindness to his mother, Ukridge persuades Ukridge's girl Flossie to write a letter claiming she has been wooed away from him by the other fighter. This entails taking the girl out for dinner, on their friend George Tupper, who is mortified by the girl's plebeian dress and manners. When the day of the prize bout arrives, Corky and Ukridge stand in the crowd, excitedly awaiting Billson's fight. However, the compere announces that the champ has been hit by a truck and will be unable to fight, to the disgust of all. Outside the hall, they encounter a bystander, who describes the "truck" that hit Bingham as an enormous, red-headed man in full rage - if only he'd thought to save his fighting for the ring, says the man, he could have made a tidy sum. Billson would return in several other Ukridge stories. ===== The rich and notorious arms and drug trafficker, as well as a skilled and ruthless fighter, Rugal Bernstein has become bored with the lack of competition, so he decides to host a new King of Fighters tournament. He has his secretary travel to eight destinations around the world to invite fighters to compete in his new tournament. Unlike the previous KOF tournaments depicted in the Fatal Fury series, the new King of Fighters is a team tournament, with eight teams of three, each representing a different nationality. ===== After the defeat of both Dio and Neo Geegus at the end of World Heroes 2, the world was saved from the threatening danger and that the 14 fighters who had participated in the World Heroes tournament had returned to their own respective time periods. However, one year later, the 14 fighters had received invitations to a new fighting tournament known as the World Heroes Battle Fest and that this tournament would take place over the next five days in different parts of the world, being watched by millions of fighting fans. Surprisingly, the 14 fighters learn that Dr. Brown is not the one who is sponsoring the tournament, but rather, a mysterious millionaire who is known simply as Mr. Z to the public. As the 14 fighters prepare themselves for the World Heroes Battle Fest, all of them have no clue or idea that Mr. Z has his own callous ambition for world domination and with the assistance of his two loyal servants, he vows to eliminate anyone who dares to get in his ruthless way. ===== The game is set one year after the events of the first game. Long before humanity existed, death was an unknown, equally distant concept. When death first came to the world, the "Messenger from Afar" was born. With time, the Sealing Rite was held to seal Death behind Hell's Gate. At that time, two worlds, one near and one far, were born, beginning the history of life and death. Half a year has passed since Suzaku's madness, and the underworld is still linked by a great portal. Our world has been called upon. Legends of long ago told of the sealing of the boundary between the two worlds. The Sealing Rite would be necessary to hold back the spirits of that far away world. ===== An ordained meeting of 28 fierce warriors begins, to precede a series of duels to the death. These individuals entrust their fates to their skill and their weapons. For those not up to the task, a cherished end in battle is their only hope. The twenty-eight Samurai characters clash in one epic title. ===== Sharon, a young Los Angeles woman, engages in a swinging, libidinous lifestyle. She comes into contact with a sect that advises her that the Rapture is imminent. In time, she comes to accept this belief herself and becomes a born-again Christian. She then starts living a pious life, eventually marrying and having a daughter, Mary. When her husband Randy is killed in a senseless murder, however, she begins to question the benevolence of God. She believes God has called her to go to the desert to wait for the Rapture, and instead of leaving her daughter safely with friends, she decides Mary must come with her. Foster, a police officer, is concerned for their well-being after they are reduced to stealing food while they wait, but Sharon is insistent that the end is near. Sharon begins to despair after a period of time and, at her daughter's urging, decides to hasten their ascendance to heaven. She kills Mary with a gunshot but is unable to take her own life afterwards, afraid she will be condemned as having killed herself. She confesses to Foster what she had done and is jailed. After an apparition of Mary (accompanied by two angels) in the night, the Rapture occurs. While Sharon sits in her cell early the next morning, a loud trumpet blast is heard all over the world, signaling the start of the Rapture. Later on, Sharon and Foster, after driving out into the desert, are both raptured to a purgatory- like landscape. Foster, who had been an atheist his whole life, accepts God and is allowed entrance to Heaven, but Sharon blames God for Mary's death, even though God did not tell her to bring Mary with her to the desert, and she cannot renounce her anger at what she sees as God's cruelty. Mary pleads with her to accept God back into her heart so she can join her and Randy in Heaven, but Sharon refuses, choosing to remain alone in the purgatory-like landscape for eternity. ===== Dr. John Rollason (Peter Cushing), his wife, Helen (Maureen Connell), and assistant, Peter Fox (Richard Wattis), are guests of the Lama (Arnold Marlé) of the monastery of Rong-buk while on a botanical expedition to the Himalayas. A second expedition, led by Dr. Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) accompanied by trapper Ed Shelley (Robert Brown), photographer Andrew McNee (Michael Brill) and Sherpa guide Kusang (Wolfe Morris), arrives at the monastery in search of the legendary Yeti or Abominable Snowman. Rollason, despite the objections of his wife and the Lama, decides to join Dr. Friend's expedition. Whereas Rollason is motivated by scientific curiosity to learn more about the creature, Dr. Friend seeks fame and fortune and wants to capture a live Yeti and present it to the world's press. The expedition climbs high into the mountains and finds a set of giant footprints in the snow, evidence of the Yeti's existence. As the tensions between Rollason and Dr. Friend rise, McNee is injured by a bear trap laid by Dr. Friend to catch the Yeti. As soon as McNee is well enough to move, he hobbles from his bed and jumps off a cliff. The Sherpa guide, Kusang, sees this and flees downhill at double speed back to the monastery, from where Helen and Fox decide to mount a rescue mission. Meanwhile, Shelley succeeds in shooting and killing a Yeti, an act that enrages the Yeti's fellows. When Shelley is killed in a failed attempt to catch a live Yeti person, Dr. Friend finally decides to cut his losses and leave with the body of the dead Yeti. However, the Yeti close in on the two survivors and Dr. Friend dies spellbound at the sight of a crushing avalanche. Rollason takes refuge in an ice cave and watches in amazement as a number of Yeti arrive and take away the body of their fallen compatriot. He realizes the Yeti are an intelligent species biding their time to claim the Earth for themselves after humanity has destroyed itself. The rescue party brings Rollason back to the monastery where, when questioned by the Lama, he asserts that the expedition found proof that nothing exists regarding the myth of the Yeti; perhaps Rollanson is a willing accomplice to the secret of Yeti existence or still under telepathic hypnosis by the Yetis, or under fear that the Lama might enforce the secret himself if needed. Or perhaps fearing for the fate of future expeditions of they too searched for the Yetis. ===== The tea party that was arranged by Hazel and Lady Prudence in Home Fires takes place in the Morning Room of 165, Eaton Place, and only three officers are there, along with Lady Berkhamstead and Mrs Vowles. Hazel befriends a shy, young airman called Jack Dyson, who like her has risen from the middle class. Lt. Jack Dyson MC and Hazel Bellamy soon start going out with each other. They go boating, see a show and go dancing, where they kiss passionately. The day before he goes back to the Front, Dyson goes to Eaton Place to say goodbye, but Hazel is out at the canteen. He then writes her a note, calling her his "only girl in the World". Meanwhile, Georgina is now a nurse in France, along with her friend Angela Barclay and Jenny. James is now a Major, and when he arrives at Georgina's hospital, they spend the day together. When they separate at the end of the day, they kiss. ===== The absent minded Lord Emsworth finds himself once again embroiled in fierce rivalry in the pig-rearing arena with his neighbour, the obese baronet Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe. With Emsworth's champion Empress of Blandings in line for a third straight victory in the local show and Parsloe bringing in a ringer, suspicions run high. Meanwhile, Blandings has its full complement of romantic entanglements. The ever-resourceful Gally is on hand to help out. ===== The novel deals with teenager Vanya Smurov's attachment to his older, urbane mentor, Larion Stroop, a pederast who initiates him into the world of early Renaissance, Classical and Romantic art. At the close of the first part, Vanya is shocked to learn that the object of his admiration frequents a gay bathhouse. In order to sort out his feelings, Vanya withdraws into the Volga countryside, but his sickening experience with rural women, whose call on him to enjoy his youth turns out to be an awkward attempt at seduction, induces Vanya to accept his Classics teacher's proposal and accompany him in a journey to Italy. In the last part of the novel, Vanya and Stroop, who is also in Italy, are seen enjoying the smiling climate and stunning artworks of Florence and Rome, while Prince Orsini mentors the delicate youth in the art of hedonism. ===== Marnus Erasmus is an eleven-year-old boy who, with his family, lives in Cape Town, South Africa in the early seventies. The Erasmus family, as white Afrikaners, lives in a country where blacks and coloured people form the majority, but where the white Apartheid regime rules and Marnus' father is an important general in the army. Marnus grows up believing that black people are second-class people because he has been indoctrinated by the Apartheid system and his parents' views. On the other hand we, the readers, see that all Marnus' encounters with black people have actually been positive. Marnus' father hates black people because his father, Marnus' grandfather, and his family were driven away and their land was expropriated by the black majority from Tanganyika, today's Tanzania. They fled to South Africa and, together with the descendants of other white settlers, turned it into an ostensibly modern state. Now Marnus' father thinks that the black people are going to destroy everything that they built up and that the white population has to prevent this by keeping the native Africans under control. Marnus' older sister Ilse, an intelligent and talented girl, under the influence of a stay in the Netherlands, but also of an aunt living in London, gradually begins to become more and more sceptic of her father's beliefs. Marnus' best friend is Frikkie, who is also white. They attend the same school and they meet almost every minute in their free time. In the summer holidays Frikkie stays with Marnus in the Erasmuses' house, where Marnus' father often meets generals from other countries. He tells Marnus that he is not allowed to tell anybody else that there is a general from another country (Chile) visiting there, and that he has to call him "Mr. Smith". At dinner Marnus' father and the general speak about the political situation in the world. Mr. Smith says that he is relieved that his army has overthrown Allende's socialist government in Chile. Marnus' father tells the general that South Africa, too, is in a very bad position because the world is "against his country". He claims that the rest of the world is against them and that the white government of South Africa does not discriminate against the black population in any way. Marnus makes an agreement with Frikkie that they will tell each other all their secrets, which is why Marnus ignores his father's warning not to tell anybody that he speaks with Mr. Smith. Marnus tells Frikkie that the whole world is against South Africa and that the coloured people are to blame for that. One night Marnus wakes up and he notices that Frikkie is not in his bed. He can see the spare room through the floor-boards in his room and witnesses Frikkie being raped. He assumes the rapist is Mr. Smith who is supposed to have left that night, and goes downstairs to wake his parents, but finds his father is not in bed. He goes back upstairs and observes that the man who is raping Frikkie does not have a scar on his back like the General (Mr. Smith) and realises that it is his father. The next day he asks Frikkie if something happened during the night but Frikkie does not tell Marnus anything. Frikkie says that he has decided to go home and he does not want to stay longer. Marnus reassures himself that Frikkie will never tell anyone what happened. In specially interspersed italicized sections of the novel set in the late 1980s, Marnus is presented to be a soldier in the South African Border War, in which he is apparently killed. ===== Jonathan "Johnny" Case (Cary Grant), a self-made man who has worked all his life, is about to marry Julia Seton (Doris Nolan), whom he met while on holiday in Lake Placid, New York. He knows very little about his bride-to-be, and is surprised to learn that she is from an extremely wealthy family, the youngest daughter of banker Edward Seton (Henry Kolker). Then Johnny meets Julia's vivacious elder sister, Linda (Katharine Hepburn), to whom he confides his plan to take a long holiday from work to find the meaning of life. He also meets the sisters' younger brother, Ned Jr (Lew Ayres), an alcoholic whose spirit has been broken by subservience to their father. At first Julia's father is stunned when she tells him her plan to marry Johnny, but is appeased after meeting Johnny and looking into his work history. Edward Sr. plans an elaborate New Year's Eve engagement party, even though Julia had promised Linda that she, Linda, could throw a smaller party for Johnny and herself, one that would include only close friends. On New Year's Eve, upset that she did not get to throw the engagement party she was promised, Linda refuses to come downstairs. Julia sends Johnny to get her, and he finds her and Ned in "the playroom", the one truly human room in the enormous and over-built Park Avenue mansion. They are with Johnny's off-beat friends, Professor Nick Potter (Edward Everett Horton) and his wife Susan (Jean Dixon), who had gotten lost in the house and serendipitously ended up there. The group spends a joyful time together, and Julia and Edward Sr. find them just as Johnny and Linda are completing a tumbling trick. Mr. Seton later offers Johnny a job at his bank, and Johnny reveals his plans for a holiday from work. Julia is appalled that her boyfriend had said no to her father. After seeing in the New Year with Linda, and the announcement of the engagement to the assembled guests, Johnny tries to kiss Linda. She kindly rebuffs Johnny, reminding him that she will soon be his sister-in-law. Johnny leaves the mansion in a dark mood without saying goodbye to the family, although wishing the kitchen staff a Happy New Year as he goes. Linda tells her brother that she has fallen in love with Johnny but, because of her love towards her younger sister, she will keep her feelings to herself. Hoping to patch things up between Johnny and Julia, Linda visits the Potters, and finds them packing for a voyage to Europe. They tell her that Johnny is planning to go as well, and that he has asked Julia to go with them. A telegram arrives, informing them that Julia has turned him down. Linda returns home, hoping to change her sister's mind, but they argue instead. Julia is certain that Johnny will give up his plans and return to her. Just then Johnny arrives with a compromise: He will work at the bank for two years, but will quit then if he is unhappy. Mr. Seton accepts this, and Julia and he begin planning the couple's honeymoon in minute detail, mixing together stops at the homes of relatives with business-related matter. They discuss hiring servants to work in Julia and Johnny's new home, which he also just finds out about. This makes Johnny realize that Julia and Edward Sr.'s plan won't work, that marrying Julia on these terms will be more of an encumbrance on his freedom than he can abide. He begs Julia to marry him that evening, and travel to Europe with him. She says no. He leaves to meet the Potters and sail. Linda sees from Julia's reaction that she is relieved by Johnny's decision. Linda makes Julia admit that she does not really love Johnny after all. With the way now clear, and inspired by Johnny, Linda renounces her father's stifling influence and declares her independence. She asks Ned to go with her, and when he can't, she promises to come back for him. Linda rushes off to meet Johnny and the Potters to go on holiday. Meanwhile, the Potters arrive at the ship, saddened that Johnny had decided to take the job at the bank. Johnny surprises them, and explains that he couldn't go through with it, and they cheerfully celebrate. Johnny is doing a back flip in the ship's hallway when Linda arrives. Seeing her while in mid-handspring, Johnny falls on his stomach rather than finishing. As she greets the three of them Johnny takes her hand, pulls her to the floor, and they kiss. ===== The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are camping in the Blackett family's garden at Beckfoot. The Swallow is not available for sailing. James Turner (Captain Flint) has sent word that he is returning from an expedition to South America prospecting for gold, and has sent "Timothy" ahead. As he can be let loose in the study, the Amazons and D's have already deduced that Timothy is an armadillo, and Titty, Dick and Peggy make a box for him, but he does not arrive. Slater Bob, an old slate miner, tells them a story about a lost gold vein in the fells. As Captain Flint has been unsuccessful in his prospecting trip, the children plan to prospect for gold on High Topps instead, as a surprise for Flint. When Mrs. Blackett shows doubts, the children prove they can stay in touch with Beckfoot using the homing pigeons that give the book its name, and earn permission to move camp to Tyson's Farm, up near the fells, to be closer to the prospecting grounds. They are disappointed in that Mrs Tyson does not permit them to cook over a campfire, owing to drought conditions and her fear of fires, meaning that they have to keep in time with her meal-schedules. Titty eventually finds a spring by dowsing, and they move closer to the Topps. They send daily messages home by pigeon. While exploring the ground, they notice a rival prospector whom they call 'Squashy Hat'. After days of prospecting, Roger finds a seam of gold-coloured mineral in an old mining excavation, and crush enough of it in order to produce a golden ingot in a charcoal furnace. Unfortunately, it disappears when the crucible breaks, and Dick, the expedition's professor, has only a small amount to test. Meanwhile, Squashy Hat is consulting the old slate miner, entering through beneath the fell via an old mine working. Seeing him, the younger three children walk inside the fell, resulting in Titty having to follow them in to look for them, with very nearly fatal results. Christina Hardyment writes that venturing into the Old Level was probably the most idiotic thing that any of Ransome's characters ever did. Captain Flint returns home, and finds Dick doing chemical tests on the putative gold in his study. Dick has read that gold dissolves in aqua regia, but Captain Flint explains "Aqua regia will dissolve almost anything. The point about gold is it won't dissolve in anything else…". He shows Dick by other tests that they have found copper pyrites, a rich copper ore. A pigeon named Sappho, whom they had previously labeled as "undependable", suddenly arrives with an urgent message from Titty, FIRE HELP QUICK. Captain Flint rings Colonel Jolys, who musters his volunteer fire fighters, and they all rush to help save the Topps. After the fire on the fells is extinguished, Squashy Hat is revealed to be Captain Flint's friend Timothy, who has been too shy to introduce himself to the children. Captain Flint is pleased to find copper, as he had talked with Timothy above Pernambuco in South America about new ways of prospecting for copper on the fells, and planned to look for copper using new methods not known to the "old miners". Indeed, when the search for gold in South America was unsuccessful, their second plan was to look for the copper in the Topps. Whilst the mining project is briefly mentioned in Secret Water, the project itself recurs in the later book The Picts and the Martyrs, with Slater Bob turning back to mining for metal instead of slate. ===== In the first season, the characters find their way through the dungeon to steal the statuette. (The last of the 12 statuettes of the prophecy). In the second season, they must cross the dangerous Earth of Fangh to meet with their employer, Gontran Teogal, in an inn of the lost city of Boulgourville. In the third season, they must steal the statuette again to save the world of the eternal sleep due to the return of the last god of chaos: Dlul the god of sleep and bore who is being summoned by the former employer of the adventurers. (This season, and the next, are not available in details on the site, but two audio episodes sum up the story of the first and second books). The fourth season begins shortly after the end of the third season, with the adventurers running into the hills to escape from a hill giant. After the death of the Elf, they travel to Waldorg to ask a wizard to resurrect her. Then they are hired by the Council of Waldorg to steal an object in the tower of the Mistress of the Slanoush Cult. But they don't know that they are being used in a vicious plot against the city of Glargh... The fifth season, the last so far, begins right after the end of the fourth, when the Elf learns that she has been proclaimed queen of her people. The adventurers must then follow her and prevent a war between all races from happening. ===== The film focuses on the plight of young poverty-stricken children working in Sivakasi in the late 1980s, and the Government's neglect of them. The children worked in factories famed for producing fireworks and matches. The film takes its name from the nickname of Sivakasi, (Mini-Japan), a name given to the town for its high technology and business standards. ===== Ex-con Otis Samuel Sr. or "O2" on account of his ability to vanish from a crime scene like oxygen, has done his time and is determined to stay out of trouble and never leave his young son, Otis, Jr. When O2 shows up late to pick Junior up from school, he swears that he will always come back for Junior. That promise is put to the test just moments later when O2's vintage 1966 Chevrolet Impala SS Lowrider convertible is stolen from him at gunpoint in the middle of a crowded Southland intersection with Junior in the back seat, kidnapping him in the process. O2 chases the car and gets into a nasty gun battle with the carjackers, but to no avail. O2 catches up with Coco, a woman who sells stolen suits for P Money. O2 knows she is the one who marked him for the carjacking, and he forces her to help him retrieve Junior. The two steal a car (a 1996 Impala SS sedan) and Coco's boyfriend savagely beats her. Upon hitting a woman O2 pistol whips him with his gun before the two retreat to Lucky's home. Lucky, Otis' unreliable cousin who works for Big Meat, the leader of the Outlaw Syndicate, offers to help. After a few hours, Lucky comes back with some bad news: Meat has Junior and demands that O2 deliver $100,000 by midnight the next night, or Junior will die. Meat was once O2's partner and thinks O2 still has the $100,000 they made off their last job together. O2 comes up with a plan: he and Coco will rob P Money's and Meat's own operations, staging it to look like one is stealing from the other, and triggering a gang war that will hopefully eliminate both and help O2 and Coco rescue Junior. After a successful robbery of one of the Big Meat's locations, O2 and Coco come across a set of safe deposit box keys belonging to numerous banks. The next day, they stage a number of bank robberies and are able to retrieve expensive jewelry, which Lucky offers to get rid to prove his worth. When Lucky takes the jewelry to Big Meat unknowing that it belongs to Big Meat, Lucky is forced to set up a meeting between himself, O2, and Coco, with Big Meat along to end O2. They take the car to an alley and give him the money. It is revealed that Big Meat never intended to let Junior live and signals one of his men to kill Junior. Lucky sees this and tackles him as the man shoots, one shot hit Lucky in the side of the chest. O2 kills Meat and his men and retrieves Junior. They stop at a gas station to attend to Lucky's wound. O2 tells Lucky they will get him to a hospital, but Lucky dies from his wounds. O2 hides in a parking lot and tells Coco to take Junior to the Mexican border while he outruns the cops. As Junior and Coco escape, O2 is tailed by the cops. They run him to a dead end where the lake is. O2, realizing he has no choice, drives into the water. Five days later in Mexico, Coco and Junior are living in a house on a beach. They are walking on the beach when they see O2 in the distance and then reunite. ===== Centered on the life of Travis Jordan, The Visitation begins when miracles, ranging from a healing, weeping crucifix to sights of Jesus in the clouds, start occurring, giving way to the arrival of a man who calls himself Brandon Nichols. Nichols begins healing people; giving a man who lost the use of his legs in the Vietnam War the ability to walk, and performing various other "healings". Most of the townspeople — who are portrayed as disillusioned, post-Pentecostal farmers — begin to believe in Nichols as a Messiah. Brandon Nichols begins to hold "revival meetings" on a large ranch outside of town every Sunday, and many churchgoers in town stop going to Sunday morning mass/services and instead listen to Brandon talk and watch him "heal". It is at this point that Nichols arouses the ire of one of the local ministers, Kyle Sherman. Enlisting the help of Travis Jordan, he seeks to prove that the so-called Brandon Nichols is not in fact a "better" Christian Messiah, but a puffed-up egomaniac using occult powers. In the end, the team (along with the help of a few others) uncover a host of pseudonyms and a hefty helping of deception surrounding Nichols' past. Startling parallels are revealed with the life story of Travis Jordan, all of which come to light as the story progresses. ===== In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Khufu (Jack Hawkins) is obsessed with preparing his tomb for the "second life". Dissatisfied with his own architects' offerings, he enlists Vashtar (James Robertson Justice), an ingenious man whose devices nearly saved his own people from being conquered and enslaved by Khufu. Khufu offers to free Vashtar's people if he will build Khufu a robber-proof tomb - although Vashtar will have to die when the pyramid-tomb is completed, to guard its secrets. During the years that the pyramid is being built, Pharaoh demands tribute and labor from all his territories, amassing a great wealth of gold and treasures that will be interred with him. Home Video VHS cover Princess Nellifer (Joan Collins) comes as the ambassador of the tributary province of Cyprus. Claiming her province is poor and cannot afford to pay the assigned tribute, she offers herself to Pharaoh instead. She becomes Khufu's second wife. Nellifer questions whether Khufu really had as much gold as he says, so she is shown an enormous hoard of fine gold artifacts and jewels, and more in an inner vault that Khufu is saving for his "second life." She puts on an ornate, jewel encrusted necklace which Khufu angrily demands she remove. After he leaves, she puts it on again, and dares Treneh (Sydney Chaplin), the captain of the guard, to take it from her, which he does gently. Later, Nellifer starts an affair with Treneh, who has become besotted with her. One day on the construction site Vashtar's son, Senta (Dewey Martin), saves Khufu from being crushed to death by a runaway stone block. In order to get the injured Khufu out of the pyramid to help, Senta reveals that he too knows the tomb's secrets, knowing that he must now share his father's fate. A grateful Pharaoh offers him anything else within his power; Senta chooses Nellifer's slave Kyra to save her from being whipped for her fierce independence. Using a cobra obtained from a snake charmer with the help of Treneh, Nellifer plots to assassinate first Queen Nailla and her son Zanin, then Khufu, leaving her to rule Egypt. First, Treneh persuades Khufu that there is a rich hoard of treasure in a tomb far to the north, in order to draw him away from the palace. Then Nellifer gives Zanin a flute to practice and teaches him a tune the snake will be attracted to. Queen Nailla sees the snake approaching Zanin and throws herself on it to save her son. Hearing of the queen's death, Khufu sends out investigators to look for snake charmers. Panicking, Nellifer dispatches her servant Mabuna to kill Khufu at the oasis, but Mabuna only manages to wound Khufu before being killed. Suspecting Nellifer, Khufu rushes back to the city. In her chambers he overhears her and Treneh plotting; he kills Treneh in a sword fight, but is himself fatally wounded. The Pharaoh, before dying, sees Nellifer wearing the necklace that he deliberately took from her earlier, and then dies while calling out for his High Priest and lifelong friend Hamar (Alexis Minotis, billed as Alex Minotis). After Khufu's death, Hamar, suspecting what Nellifer did and deeming the tomb truly robber- proof, even for Vashtar and Senta, releases them from their death sentences, allowing them to leave Egypt and return to their homeland with their people as part of a plan to deal with Nellifer. During Pharaoh's funeral, Hamar has Nellifer accompany him into the burial chamber because she "must give the order" to seal the sarcophagus. When her order is obeyed, it releases a large stone in a lower chamber, triggering Vashtar's mechanism to seal the tomb. Nellifer goes into hysterics when told the tomb is being sealed, realizing she is trapped. "There's no way out," Hamar tells her, adding: "This is what you lied and schemed and murdered to achieve. This is your kingdom." ===== Fontaine Khaled (Joan Collins) is the London wife of a wealthy Arab businessman. She spends his money on her nightclub, Hobo, and partying. She hires a handsome manager, Tony (Oliver Tobias), to run her club, but it is understood that his job security is dependent on his satisfying her nymphomaniac demands. Tony loses interest in Fontaine, as she treats him like a plaything, and turns his attention to her young stepdaughter Alexandra Khaled (Emma Jacobs), who uses him to get back at Fontaine after she discovers a video tape of Fontaine and Tony having sex in the Khaleds' private elevator, essentially cheating on her father. Fontaine then dumps Tony and is divorced by her husband for adultery. ===== Following from where The Stud left off, Fontaine Khaled is now a divorcee. While she still leads an extravagant jetset lifestyle, she no longer has the financial security of being a billionaire's wife and her once-successful London nightclub, "Hobo", is now failing. While on a flight returning to London from New York, she meets handsome Italian gambler Nico Cantafora. In order to impress Fontaine, Nico pretends he is a wealthy businessman, though he is actually a conman who owes money to the mafia and he covertly uses Fontaine to smuggle a stolen diamond ring through airport customs which he intends to sell in London to pay off his debts. Nico later tracks Fontaine down in order to retrieve the ring she unwittingly carried through customs for him. They spend the night together but when she discovers that he planted the ring in her coat, she throws him out. However, when Nico later learns that the ring is a fake, he gives it to Fontaine as a light-hearted gift and she forgives him. Meanwhile, Fontaine's own financial problems continue to mount and her accountant warns her that she is rapidly running out of money. To combat this, she attempts to restore her failing nightclub to its former glory. Meanwhile, she learns of Nico's mob connections after he is beaten up by local gangsters due to the money he still owes them. Later, Fontaine and Nico are invited to the country estate of Fontaine's best friends, Leonard and Vanessa Grant. The Grants own a racehorse named Plato that is favourite to win an upcoming high-stakes derby. Still in debt to the mafia, Nico is instructed by local gangland boss Thrush Feathers to ensure that Plato loses the race. To this effect, Nico blackmails the horse's jockey to throw the race. Fontaine overhears Nico's plan and meets with Feathers to get a cut of the deal with him which could solve her financial problems. Feathers agrees so that Fontaine won't interfere with his plans and will also be indebted to him. On the day of the race, the jockey falls off the horse as planned and loses the race. Fontaine pretends to Nico that she betted her entire fortune on Plato to win and now she is broke, but Nico is ecstatic because he backed the winning horse and now believes he can get the mafia off his back once and for all. However, the mafia have other ideas for him and after he gives Fontaine his winning tickets to collect on his behalf, he is carted off by Feathers' henchmen. Fontaine, meanwhile, goes to collect a double payout - with Nico's winning tickets and her cut from Feathers for going along with his scam. With the money she made from the horse race scam, and her nightclub a success again, Fontaine is saved from financial ruin. But when she arrives at her club one evening, she meets Feathers there who tells everyone he is now the club's new owner. ===== A poor, single woman called Ellis (Linda de Mol), with a son, who meets Susan (Joan Collins), who wrote a successful book about 'How to marry a millionaire' and who now teaches classes on the subject. Ellis attends the course, which is offered her for free. As a result, she meets many millionaires, of which several want to marry her. For one man who seemed rich, this turns out not to be the case. Nevertheless, after all Ellis chooses him. ===== During a football game, an earthquake reveals buried toxic waste, and the fumes cause all of the attendees and players to mutate, including young Bones Justice (cf. Bones Jackson in the games). A sports federation based around the superhuman beings, the Mutant League is formed and Bones grows up to play for the Midway Monsters. Corrupt league commissioner Zalgor Prigg constantly schemes to get the popular athlete to play for any one of the four teams he owns (Slayers, Evils, Derangers or Ooze), or if nothing else discredit him for refusing to join. Bones' search for his father and his personal quest to bring order to the league, are subplots throughout the series. Several other characters from the games such as Razor Kidd, Mo and Spew, K.T. Slayer, Grim McSlam and Coach McWimple regularly appear in the show. Unlike the games, players did not die from their unique approach to contact sports; though frequently maimed to the point of losing body parts, through treatments in a machine called the Rejuvenator which bathed them in toxic chemicals, they would soon be as returned to health. The show also has no robot players (except in one episode where K.T. Slayer was benched by robotic clones of himself), and only five teams: the Monsters, the Slayers, the Ooze, the Derangers and the Screaming Evils. It also has the teams competing in all manner of sports, not just the ones seen in the games. Most commonly Football, but also hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball and even monster truck races and sumo wrestling. As with the video games, all of these sports were modified with deathtraps and loose rules on violence to accommodate the near-indestructible nature of the players. Some episodes end with a "grudge match" between two particular players. A line of action figures was released based on the show, but went virtually unknown. Rumours of a Mutant League wrestling league surfaced featuring such characters as The Polluter, The Toxic Teacher, and "Dad" (or possibly Butch Justice) but apparently never entered production. ===== Fictitious scientist Dr. Nils Hellstrom (played by Lawrence Pressman)THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE (Waylon Green, 1971) on Vimeo guides viewers throughout the film. He claims, on the basis of scientific-sounding theories, that insects will ultimately win the fight for survival on planet Earth because of their adaptability and ability to reproduce rapidly, and that the human race will lose this fight largely because of excessive individualism. The film combines short clips from horror and science fiction movies with extraordinary camera sequences of butterflies, locusts, wasps, termites, ants, mayflies, other insects rarely seen before on film and insectivorous plants/insects.AllMovie Technical advisers Roy Snelling and Charles Hogue, were entomologists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. ===== A professor, studying an Etruscan crypt near a grand mansion, accidentally unleashes an evil curse. The curse reanimates the dead buried in the area and the zombies devour the professor. Three jet-set couples and the creepy, mentally challenged son of one of the women arrive at the mansion at the professor's invitation. The guests are quickly attacked by rotting corpses as they begin rising from their graves. The group of people lock themselves in the mansion and, as night falls, the zombie siege begins. The first victim is Kathryn, the maid, who is pinned to a window and decapitated with a scythe. The zombies then begin to display unusually high levels of intelligence, using tools, axes to chop through doors, etc. One of the guests, George, tries shooting at them with a shotgun but quickly runs out of shells. Zombies then break into the mansion and attack the guests in the library. One of the guests, the young Michael, has become traumatized. His mother, Evelyn, tries comforting him in another room. Michael, however, seems to be becoming sexually attracted to his mother, and fondles her breasts while kissing her. Evelyn slaps him, and he runs off, screaming "What's wrong?! I'm your son!" Michael then encounters the now- zombified Leslie, another guest, and stands still and stares at her while she shambles towards him, snarling and covered in blood. The group then decides to let the zombies inside the house, reasoning that they can distract them while they escape. Evelyn goes off to get Michael, but finds he has been killed by Leslie, then has a nervous breakdown. The remaining survivors escape from the mansion, and hide out until morning. They then find a monastery, but discover that all of the monks have become zombies. The zombie monks chase the rest of the survivors to a workshop in the middle of the forest, where they encounter the zombified Michael. Evelyn offers Michael to suckle at her breast, and he bites off her nipple. The last two survivors, Mark, and Janet, are assaulted and killed by zombies in the workshop; as the scenes fades, the zombies put their hands on Janet's head while she screams in terror. The misspelled "Profecy of the Black Spider" then appears. The Earth shall tremble, graves shall open...they shall come among the living as messengers of death, and there shall be the nigths [sic] of terror"). ===== Michael Scott (Steve Carell) accidentally burns his foot while grilling bacon on his George Foreman Grill, which he keeps next to his bed. After he makes a distress call to the office, Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) comes to "rescue" him, but crashes his car into a pole. Dwight becomes more easygoing and friendly to his co-workers. He and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) strike up a friendship as a result. Michael becomes upset with the staff's lack of compassion towards his "disability." Under false pretenses, he brings in Billy Merchant (Marcus A. York), the building's property manager who uses a wheelchair, to discuss what it is like to be disabled. Billy leaves after Michael makes several offensive remarks, but not before pointing out to Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) that Dwight has suffered a concussion from his car crash. Jim and Michael take Dwight to the hospital. Before they go, Pam bids "goodbye" to the concussed Dwight, aware that she will probably never see the good-natured version of Dwight Schrute ever again. They take Meredith Palmer's mini-van, and as Jim drives, he uses a spray bottle to squirt Dwight to keep him from drinking liquor from a bottle he found under the seat. Jim then turns the squirt bottle on Michael to stop him from wrestling the liquor bottle away from Dwight. At the hospital, Michael insists that his burned foot is a more serious injury than Dwight's, to no avail. To add insult to over-dramatic injury, Dwight gets in a "that's what she said" joke that makes the doctor chuckle. Jim calls Pam to report Dwight's results. Pam coyly tells Oscar Martinez about Dwight's recovery as a way of getting the good news to Angela Martin, who is between them, as Pam is the only person in the office aware that Angela is Dwight's girlfriend. ===== Michael Scott's (Steve Carell) "best friend forever" Todd Packer (David Koechner) offends the staff with crude gossip about an upper management scandal. Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) informs Michael that he will conduct a review of the company's sexual harassment policies because the CFO resigned after allegations made by his secretary. Michael's indignation that this will put a damper on his easygoing office environment rises to outrage when he learns that the corporate headquarters is sending down a lawyer to talk to him. Michael and the warehouse staff mock the sexual harassment video, but the crude remarks come to a screeching halt when Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) and the lawyer arrive from Corporate. While Michael angrily announces that he can no longer be friends with his staff and that he will never tell another joke again, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) goads Michael into breaking his vow immediately, to the approval of Packer. Michael's attitude suddenly changes when he realizes that he is not in trouble, and that the lawyer's job is to protect him. After Packer tells a crude joke at the expense of Phyllis, Michael defends her, telling the entire office that he finds Phyllis attractive and that the only thing he worries about when he is near her "is getting a boner". Meanwhile, Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) waits with anticipation for her mother (Shannon Cochran) to arrive from out of town. Pam's mother arrives and asks in whispers (shushed by an embarrassed Pam), "Which one is Jim?" Michael stops Packer when he tries to share another inappropriate joke and concludes with his misguided thoughts on sexual harassment. ===== While Michael Scott (Steve Carell) leaves with Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) to sign closing papers for his new condominium, the staff fills out their expense reports. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) "dies" of boredom, and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) revives him by calling him to the reception desk and throwing objects into Dwight's coffee mug. Jim discovers that his co-workers have their own office games, such as Toby Flenderson's (Paul Lieberstein) "Dunderball", and Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) and Oscar Martinez's (Oscar Nunez) "paper football flicking and hitting" game, "Hateball" (named because of Angela's dislike for the game). Jim and Pam organize the Games of the First Dunder Mifflin Olympiad, competing for hand-made medals constructed from yogurt lids and paper clips. Some of the games include Flonkerton, a game where people race with cartons of paper strapped to their feet, and seeing who can stuff the most M&M;'s into their mouth. At the condominium signing, Michael discusses the deal with his realtor, Carol Stills (Nancy Carell). Dwight finds a variety of things wrong with the condominium, and, at the very end of the deal, Michael gets cold feet but relents when he learns that backing out of the deal will cost him a substantial amount of money. When Michael and Dwight return, the coffee cup race quickly dissolves, and the office returns to normal. Michael isolates himself in his office, still upset over the closure of his condo. When Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) throws away his gold medal, Jim and Pam organize the "closing ceremonies", believing them important to the office staff. Michael is awarded a medal for closing on his condo, and the gesture appears to give him some reassurance of his decision. Michael feels touched by this and thanks everyone for the honor - a gesture that triggers his emotional tears during the closing scene of the episode. ===== In 1699, Dr Lemuel Gulliver is an impoverished surgeon who seeks riches and adventure as a ship's doctor on a voyage around the world. His fiancée Elizabeth strongly wishes for him to settle down, and the two quarrel. Gulliver embarks on the voyage and is soon discovered that Elizabeth has stowed away aboard his ship to be near him. A storm develops and sweeps him overboard. Gulliver is washed ashore on Lilliput, a land of tiny humans who see him as a threatening giant. The Lilliputians are afraid of Gulliver and tie him down with stakes to the beach, but he eases their fears by performing several acts of kindness. An old quarrel between Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu is revived, and Gulliver lends a hand by towing Blefuscu's warships far out to sea. Lilliput's Emperor then views the giant as a threat to his throne after Gulliver is critical of the reasons for the war. Gulliver escapes in a boat he had previously built when the Emperor orders his execution. He makes his way to a large isle Brobdingnag, unaware that it was inhabited by Brobdingnagians, a race of 60 foot giants. After making shore, he encounters a very kind 40 foot peasant brobdingnagian girl named Glumdalclitch finds him on the shore and carries him to the castle of King Brob. Their law requires that all tiny people be brought to the King, who has a collection of "tiny animals". Gulliver is delighted to find Elizabeth, who was washed ashore following a shipwreck. The King installs the two in a dollhouse and lets Glumdalclitch look after them. The King marries Gulliver and Elizabeth. After the wedding. Gulliver and Elizabeth go outside to celebrate but are attacked by a giant squirrel, which drags Gulliver into its burrow. Glumdalclitch, however, is alerted and saves Gulliver by pulling him out of the burrow using her hair. When Gulliver later defeats the King at Chess and cures the Queen of a simple stomach-ache, Prime Minister Makovan accuses Gulliver of witchcraft. Gulliver's attempts at explaining science to them, but this is taken as further "proof". After being forced to say what the King wanted to hear from him, he orders his execution and pits his pet crocodile against Gulliver, who is able to slay the creature. The King orders him burned, but Glumdalclitch saves Gulliver and Elizabeth from the pursuing Brobdingnagians by placing them in her sewing basket and tossing the basket into a brook that flows out to the sea. Gulliver and Elizabeth wake on a beach with Glumdalclitch's small basket behind them. A passer-by of their own size indicates they are only a short distance from their home in England. Elizabeth asks if it had all been a dream. Gulliver, now happy to settle down with Elizabeth, replies that the bad qualities of the pettiness of Lilliput and ignorance of Brobdingnag are inside everyone. When Elizabeth asks about Glumdalclitch, Gulliver gives her a knowing look and says that she has yet to be born. ===== Ten years ago, a legendary fighter named Choi Gi-dong and a timid straight-A student named Park Young-joon leave for a high school field trip to Gyeongju city. But during their journey, fate befalls on them as they experience an unforgettable incident that would change the course of their lives. One night during a school gala, Gi-dong leads his entire school to a huge brawl against a local gang while Young-joon chickens out and stays behind at the party by himself. The streets turn out to be a battlefield with blood gushing, heads bashing and bones breaking, but the gruesome fight nonetheless becomes history in the making. Gi-dong becomes admired for his bravery, while Young-joon gets ostracized for his fear. Ten years later, Gi-dong and Young- joon coincidentally meet each other at a club in Gyeongju. Surprisingly, Young-joon turns out to be a big time gangster while Gi-dong becomes a daunting phys ed teacher who transferred to a high school in Gyeongju. They feel glad about their unexpected reunion, but the mood gets tense as they rekindle old yet not-so-fond memories. Before they bid farewell, both Gi-dong and Young-joon suddenly find a pretty damsel named Ju-ran in distress. In an instant, they fall headlong in love with her as Ju-ran's gleeful smile sweeps them off their feet. Gi-dong makes his claim on Ju-ran, but Young-joon calls it a fair game. Young-joon planned to make his trip to Gyeongju a short visit, but he extends his stay to win Ju-ran's heart and to get back at Gi-dong for old time's sake. Gi-dong gets infuriated over Young-joon's decision since he won't listen to him like the good old days. Even though fighting over Ju-ran becomes a grueling test to their friendship, the situation gets worse when they practically get the whole city involved. It's a fight to the finish to win one girl's heart, even if it takes a few bones to break. ===== Jaja Uma Grooming Up! depicts the story of Shunpei Kuze, a high-school student unsure of the future until he takes a motorcycle ride to Hokkaidō. When his motorbike runs out of fuel, Shunpei is stranded on a country road; to make matters worse, he loses his wallet. He is found and taken in by the daughter of a local rancher named Hibiki Watarai. Shunpei begins a new life on the Watarai horse-breeding ranch, learning about the horses and the ranch's lively family and workers. ===== Bertie has grown a moustache, which Jeeves disapproves of. G. D'Arcy "Stilton" Cheesewright, a fellow member at the Drones Club who has drawn Bertie's name in the annual club darts sweep, becomes jealous when Cheesewright’s fiancée Florence Craye says she loves Bertie's moustache. Florence and Bertie were engaged in the past, and Stilton mistakenly believes Bertie still loves her. Stilton is also jealous of Percy Gorringe, a playwright dramatizing Florence's novel Spindrift. Disappointed with Stilton after he refuses to grow a moustache, Florence asks Bertie to take her to a night club for research for her next novel. Hoping to talk her into returning to Stilton, Bertie agrees. However, the night club is raided. When Florence tries to run away, Bertie trips a policeman chasing her. Florence escapes and Bertie spends the night in jail before paying a fine of ten pounds. Shortly afterward, Florence and Stilton reconcile when Stilton agrees to grow a moustache. At her home of Brinkley Court, Aunt Dahlia, Bertie's aunt who runs a magazine called Milady's Boudoir, is trying to sell the paper to the Liverpudlian newspaper magnate Mr. Trotter, who brought along his wife Mrs. Trotter and his stepson, Percy Gorringe. Aunt Dahlia has hired the successful novelist Daphne Dolores Morehead, who is staying at Brinkley, to write a serial for Milady's Boudoir, to make the magazine appear successful to Mr. Trotter. Aunt Dahlia is also trying to win over Mr. Trotter with the magnificent cooking of her French chef, Anatole, though this does not seem to be working. Florence has also gone to Brinkley Court. Aunt Dahlia tells Bertie to come to Brinkley to cheer up Percy, who is in love with Florence and upset that she is with Stilton. Stilton discovers that Florence and Bertie went to a night club together, and breaks his engagement to her by telegram. He comes to Brinkley Court, seeking revenge on Bertie, who avoids Stilton. Bertie learns from Aunt Dahlia that she pawned the pearl necklace her husband Tom Travers bought her to pay for the new serial, without telling Tom. She is wearing a fake pearl necklace instead, and fears that Lord Sidcup, a jewellery expert who is coming to see Uncle Tom's silver collection, will reveal the necklace as a fake. Jeeves suggests that Bertie act as a burglar and steal the fake necklace. Bertie attempts to do so but mistakenly enters Florence's bedroom. She is moved to see him and assumes that he is in love with her. When Stilton comes to return her letters, Florence says she will marry Bertie, and Stilton, finding Bertie in Florence's room, becomes aggressive. Bertie saves himself by reminding Stilton about the Drones Club darts sweep: hurting Bertie could cost Stilton fifty-six pounds and ten shillings. Uncle Tom locks Aunt Dahlia's necklace in a safe. In addition, Lord Sidcup is revealed to be the recently elevated Roderick Spode. After selling his Drones Club darts sweep ticket to Percy Gorringe, Stilton again threatens Bertie. Bertie tries, unsuccessfully, to fend off Stilton with a cosh, though Stilton forgets about Bertie and Florence when he sees Daphne Dolores Morehead and falls for her. Seeing Uncle Tom's safe open, Bertie takes a pearl necklace he sees there. Next he talks to Aunt Dahlia, who says she took the fake necklace from the safe. The necklace Bertie took belongs to Mrs. Trotter. Bertie tries to put back the second necklace, but is unable to do so since Mr. Trotter shuts the safe door. At breakfast, Aunt Dahlia's butler Seppings presents Mrs. Trotter's pearl necklace on a salver, stating that he found it in Jeeves's room. Though Bertie prepares to confess stealing the necklace to save Jeeves, Jeeves says he planned to find the necklace's owner, since he realized the pearls were fake and assumed the necklace belonged to a housemaid. Spode, or Lord Sidcup, confirms the pearls are fake. Percy admits that he pawned his mother's real pearl necklace to produce the play based on Florence's novel. Florence is touched, and she and Percy get engaged. Mr. Trotter dislikes Anatole's cooking. However, he feels much better after having one of Jeeves's special drinks, and purchases Milady's Boudoir. Grateful to Jeeves, Bertie agrees to shave off his moustache. ===== In 2007, the United States invades Turkey to gain control of its deposits of an important strategic resource, borax. After securing the principal cities in Turkey, the United States attempts to re-enact the Treaty of Sèvres by dividing Turkey up between its historic rivals Greece and Armenia. Turkey responds by forming a military alliance with China, Russia and Germany. A Turkish agent then steals an American nuclear bomb and detonates it in Washington, D.C., killing millions of people. This however, backfires and U.S. troops increase their abuse of occupied Turkish citizens and the invasion picks up in pace. When American troops reach Istanbul, the conflict degrades to urban combat between U.S. forces, Turkish armed citizenry, Turkish Army remnants and police forces. The climax turns out to be anticlimactic; the occupation of Istanbul agitates Russia, the European Union and China to sign a military alliance and threaten the United States with nuclear warfare in order to stop the invasion. The war comes to a close; U.S. forces retreat, and Turkey is saved. The agent, a member of a secret Turkish intelligence agency named "The Grey Team", trained from birth as obedient and amoral orphans, kidnaps the mastermind behind the invasion, the CEO of a corporation funding the U.S. President, and the book ends with a Central Asian torture scene with said CEO. ===== Our narrator Jimmy Corcoran spots Ukridge helping an attractive young girl onto a bus; intrigued, he finds the girl is one Dora Mason, secretary to Ukridge's Aunt Julia, a novelist. Later, having won some money on the Derby, Corcoran promises his friends a night out, but returning home to dress, he finds Bowles has let Ukridge borrow his evening suit. Dismayed, Corcoran must in turn borrow an ancient outfit from Bowles, which in addition to being rather snug, smells rather strongly of moth-balls, rendering his evening less than pleasant. Seeing Ukridge enjoying himself in his fine clothes, Corcoran upbraids him strongly, but hears that Ukridge is entertaining the pretty Dora. The next day, Ukridge arrives with the news that, attempting to smuggle the girl back into his aunt's house, they were caught by a police officer, who woke the aunt, who in turn sacked Dora. Corcoran suggests asking their respectable friend George Tupper to put in a good word for the girl. Later Ukridge returns with the news that Tupper's appeal has failed, and further upsets Corcoran by informing him that Aunt Julia now expects a visit from the writer, posing as a journalist from her favourite magazine, Women's Sphere, sent to interview her. Arriving at the house, he meets Aunt Julia in the company of another woman, introduced to him as a Miss Watterson, and finds her far less intimidating than expected. However, she soon reveals that Ukridge's thin plot has been see through, and that Miss Watterson is in fact the editor of Women's Sphere, sending Corcoran away in shame and embarrassment. Arriving home, he finds Ukridge on his couch, and hears that Dora has found work elsewhere and the scheme need not go ahead. Ukridge had known this the previous day, but had forgotten to inform his friend and spare him his ordeal. ===== The story takes place in an alien solar system and focuses on the history of its two inhabited planets: Parceria and Seneca. For many years, the people of these planets lived in harmony together with the seemingly more advanced Parcerians continually visiting the Senecans. However, something happened on Parceria: something caused the Parcerians to shut off all forms of communication, visitation and activity with Seneca. Over time, Parceria's environment died out, leaving only a planet-wide barren terrain. Hundreds of years have now passed and the current generation of Senecans see Parceria as nothing but a dead husk with the concept of life and companionship on it being mere, long forgotten legends. One day, an enormous attack force flies from Parceria and attacks Seneca without warning. Confirmed to be the Parcerian Military, the invaders cripple Seneca's defense forces. Besides being well armed and equipped, the Parceria Military is also able to manipulate the wildlife to do its bidding through unknown means, ensuring no possible escape to safety. The desperate people of Seneca eventually discovered an ancient star fighter abandoned by the Parcerians called The Baldanders. Using its super-technology, the people of Seneca use the Baldanders in a counter-attack against the Parcerian invasion to destroy their main battleship: a large, mysterious warship known only as 'Mother.' ===== In the face of seriously declining railroad passenger travel, engineer Tom Caldwell presents to the president of the CB&D; Railroad,The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad became the Chicago, Burlington and Denver in the film. B.J. Dexter, a design for a revolutionary diesel-electric train that will increase efficiency and lower costs. Dexter opposes change, however, and the railroad's conservative board of directors agrees with him, rejecting Tom's design. Tom quits in frustration. Sure that Tom's theory is sound, Dexter's daughter Ruth convinces Ed Tyler, a locomotive manufacturer, to look into Tom's design. Tyler is impressed with the concept and initiates immediate construction of a prototype. Soon Tom and his team prepare the Silver Streak for a well-publicized trial run with Dexter and Ruth aboard as passengers. The Silver Streak fails to attain even half of its projected speed of , however, and is even easily overtaken by a steam-powered freight train. An angry Dexter tells Tyler that all the Silver Streak is good for is an exhibit at the Century of Progress Exposition to recover his advertising expenses. Tom is baffled by the failure since all the engine components worked perfectly during assembly but Dexter stubbornly insists that the concept will never work. Furious with Dexter's attitude, Tom quarrels with Ruth. Her brother Allen, who supported Tom's idea, tells his father that he is quitting the railroad to take a job as a civil engineer with the Six Companies, Inc. constructing the Boulder Dam. Tom and Bronte, the engine's builder, discover that the electrical generator acquired for the Silver Streak has a manufacturing flaw. After correcting the flaw, the engine produces even greater power than he had earlier predicted. He tries to telephone Ruth with the good news to reconcile with her, but she has left Chicago to travel by train to California. Ruth discovers en route that infantile paralysis (polio) has broken out among the dam's construction crew and detours to the site only to find that Allen has contracted the disease. When a doctor informs her that Allen will die within 24 hours unless he receives treatment from an iron lung respirator, Ruth telephones her father to have the machine shipped to the dam by airplane. Dexter is told that the iron lung is too heavy for any transport airplane to carry and cannot be disassembled. Tom and Tyler persuade Dexter to take a gamble on the Silver Streak as Allen's only hope. With less than twenty hours of time to travel , the Silver Streak is given a cleared track and takes a shipment of Drinker Respirators out of Chicago. Tom includes Bronte on his crew, unaware that he is a foreign spy wanted for murder. As radio broadcasts track the progress of the "epic errand of mercy," the Silver Streak breaks records as it races south against time through the night. Nearing Boulder City, however, Bronte is revealed as a fugitive and sabotages the engine trying to stop the train, but instead causes it to speed out of control. Tom knocks the spy unconscious and regains control of the runaway train just before it arrives at the station. ===== In the land of Odegan, orphaned squire Mars is employed at Odegan Castle on the strength of his father's great reputation. A series of lies and deceptions on his part unexpectedly places him as the foremost obstacle to the schemes of the dark elf wizard, Pazort. Pazort and his followers intend to destroy the world by summoning the Giant, Seeega (referred to as "the Dark Titan" in the North American translation), and to do so they first must use Princess Satera to get at an orb held by King Odegan. It is up to Mars to redeem his lies and failures by thwarting the mighty wizard's plans. Shining Wisdom takes place on the continent of Parmecia just a few years after Shining Force II, and is a sequel of sorts to that game. Sarah and Kazin, who were playable characters in Shining Force II, are roaming the continent in a hunt for Zeon's remaining henchmen. Pazort, the main villain of Shining Wisdom, is a former follower of Zeon, and Sarah and Kazin aid in the fight against him. There are also several references to the hero of Shining Force II, Bowie, though he does not actually appear anywhere in the game. A book even refers to the setting of Shining in the Darkness, Stormsong (referred to in English versions as "Thornwood").Shining Force Chronology and Connections , Shining Force Central. Due to the various name changes and omissions of the North American translation, none of the above connections to the Shining series are apparent in the USA version of the game and they can only be seen in the Japanese and European versions. ===== Darren, Harkat, and Mr. Crepsley (Vancha going back to Vampire Mountain to inform the other Princes and Generals of their encounter with the Vampaneze Lord) go to Mr. Crepsley's hometown once again to investigate if the Vampaneze had set up territories there. But soon after their arrival Darren is discovered by the police and forced to attend school. He has trouble with most of his subjects as he only has a middle school education, but luckily his English teacher is Debbie, his old girlfriend from his first visit to this city. Mr. Crepsley has to go back to Vampire Mountain again for Paris Skyle's funeral, leaving Darren and Harkat to continue the investigations alone. One night on his way back to the hotel room the three are staying in, Darren encounters a Vampaneze with hooks for hands and a mask wrapped around his face. The Vampaneze attacks, but Darren is saved by his old friend Steve. Steve joins Darren for the hunt of the Vampaneze, claiming he's changed his ways and now understands who the real enemy is and dropped his desire for vengeance against Darren and Mr. Crepsley long ago. Darren later reveals himself as a vampire to Debbie, and after a long explanation and a day's contemplating she joins Darren and Steve for the fight. Mr. Crepsley comes back and helps Darren pursue the Vampaneze, but understandably doesn't trust Steve. Darren does convince him, however, that Steve will be a big help for them and lets him come with them. Vancha also joins them again a few days later. They chase the hooked Vampaneze through the sewers at night, but the Vampaneze led them into a trap. Darren and his team are soon surrounded and the Vampaneze Lord make his second appearance. Darren tries to kill him, but is stopped by Steve, who shows his true side as being a half-vampaneze and betraying Darren and his friends. The hooked Vampaneze is also revealed to be RV (Previously known as Reggie Veggie, but now claims it stands for Righteous Vampaneze). A fight begins between the Hunters and the Vampaneze. Vancha charges through the Vampets, scattering them and Mr. Crepsley follows, slicing with his nails to bring down many Vampaneze. Darren soon beats Steve and is about to finish him off, but RV uses Debbie as a hostage. RV, Gannen Harst, and the Lord soon leave with the threat that they will kill Debbie if they are followed. Darren and Vancha take a Vampet and Steve as their hostage and are given a warning by Gannen to leave the tunnels immediately or he'll send Vampaneze to finish them off. ===== ===== Negar (Hāni'eh Tavassoli) has been kicked out of home by her mother. She is left with no choice but to spend the night walking around the streets of Tehran where she meets three men who all have different stories. ===== The book begins with the title character, the gryphon Skandranon Rashkae ("Skan"), creeping into an enemy encampment on a mission to acquire a new, magical weapon instrumental in the fall and capture of a key defensive garrison. Though successful, he is pursued by makaar, creatures created by the antagonist Ma'ar to match Urtho's gryphons, and eventually crashlands in friendly territory. Meanwhile, in Urtho's camp, Amberdrake and Gesten are waiting for the return of their friend Skan along with two fellow healers, Tamsin and Cinnabar. Amberdrake is sitting in the surgery tent in the area where the Healers live and work when a badly wounded Skan is carried in. While Skan is recovering in the Healer's tent, he meets Zhaneel, a timid and shy female gryphon who distinguished herself by slaying three makaar using unorthodox falcon-like diving tactics; Skan suggests that she spend her reward token on Amberdrake's services to overcome her apparent shyness -- actually the result of a bullied childhood; having been orphaned at a young age, other gryphons taunted her falcon-like appearance as being "misborn" and a "cull". Skan also becomes furious with a healer named Winterhart, whose job is to care for Urtho's non-human creatures (such as the gryphons) but who shows no emotional investment in any of them, viewing and treating them as simple beasts -- a feeling shared by the leaders of the Sixth Wing division, General Shaiknam and Commander Garber. Despite being the son of Urtho's most distinguished general, Shaiknam shows no actual competence in military strategy or issuing sound orders. After a therapy session with Amberdrake, Zhaneel is encouraged to put her unique skills to use and gradually assembles a training course in her off-duty time, which begins to grow in size and popularity. When Shaiknam hears of this he attempts to stop it by sending Winterhart with a reprimand, but Zhaneel stands up for herself, her supporters stand with her, and Skandranon defends her as well; Winterhart is the one reprimanded instead. She is shaken by this turn of events, and later sent to Amberdrake to treat a back injury that never healed properly. While Skandranon rants about Shaiknam's incompetence, a mage named Vikteren similarly rants about Shaiknam's treatment of the other troops under his command, particularly one mage unit that he worked to magical exhaustion, resulting in their demise. After an uneasy mages' meeting occurs that evening (with the mages protesting Shaiknam specifically), organizational changes are made, with Shaiknam no longer allowed to command non-human or mage troops. He is later placed on leave while another, more competent, commander is assigned to the Sixth Wing instead. Meanwhile, upon mentioning how only Urtho knows the secret to gryphon fertility, Amberdrake suggests that Skandranon steal the knowledge for possible use in bargaining with Urtho; they consult Urtho's library with Tamsin and Cinnabar, acquiring the secret notes, and discovering that the "secret" is easy to accomplish, with the majority of effort spent simply maintaining its secretive nature. Skan also discovers a strange, childlike gryphon named Kechara locked in an isolated room of the library, but realizes that Urtho has kept this "misborn" Kechara safe from the harassment that haunted Zhaneel's childhood. Through her treatments with Amberdrake, Winterhart begins to treat the gryphons more as persons than animals, starts to become friends with Amberdrake, and in turn begins to question her superficial relationship with a mercenary mage named Conn Levas. She is also revealed to have formerly been a member of the neighboring Leodhan kingdom before Ma'ar's agents caused it to fall. Meanwhile, Skan begins to fall in love with Zhaneel as they fly combat missions together, though the missions are a mix of victories and retreats. When the Sixth Wing commander is killed by an explosion in his command tent, Shaiknam resumes command of the Sixth Wing -- much to the gryphons' dismay -- and Skan volunteers to lead the Sixth Wing as they stage a formal protest of Shaiknam's latest orders. Skan then meets with Urtho privately to discuss Shaiknam. In doing so, Skan reveals they have acquired Urtho's secret knowledge and are therefore free to leave Urtho's service if they choose -- but they would rather stay, out of loyalty and love for their creator; Urtho is shocked at first, but ultimately approves. Urtho also reveals that Ma'ar's forces have been advancing quickly, have occupied the nearby Leodhan Palace, and are almost able to launch a direct assault on the Tower itself; Urtho has been secretly organizing gradual evacuations of all nonessential personnel. Shaiknam is appointed to hold the defensive line while the nonhuman and mage troops of the Sixth Wing are dissolved into other divisions outside his command. As the evacuations escalate, a gryphon named Aubri discovers General Shaiknam has brokered a deal with Ma'ar, simply allowing them to pass through to advance upon Urtho's tower, while also hiring the mercenary Conn Levas to assassinate Urtho. Although successful in poisoning Urtho, Conn Levas is killed by Skandranon, and the dying Urtho gives Skan a device to be used against Ma'ar specifically, similar to a prototype Zhaneel field-tested earlier (to great effect). Skandranon arrives at the Leodhan Palace in time to rescue a captured Kechara and Aubri, activate the device against Ma'ar, and escape through a Gate before the device detonates. Ma'ar appears to take his own life while claiming that he and his empire will last forever. Upon Urtho's death, his tower explodes in a massive surge of energy, while mages at the evacuation sites ready magical shielding for the approaching blast wave. The site's Gate activates, with Kechara and Aubri the first to arrive, but the Gate begins to break down before Skandranon can follow; the mage Vikteren, with the help of the others, is able to hold the Gate together long enough to pull Skandranon through safely, though his signature coat of black feathers has been bleached white from the force of the blast. Although unable to establish any magical contact with the other evacuees, they are thankful to be alive and safe. ===== The action takes place ten years after the end of World War I in a small town in France. The protagonist, Julien Davenne, is a war veteran who works as an editor at the newspaper, The Globe. He specializes in funeral announcements ("a virtuoso of the obituary", as defined by its editor-in-chief) and the thought of death haunts him. Davenne has reserved a room for the worship of his wife, Julie, on the upper floor of the house he shares with his elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Rambaud, and Georges, a deaf-mute boy. His wife had died eleven years prior, at the height of her beauty. During a thunderstorm, a fire destroys the green room, Davenne managing to save only pictures and portraits of his wife. On discovering an abandoned chapel in ruins, at the same cemetery where Julie is buried, Julien decides to consecrate it not only to his wife but to all the cemetery's dead, having reached "that point in life where you know more dead than alive." The place is transformed into a forest of lighted candles, with photos of all the people he treasured in life. To keep the chapel, Davenne calls a young woman, Cécilia, secretary of the auction house that has regained a ring that had belonged to Julie. The friendship between the two seems to evolve when Paul Massigny, a French politician and Davenne's former best friend, dies. The film suggests that Massigny once betrayed Davenne but does not say what constituted the betrayal. When Davenne first visits Cécilia at home, Davenne discovers that the living room is full of pictures of Massigny and, without asking for explanations, leaves. At the chapel, Cecilia tells him that she was one of Massigny's many women and still loves him. She requests that Massigny be represented by one of the candles on the altar. After being rebuffed by Davenne, Cecilia breaks off the relationship and he breaks down. He locks himself away at home, refusing to eat, to see the doctor, or talk. The managing editor of The Globe recommends that Cécilia write him a letter. She finally declares her love, knowing he would never reciprocate, "because to be loved by you, I should be dead." Having forgiven Massigny, Davenne joins her in the chapel, but he is weakened, falls to the ground and dies. Cécilia completes the work, as she had asked the first time, dedicating one last candle to Julien Davenne. ===== A young doctor in Los Angeles becomes a suspect when a series of Jack the Ripper copycat killings is committed. However, when the doctor himself is murdered, his identical twin brother claims to have seen visions of the true killer. ===== Psychiatrist Dan Potter is appointed on the staff of Dr. Leo Bain's experimental psychiatric hospital, known as the Haven, in New Jersey. His predecessor, Dr. Merton, has taken a new position in Philadelphia. Dan, his wife Nell, and their daughter Lyla, move into a rural home in the area. At Haven, Dr. Bain uses lenient security methods, except with the third-floor patients, whom he keeps contained with an electric security door. Among them are former POW Frank Hawkes, pyromaniac evangelist Byron "Preacher" Sutcliff, obese child molester Ronald Elster, and a shy serial killer John "the Bleeder" Skagg, who refuses to show his face. Angered by Dr. Merton's departure, the third-floor patients irrationally blame Dan, believing he has murdered Merton and taken his place. The four men make plans to kill Dan, and retrieve his address from Dr. Bain's office. Dan's younger sister, Toni, who has recently suffered a nervous breakdown, arrives to visit. Dan, Nell, and Tony go to a local rock club, while Lyla is left with babysitter Bunky. A regional power outage occurs that night rendering all electricity in the town ineffective. The security system at Haven fails, and the four men on the third floor escape, killing security guard Ray in the process, before killing another doctor and stealing his car. They stop by a local strip mall that is being looted during the blackout, and arm themselves with weapons from a sporting goods store. The next morning, Preacher arrives at the Potter residence, pretending to be delivering a telegram, but Dan is not home. While Lyla is at school, Nell accompanies Toni to a nuclear power protest, where the women are arrested. Lyla arrives home from school and finds Ronald in the house, claiming to be a babysitter. After Nell phones Dan from jail explaining what has happened, Dan calls Bunky, who goes to check on Lyla. She finds Lyla asleep in her room, and invites her boyfriend Billy there to have sex. Preacher kills Billy by dragging him beneath the bed and stabbing him, while Ronald strangles Bunky. Lyla later awakens unharmed, but Ronald has vanished. Dan arrives home with Nell, Toni, and Tom, a fellow protester Nell and Toni met in jail, whom Toni is attracted to. They find police at the house, and Detective Barnett interviewing Lyla about the missing Bunky and Billy. Lyla explains that a man named Ronald babysat her; Dan recognizes him as one of the Haven patients. Dan and Nell invite Detective Barnett, to stay for dinner. While investigating a noise outside, Barnett is killed with a crossbow by Frank, which is witnessed by the entire family. Finding the phone lines cut, the family barricade themselves in the house. Meanwhile, Dr. Bain arrives after unsuccessfully attempting to reach Dan by phone, but is hacked to death by Preacher with an axe. Dan attempts to reason with the men, assuring them he has not killed Dr. Merton. Ronald throws Barnett's body through a window, and Preacher manages to infiltrate the basement, where he starts a fire. Dan bludgeons Preacher with an extinguisher canister before putting out the fire, locking the basement door behind him. Ronald enters the kitchen and attempts to kill the family, but they work together to disarm him, before Tom kills him with a cleaver. Dan flees outside to retrieve Leo's car. While he does, Tom's nose begins bleeding profusely, revealing his identity as Skagg, the fourth patient. Skagg attempts to kill Toni, but Nell stabs him to death. Hearing the screams, Dan flees back into the house. Moments later, Preacher bursts out of the basement, but Dan stabs him to death. Frank appears with his crossbow, proclaiming, "It's not just us crazy ones who kill." Dan pleads Frank to spare his family. Suddenly, the electricity is restored, and Frank witnesses Dr. Merton being interviewed on a local news station about the missing patients. Hysterical, Frank smashes the television and flees into the night. A short time later, Frank arrives at the local rock club. A drunken woman approaches him inside. He pulls out a pistol, pointing it to her neck. Assuming he is playing a joke, the woman laughs, and so does Frank. ===== A young, disheveled-looking man is awakened on the side of a road by passing traffic. He walks to a nearby lake and attempts to drown himself by filling his clothing with rocks and walking into the water, but is pulled out and taken to a nearby mental hospital for treatment. He is suffering from retrograde amnesia, unable to remember his name or details of his personal life, other that he lives in a house within several miles and has no father to speak of. Without any form of identification, the patient is designated “John Doe #83”, and placed under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Gail Farmer. Almost immediately, John begins to display odd behavior, with a fellow patient nicknamed “The Messiah” suddenly developing a delusion that he intends to behead him. At her home later that night, Gail hears a window being broken and witnesses a John entering her house and stealing a necklace from her nightstand. When she calls the police, they can find no evidence of a break-in, and her colleagues at the hospital tell her that John is fast asleep in his dormitory. Farmer quickly suspects that John is not all that he seems, as she continues to have strange visions while he is asleep. She theorizes to her boss Dr. Denman that John has some form of telepathy, wherein he “sends” his dreams into the minds of other people, causing them to experience semi-corporeal sensory hallucinations for the duration of the dream. Denman dismisses Gail's hypothesis as her developing a maternal bond with the young patient, and plans to have him treated with electroshock therapy against her wishes. Meanwhile, both Gail and John are haunted by the presence of a middle-aged woman named Jerolyn, apparently John's mother, who tells Gail that she must release John for everyone's well-being but disappears before she can be questioned further. After John attempts suicide a second time, he's taken in by Denman for electroshock therapy. The moment the current is activated, John unconsciously sends violent and destructive hallucinations towards everyone in the hospital, both staff and patients. Gail rushes in and removes the electrodes. Now believing her hypothesis, Denman begins intensive study of John, while Gail continues to see Jerolyn and other cryptic visions sent by John, including one in which he lies dead with his body covered in rats. She suspects that the visions are memories of the recent past, repressed into the subconscious due to trauma. After John tells her that his mother used to lock him up in the house, she theorizes that Jerolyn, who believed that her son was a miraculous virgin birth, kept him trapped inside her house for his entire life, eventually trying to kill him with carbon monoxide poisoning when she believed he'd leave her. John's telepathy quickly becomes more and more uncontrollable, especially after he begins “sending” while conscious. Despite Gail's protestations, John is taken into the surgical ward to have an intracranial operation to identify and neutralize the receptors causing his powers. Before the operation begins, the local Sheriff arrives to tell Denman and Gail that they found John's house and mother, but that she's been dead of carbon monoxide poisoning for five days, indicating that he killed her and not the other way around. John's placed under guard, but the moment the surgeons pierce his skull with a drill he suddenly lashes out again, this time causing the room to explode into flames. In the chaos, John steals Gail's car keys and escapes, guided by a vision of his mother. When they arrive at their house, he turns on the gas stove to kill a swarm of cockroaches, but as he lies in bed he suddenly realizes that his mother is trying to kill him and snaps out of his hallucination. Gail bursts in and drags a suffocating John away, as they're pursued by the projection of his Jerolyn. They manage to get out of the house just before the gas ignites, destroying the house. Some time later, John has regained his memory and tells his story – his mother tried to kill him, and when he realized what was happening, he fought her and inadvertently knocked her unconscious, leaving her to suffocate while fleeing the house. Unable to cope with what he'd done, his id took the form of a projection of his mother, trying to compel him to kill himself on multiple occasions. Seemingly cured, he leaves the hospital as Gail looks on, only to enter his truck with his mother sitting next to him, indicating he's still suffering from his condition and is bound to relapse. ===== During a college costume party, Peter prepares to initiate four new pledges into Alpha Sigma Rho. The four consist of Jeff, a boy from an opulent upbringing, Marti, an intelligent girl from a poor background, Denise, a promiscuous, heavy drinking party-girl, and Seth, a stoner and surfer from California. The group are forced to spend the night in Garth Manor, an abandoned mansion once owned by a man named Ramon Garth, who murdered his wife and three deformed children; following the murders, Garth hanged himself. While Garth had a fourth child, Andrew, his body was never found and legend states that Andrew still lurks within the mansion. Peter and the rest of the students drive the four pledges up the mansion, leaving them alone at the gates. Seth and Denise leave Marti and Jeff alone to go have sex. The two discuss their contrasting backgrounds, before the windows in the parlor suddenly burst open and an apparition frightens Marti. In reality, Peter, along with two other students: May and Scott, have set up scares all over the mansion to frighten the pledges. While walking around the side of the house, May is pulled down a hole, where she is murdered by an unseen assailant, who violently decapitates her. Following this, Scott is also murdered by the same figure on the roof. Peter attempts to prank Denise, but she is oblivious to his efforts. He goes to search for Scott, only to discover his body strung up on the roof. He flees and attempts to escape through the fence with his key, only to be attacked by an unknown assailant. He runs into a nearby hedge maze where he and the audience realize there are two assailants. Unable to find his way out, one of them murders him with a scythe. In the house, the four pledges quickly discover the tricks and pranks set up around the mansion for them. Seth and Denise return to the bedroom to have sex and consume drugs; Seth leaves Denise alone to use the restroom, only to return and discover May's severed head under the sheets. Panicked, Seth jumps the mansion gates to alert the police. Marti and Jeff also discover Scott's body, before Marti locks herself in one of the bedrooms, while Jeff goes to investigate a light in the hedge maze. He enters the maze, where he finds Peter's remains. He flees back to the house to inform Marti of the murder, and the pair theorize that Andrew Garth could be behind the murders. While their backs are turned, a large figure begins to emerge from the floor behind them. Armed with a pitchfork, Jeff wounds the assailant, who seemingly disappears. They remove the rug, only to discover a trap door through which the assailant has fled. The couple descends into the tunnels below, in which they discover Denise's corpse, along with the preserved remains of Garth's family members. Suddenly, a large and disfigured man appears and pursues them. Jeff attempts to subdue the man, who knocks him down a flight of steps, badly injuring him. Another killer appears, surprising the couple. The Garth brothers corner Marti and Jeff, but they are able to escape through a concealed door, fleeing back to the bedroom. Seth finally arrives at the local police station, begging for help. The police do not take his claims seriously, believing him to be drunk, and ask him to leave. Seth pretends to leave the police station, only to take a shotgun and some bullets, before escaping through a window. He hijacks a vehicle from a civilian, informing him that he is going to Garth Manor. Seth arrives back at the mansion, where he is ambushed by one of the Garth brothers; they struggle, before Seth shoots and kills him. Alerted by the noise, Jeff and Marti meet him in the entryway of the mansion, where the other killer appears and attacks Seth, dragging him into an unlit corner of the room. Marti and Jeff are frightened by gunfire and Marti attempts to recover the shotgun. Andrew Garth emerges from the darkness and pursues Marti and Jeff through the house and back to the bedroom, where they barricade the door. Jeff urges Marti to escape out a window. Before he can follow suit, Andrew breaks through the door and hurls him to the ground below, killing him. A frightened Marti enters the hedge maze, where she finds Peter's corpse. She pries the keys from his fingers, before escaping. She is able to get through the gates using the keys, before attempting to escape in Seth's stolen vehicle. She successfully hot-wires the vehicle, but is ambushed by Andrew who jumps on the roof of the vehicle. He smashes the windshield and a struggle ensues, resulting in one of the spiked gates being knocked over. Marti sees the gate and accelerates, impaling and killing Andrew. Marti loses consciousness. Waking in the morning as the sun rises over the mansion, Marti emerges from the car with Andrew still impaled, and walks away. ===== At the beginning of the story Ray Talloway (Neale Donald Walsch) is a construction manager whose business is near bankruptcy. His semi-estranged daughter Cheryl (Sarah Rutan) quarrels with him on the slightest pretext, while her husband Alex (Gregory Linington) is one of a small group of minor criminals. Cheryl and Alex have one daughter, Grace (shared role by Meghan McCandless as older Grace and Angelina Hess as younger Grace), who is the indigo child of the story, and who eventually reunites the family. One night, Alex takes Cheryl to a "party" that promises something exciting to happen to the participants (presumably overuse of drugs). Cheryl is worried by leaving Grace alone in the car; therefore, Alex leaves to check on her. A few minutes later, a police detachment arrests every one of the criminals. Grace, who was asleep in the car, wakes and sees her mother taken to prison. Ray, who is asleep at home, receives a call from the police station informing him of his daughter's arrest. He goes to the police station, arriving deep in telephone conversation with one of his business partners, who warns him of protest by environmentalists at the site of one of his latest projects. This causes him to abandon his daughter at the station and drive to the site. The sight of the crowd protesting his efforts to eradicate a forest to make room for a new highway, combined with the effect of having his daughter arrested, causes him to experience a small nervous breakdown. Here, the film jumps ahead five years. In the interim, Ray has lost his job and is living at home alone, as the owner of a very old car which is on the verge of disintegration. Cheryl has been in jail for possession of illegal drugs even though she is innocent. Ray has neither come to visit her nor bailed her out of prison. Grace is living in a children's home superintended by a nurse (Saffron Henke). Alex has fled, possibly to Canada, and has not appeared since. A visit by her lawyer leaves Cheryl afraid for Grace's safety, the lawyer having intimated that Alex might kidnap Grace in exchange for money he believes to be in Cheryl's possession. After this scene is over, viewers see the lawyer walking to a car and accepting a bribe. Cheryl, who has not seen this, calls Ray asking that he visit her. When he arrives, Cheryl tells him of the lawyer's information and asks him to retrieve Grace and take care of her until Cheryl is released on parole. Ray does so, out of a sense of duty towards his daughter and guilt at being an inadequate father and grandfather. Upon her reappearance, Grace is revealed to have developed her supermundane abilities to the point where they are unsettling to Ray, who unceremoniously kidnaps her with her consent and aid. Having escaped, the two meet with Ray's girlfriend Sally (Lynette Louise), who temporarily harbors them. Ray and Grace later drive north to Ashland, Oregon, where they think to hide until Cheryl's parole takes effect. On the way, they spend the night in a hotel and begin to develop a bond. The hotel manager is astonished next morning when Grace brings his father, who suffers a severe case of Alzheimer's disease, into waking consciousness. He reacts with the accusation that it is the work of the devil, whereupon Ray and Grace leave, while the father and son begin to reconcile. At a park, Grace befriends a lonely boy called Nicholas, who like her is one of the indigo children. The nature thereof is explained to Ray (and thus to the viewer) by Nicholas' mother while the children play. Further north, Ray's car finally fails to operate so that he and Grace are forced to walk. They are befriended by a group of teenagers who are on their way to Mt. Ashland, one of whom is played by Neale's son, Karus Walsch, with whom they spend the night in a cabin. Karus's character, Logan, is disturbed by Grace's telling of a story of his childhood that revives painful memories. According to her, he could communicate with angels when he was a boy but suppressed his ability when his older brother beat him whenever he talked about it. Another one of the teenagers, Emma, expresses skepticism and anger at Grace's powers, especially when Grace claims to see the spirit of Emma's mother; later, Emma accepts Grace's ways and becomes grateful. When Ray and Grace arrive at the arranged cabin, they find to Ray's surprise that it is occupied by Ray's long-estranged son Stewart (Dane Bowman). Stewart is there to collect the money that he thinks Cheryl hid and believes that Grace knows where it is. He takes her hostage; at this, Ray claims that Grace requires a medicine that is in his suitcase. Stewart allows Ray to open the suitcase, in which is no medicine but a pistol, with which Ray intends to frighten his son. As Ray reaches for the pistol, he suddenly recalls his past and reconsiders his decision. He attempts to apologize to Stewart, but Stewart refuses to accept this. An arrival of two police officers at the cabin surprises them all, with the exception of Grace, who had summoned them. Grace reveals that the younger of the two, Officer Whitfield, was one of the officers who had captured Cheryl, and that he has illegally been using the money Stewart sought. The film ends with the reconciliation and reunion of the family. ===== The Enterprise welcomes aboard Dr. Leah Brahms, a lead designer of the Galaxy-class starship engines. Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, who also had previously used a lifelike holodeck simulation of Brahms to help save the Enterprise in "Booby Trap", is excited to meet her, but is frustrated when she complains about modifications he has made to the engines of the Enterprise. La Forge also learns that Brahms is married, a fact not noted in the holodeck simulation. Brahms learns how La Forge previously saved the Enterprise, and asks another crewman to show her the simulation. Alarmed, La Forge tries to stop her but is too late. Brahms discovers the holodeck simulation and accuses La Forge of invading her privacy. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is attacked by a strange space-faring creature that is nearly the size of the ship. Taking defensive action, Captain Picard orders a low- power phaser burst on the creature, inadvertently killing it. Scanning the creature, Data finds another smaller entity inside of it, and the crew realizes the larger creature only attacked to protect its unborn. The crew performs a Cesarean section, using the ship's phasers as a scalpel to free the newborn. As the ship turns to leave, the newborn attaches itself to the ship and begins feeding off its power systems, imprinting on the Enterprise as if it were the creature's mother. As the ship's power supplies run low, the crew finds a nearby debris field toward which the larger creature appeared to have been traveling, and realize it would serve as a better feeding ground for the infant. After the crew arrives at the debris field on the last of the ship's power reserves, they find they are unable to dislodge the creature. Worse, they also discover the creature is emitting radio signals attracting more of its kind from the debris field, and they are heading straight toward the Enterprise. La Forge and Brahms put aside their differences and devise a solution: altering the frequency of energy to "sour the milk", causing the infant to leave the ship and join the other creatures. As the Enterprise's power is restored, La Forge and Brahms make up and determine they can still be friends. ===== The story is set in the late 1920s to early 1930s. Tristana is a young woman who, following the death of her mother, becomes a ward of nobleman don Lope Garrido. Don Lope falls in love with her and thus treats her as wife as well as daughter from the age of 19. But, by age 21 Tristana starts finding her voice, to demand to study music, art and other subjects with which she wishes to become independent, chafing under Lope, who thinks women are untrustworthy and should be kept at home. She meets the young artist Horacio Díaz, falls in love, and eventually leaves Toledo to live with him. When she falls ill, she returns to don Lope. The illness results in her losing a leg, which changes her prospects; here, the film substantially varies from the novel. Don Lope inherits money from his sister, Tristana eventually marries him, and, when don Lope is ill, Tristana finishes him off by feigning calling the doctor and opening the window to the winter cold. ===== Optimistic psychiatrist Dr. Donovan MacLeod wants to prove his theory that mental patients can benefit from group therapy. His method of treatment, with no violence or punishment, is met with a great deal of resistance from his unyielding and self-righteous head nurse, Lucretia Terry, who believes in traditional methods such as strait-jackets and padded cells for treating the mentally ill. Head of the hospital Dr. Harrington is weak-willed. Terry's assistant, nurse Bracken, supports her superior's stand. After much trial and error and the harrowing near-rape of a patient, MacLeod's ideas prevail in spite of the opposition and meet some success. Patients include distraught mother Lorna Medford, former prostitute Marion, pyromaniac Edna, and former schoolteacher Irene. ===== The novel is set in Japan after World War II. The protagonist, Kikuji, who has been orphaned, becomes involved with Mrs. Ota, a former mistress of his father's. She commits suicide, seemingly because of the shame she associates with the affair, and after her death Kikuji transfers much of his love, and his grief over Mrs Ota's death, to her daughter, Fumiko. ===== Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) is babysitting his grandson at his house in the Australian outback when a massive razorback boar attacks him, smashing through his house and carrying off his grandson to devour alive. Jake is accused of murdering the child and while his account of the events are met with considerable scepticism, he is ultimately acquitted due to lack of evidence for accountability. The event destroys his credibility and reputation however, and he vows revenge on the boar. Two years later, American wildlife reporter Beth Winters (Judy Morris) journeys to the outback to document the hunting of Australian wildlife to be processed into pet food at a run-down factory. Beth gets video footage of two thugs, Benny Baker (Chris Haywood) and his brother Dicko (David Argue) illegally making pet food out of animals and is subsequently chased down by them by car. They catch up, force her off the road and attempt to rape her only to be chased off by the same boar that killed Jake's grandson. Beth attempts to take shelter in her car but the hog rips off the door, drags her out and eats her. With no witnesses, her disappearance is subsequently ruled an accident resulting from having fallen down an abandoned mine shaft after leaving her wrecked car. Some time later, Beth's husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) travels to Australia in search of her and encounters Jake, whom Beth interviewed during her initial report. Jake refers him to the local cannery where he meets Benny and Dicko. He pretends to be a Canadian visitor and convinces them to take him along on their next kangaroo hunt, only to be abandoned by them when he spoils a potential kill. Carl is then attacked by a herd of wild pigs, spurred on by the giant boar, who chase him through the night and force him take shelter atop a windmill. The next morning the pigs knock over the windmill but Carl is saved by landing in a pond at the windmill's base, in which the pigs fear to swim. Once the pigs leave Carl attempts to make his way back to civilisation, all the while suffering from dehydration-induced hallucinations, before finally reaching the house of Sarah Cameron (Arkie Whiteley): a friend of Jake who has been studying the local pig population and the only one who believes his story of the giant razorback. While recovering at Sarah's house, Carl learns from Sarah that something has been causing the wild pigs excess stress, leading them into unusual behaviour such as increased aggression and cannibalising their own young. Meanwhile, after learning that Carl had seen the razorback, Jake sets out for the pumping station and manages to shoot it with one of Sarah's tracking darts. He also finds Beth's wedding ring in the boar's faeces which he returns to a grieving Carl. After overhearing a radio conversation suggesting that Jake knows what really happened to Beth Winters, Benny and Dicko, fearful that Jake is attempting to implicate them in her death, attack him at his camp, breaking his legs with bolt-cutters and leaving him to be killed by the razorback. His remains are later found by Sarah and Carl, along with marks in the dirt made by Dicko's cleaver. Realising that the brothers were responsible for both his wife and Jake's death, Carl attacks Benny at his and Dicko's lair, interrogating Benny by dangling him over a mine shaft before dropping him into it. As Sarah rounds up a posse to hunt down the razorback using the tracker Jake shot into it, Carl corners Dicko at the cannery when the razorback suddenly appears and mauls Dicko before Carl can shoot him. The razorback then chases Carl into the factory when Sarah suddenly arrives and is seemingly killed by the boar, who continues to pursue Carl even after impaling its throat on a broken pipe. In its maddened rampage, the razorback ends up damaging the cannery's generator which sends the machines running out of control as Carl lures the boar up onto a conveyor belt that throws it onto a giant fan, chopping it to pieces. After shutting down the machinery, Carl finds and rescues Sarah, who had merely been knocked unconscious, and the two embrace. ===== Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) learns that Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Katy Moore (Amy Adams) have started dating. Michael Scott (Steve Carell) gives Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) a glowing checkpoint review. When Ryan expresses his interest in starting his own business someday, Michael takes it upon himself to teach Ryan the "ten rules of business". The fire alarm sounds, and while Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) and Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) both attempt to take charge of the evacuation, Michael pushes others out of the way in his escape out of the building. The employees play games to pass the time, including "Desert Island Picks" and "Who Would You Do?" When Ryan reveals that he is attending business school at night, Michael becomes enamored of his newfound protégé. Dwight becomes noticeably jealous of Ryan's favor with Michael, and he is seen sulking in his car to the tune "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M. When Michael mentions that he left his cell phone in the office, Dwight rushes back into the building to fetch it. Michael asks Ryan to call his cell phone to help Dwight find it. The phone rings, which happens to be in Michael's pocket. Dwight emerges, coughing, from the building and reveals that the fire was started by Ryan, who left a cheese pita in the toaster-oven set to "oven" instead of "toaster". Dwight and Michael mock Ryan and dub him "The Fire Guy" by doing a song parody of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire". ===== Although informed early in October that he must fire somebody by the end of the month, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) waits until the last day of the month, Halloween, and still has not fired anyone. Meanwhile, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) post Dwight Schrute's (Rainn Wilson) résumé on the internet, and when a prospective employer (Cumberland Mills in Maryland) calls, Jim pretends to be Michael and gives Dwight a great reference. When the company calls Dwight to set up an interview, Dwight immediately ruins his chances by arguing with the caller over the importance and relevance of martial arts on his résumé. Later in the day, Pam suggests that Jim should apply for the Cumberland Mills position. Jim is quietly hurt by the suggestion that Pam would not miss him if he left. After several failed attempted firings of other employees, Michael calls Creed Bratton (Creed Bratton) into his office to fire him. Creed, in turn, convinces Michael to let Devon (Devon Abner) go. After Michael fires Devon, Devon angrily rebuffs Michael's attempts to save their friendship, and invites everyone in the office (except Michael, Creed, Dwight and Angela) to join him at a local bar. As Jim leaves, Pam apologizes for pushing him into taking the Cumberland job and assures him that she would "blow her brains out" if he ever left. Jim admits to the camera that Pam is the only thing keeping him there. When the group leaves the office, Devon smashes a pumpkin over Michael's car in revenge. At the end of the episode, Michael is alone at his home in front of the television, upset over firing Devon. When trick-or-treaters come, Michael cheerfully gives them a generous amount of candy. ===== Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) meet with Christian (Tim Meadows), who represents the governmental paper interests of the entire surrounding county. Taking him on could mean the branch will not have to downsize, a threat that has been looming for the past year. Jan is disgusted when Michael changes the meeting location from a hotel meeting room to Chili's without permission and persists in jokes and personal discussion instead of getting down to business. However, she discovers at the end of the day that there is a method to his madness, as the bonding between Michael and Christian allows him to close the deal. Afterwards, in the parking lot, Michael and the recently divorced Jan kiss and leave together. During the meeting Michael calls Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) to read from one of the joke books in his desk, where she finds a screenplay written by Michael entitled Threat Level: Midnight, starring himself as "Agent Michael Scarn". The staff perform a read-through of the script, in which the character sequence "Dwigt" appears. They realize Michael based his incompetent sidekick on Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), but later changed the name with a search and replace, which did not affect the single misspelling of Dwight's name. Dwight is upset and shuts down the exercise to invite everyone to set off fireworks outside, but only Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) follows. When the staff discuss their worst first dates, Pam astounds them with a story of how her date forgot about her and left her behind at a high school hockey game. Their astonishment increases when they realize the date was her now-fiancé, Roy. Later, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam break off their respective evening plans to enjoy an impromptu dinner on the roof and watch Dwight and Kevin fool around with fireworks. The next day Jim half-jokingly remarks to Pam that this was their first date. When Pam is unfazed by this, Jim gets angry and taunts her about the hockey game date. Hurt, Pam breaks off the conversation. That morning, Dwight, having spent the night in the office, sees Jan coming by to retrieve her car, igniting gossip that she had sex with Michael. Michael reveals to the documentary crew that they made out and talked long into the night before falling asleep. Jan calls and says she regrets what happened, even accusing Michael of deliberately getting her drunk to initiate a romantic encounter with her, but Michael refuses to accept her change of heart. He and Jim share a moment of confusion at their (apparently) unrequited loves. ===== A group of Confederate guerillas are trying to raid the Union Army, very late in the American Civil War. The southerners are ambushed, but thanks to the sharp- shooting of Frank James (Gabriel Macht) and the distracting and at the same time clever antics of Jesse James (Colin Farrell), the guerillas manage to survive and pull through. The James brothers, along with their war buddies, the Younger brothers, congratulate themselves, but (during the ride to reconnect with their unit) are surprised to learn that their army has pulled out, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the previous day at Appomattox, and the war is over. The group decides to return home to their families and farms. Things have changed when they get back to Missouri. The town is occupied by the Union Army, Jesse's childhood friend, Zee (Ali Larter), has grown up into a very attractive young woman, and there is a man hanging in the town square, ostensibly for treason against the North. In actuality, those farmers with large amounts of land are being pressured to sell their farms to the railroad company, who are pushing across North America. If they don't sell their land to the well-groomed, suit-wearing Thaddeus Rains, (Harris Yulin) and his secret-service organizer, Allan Pinkerton (Timothy Dalton) the farmers are burned out of their homes, or killed outright. Frank James finds that the railroad doesn't even need their land—they're just buying it as cheap as they can get, to push the railroad through. The James and Younger brothers don't want to sell, and Cole Younger (Scott Caan) loses his temper when several 'railroad men' approach him about selling, and kills two of them. The army decides to hang him (since they were working for the government, he faces charges of treason), but his brothers Bob (Will McCormack) and Jim Younger (Gregory Smith), along with Jesse James and Frank James, decide to rescue him, with some help from Zee. During the rescue, Jesse is shot in the shoulder, and has to hide out at Zee's farm. A few weeks later, when Jesse has recovered, the railroad sets fire to the James' home, killing Jesse's and Frank's mother (Kathy Bates). The James and Younger brothers ride out for revenge against the railroad men—but instead focus on the bank's payroll, reasoning that 'you could kill a hundred railroad men and they won't care', but if they steal the payroll and attack supply trains, the army will sit up and take notice. Dubbing themselves the 'James-Younger' gang, they set out robbing banks, with Pinkerton and Rains struggling to stop them. The impact of the James gang is only increased when they commit the first daylight bank-robbery in history, turning themselves into folk heroes in the process. Eventually, the gang comes to blows over leadership, with Cole Younger feeling that Jesse is getting an overblown ego from the publicity of 'his' gang's activities. Jesse backs down, after a bitter argument, and lets Cole plan and execute a robbery; Cole's chosen target proves to be a trap set by Pinkerton and Rains. Jim Younger is shot and killed, and Jesse and his brother (who are tired of the killing and fighting) leave the gang, with Jesse later marrying Zee. The gang does not do as well without the James brothers. People don't respect the Younger brothers as much as they did the James-Younger Gang, preferring Jesse's easy-going 'nice guy' personality and his warm, friendly and accommodating manner, which had won the affection of the townsfolk in previous robberies. When Jesse and Zee attempt to start a new life, Pinkerton finds and arrests Jesse. During the train ride to the jail, Jesse is chained in a rear car, but manages to trick one of the deputies into showing his gun, which he uses to escape to the top of the train car. Meanwhile, Zee and the remainder of the Gang shoot a cannon at the locomotive, stopping the train and rescuing Jesse. Confronted in the final moments by the two men he's come to hate, Jesse shoots neither Rains nor Pinkerton, but rather Rains' prized watch, a treasured gift from his father. Pinkerton tells Jesse, through gritted teeth, that he should go to Tennessee, as 'the railroad has no interest in Tennessee', and therefore, neither does Pinkerton (since Pinkerton's being paid by the railroad). ===== Jouji Gouda is a new transfer student at Hakuryo High School. On his first day of class, he fell in love at first sight for Akane Suzumiya and boldly proposed to her on the spot. The two characters conflict with each other greatly, but Jouji never gives up and would do anything to express his love towards Akane. Although his attempts to win Akane's love at first do nothing but anger Akane, he gradually starts to make an impression on her, inspiring Akane to be more honest about her own feelings. There are two possible endings. In the good ending, Akane admits she might have developed feelings for Jouji—but confesses that she might be using him as a rebound guy since he reminds her of her sister's ex-boyfriend. He then finds a new true love in the form of Muv-Luv's Sumika, only to have his heart broken about a minute later when she goes running after Takeru. In the true ending, Jouji transforms into a hero called Dimension Knight Tekkumen (時空の騎士テックメン, "Jikuu no Kishi Tekkumen") and fights aliens. Either way, he is said to have transferred out of the school after being scouted for a baseball team in Muv-Luv Extra, which Kouzuki suggests might have been Meiya's doing. In the ending of the later produced Akane Maniax OVA, Akane told Jouji that she has been accepted by an American university and will go there to further her studies. She still said it was nice to have met him. Later, after seeing Sumika running to Takeru, Jouji was taken away by Meiya and Tsukoyomi in their long limousine, presumably arranged to get some compensation and transfer to another school as a result. ===== Kevin and Rachel move to Los Angeles to follow their dream – making it in cinema. They can't believe their luck when they find the perfect house on a hill called Edendale – right next door to Hollywood. Here, all the neighbors are in "the business", and they have high hopes for Kevin and Rachel. But Rachel's dreams soon turn to nightmares. First, there's something hiding in the closet, then, the awful crying in the walls, and now, Kevin is acting strange. Terrified, Rachel thinks she must be going crazy – but could her insanity extend to the hill itself? As the neighbors eagerly await the completion of Kevin's work, Rachel must convince him to leave this place before the powerful Ghosts of Edendale reach through time to possess his very soul. ===== Like much of Southern's work, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes presents a detailed portrait of American culture during the 1950s. Many stories, in particular "You're Too Hip, Baby", "The Blood of a Wig", and "The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner", explore the mentality of the hipster and the pretentiousness of countercultures. Other stories, like "Recruiting for the Big Parade" and "Twirling at Ole Miss", present unusual non-fiction, and may be viewed as an early form of gonzo journalism. "Twirlin' at Ole Miss" has been cited by Tom Wolfe as one of the defining works of the genre and as such it was included in Wolfe and A.W. Johnson's anthology The New Journalism.Lee Hill - A Grand Guy: The Life and Art of Terry Southern (Bloomsbury, 2002), p.206 The majority of the book's stories, like the eponymous "Red-Dirt Marijuana", simply present detailed character sketches and bizarre flights of fancy. In "The Sun and the Still- Born Stars", a Texan farmer wages a surreal, Beowulfian struggle against a mysterious sea monster. In "Love Is a Many Splendored", Franz Kafka receives an obscene crank call from Sigmund Freud. Beneath these strange juxtapositions, Southern explores themes of alienation, love, and truth. The collection has been widely praised by authors such as Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and Kurt Vonnegut. Joseph Heller characterized it as "the cutting edge of black comedy." ===== The film follows how 13-year-old Kenny, his family and neighborhood deal with the intrusion of a French- speaking Quebec crew filming a documentary about Kenny's adaptation to his unusual congenital condition, the absence of his pelvis and legs. It was filmed in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, United States. ===== In the first year of the , the demon lord escaped from hell and plotted to conquer the surface world ruled by the . The Getsu brothers fought against Ryūkotsuki, each wielding one of the three spiritual that have been passed within the clan for generations. However, the brothers were ultimately defeated by the demon and only , the youngest of the three, survived. Vowing to avenge his slain brothers, Fūma ventures into to recover the three stolen Pulse Blades and summon the spirits of his brothers to defeat Ryūkotsuki. ===== Foster brothers John and Charlie Robinson are transit cops patrolling the New York City Subway. On Christmas, they chase a mugger into a subway tunnel. Nearby trains are halted, but transit captain Donald Patterson allows the money train – hauling subway revenue – to continue. The teenage mugger is shot dead by transit cops guarding the money train, triggering a brawl between them and the brothers. Patterson blames John and Charlie for delaying the money train. Charlie asks John for money to buy a Christmas present, but instead pays off gambling debts to mobster Mr. Brown. Brown intends to throw Charlie off a building, but John intervenes. Revealing Charlie is $15,000 in debt, Brown accepts John’s promise to deliver the money in a few days. John and Charlie both take a liking to Grace Santiago, a newly assigned decoy transit officer. When a serial killer known as the Torch robs a token booth and sets it on fire, John and Charlie rescue the booth attendant and put out the fire, but Torch escapes. John rejects Charlie’s plan to rob the money train to pay off their debts. When they and Grace are assigned to patrol the money train, Charlie discovers a grate in the train’s floor and a maintenance ladder leading to Central Park. A brawl breaks out between John and another officer, quickly involving the entire squad. Again blaming the brothers and accusing them of taking some of the money, Patterson continues to berate them even after realizing a collection agent miscounted. Charlie tells John the best time to rob the money train would be New Year's Eve, due to looser security and the year’s highest proceeds: up to $4,000,000 that night. John gives Charlie $15,000 to pay back Mr. Brown, but Charlie loses it to a thief on the train and is beaten by Brown’s men. Returning home, he is saddened to spot Grace and John sleeping together. In a sting operation to apprehend Torch, Grace is disguised as a token booth attendant. Realizing the trap, Torch distracts police by pushing a man in front of a moving train, killing him. Torch sprays gasoline on Grace, but before he can light it, Charlie alerts the other officers, who open fire. John pursues the killer into another station, where they fight. Torch is burned by his gasoline and killed by a moving train. Patterson fires Charlie for ruining the ambush; trying to defend Charlie, John is fired as well. John storms into Mr. Brown’s club, after hearing about Charlie and defeats the mobsters utilizing his Kung-Fu skills, threatening Brown if anything happens to Charlie, killing him with a 360-degree kick into a glass enclosure. Grace persuades John to intervene in Charlie’s robbery. Charlie enters the money train from beneath and drives it to the ladder, but is unable to escape with the money due to the presence of a group of cops. Reaching the train, John persuades Charlie to drive further to avoid arrest, and they disable the brakes to prevent Patterson activating them remotely. Patterson deploys a steel barricade, but John increases the train to maximum speed and smashes through. Transit control officer Kowalski declares the money train a runaway and starts clearing tracks, but Patterson diverts the train onto a track occupied by a passenger train to prevent its escape. The money train rams the passenger train and slows down, but speeds up again, continuing to ram the train with increasing risk of derailing it and killing everyone on board. Without brakes and the throttle jammed, the brothers decide to throw the train into reverse to save the passenger train. Charlie positions an iron bar to trip the reverse lever, and the brothers climb on top of the train. The trains collide, activating the reverse lever, and the brothers jump across to the passenger train as the money train derails. The brothers try to escape but are spotted by Patterson. Fed up with his abuse, they punch him in the face after he spits at John. As Patterson shouts out for their arrest, but instead only arrested by Grace for endangering the passengers’ lives. The brothers exit onto Times Square just as the New Year countdown begins. During the celebration, John realizes Charlie has a bag with over $500,000. ===== Without Evidence is based on the true story of Michael Francke, who was the Head of Corrections for the state of Oregon before being murdered. Just before his murder, Francke visits his brother and informs him of a drug ring involving his prison colleagues. When Michael is killed, his brother begins his own investigation into the murder, leading him to more lies and deceit. ===== An oil prospector, Henry "Hank" Dowling (Lloyd Ingraham), has raised his free-spirited daughter, Alice "Bingo" Dowling (Joan Crawford), in the jungle of South America. He asks his friend, Ben Murchison (Ernest Torrence), to come work with him on oil wells that have made him rich. Just as Ben arrives with his friend, Howard Presley (Holmes Herbert), Hank is killed by a transient oil worker who has designs on Bingo. At a relatively young age, Bingo has now inherited her father's company and wealth and Ben is appointed her guardian. She calls him and Howard both uncles, though they are not related. She is sassy and without refinement, hitting anyone she disagrees with. Her "uncles" decide that the wild Bingo should move to New York City, learn proper deportment and enter society. While they are aboard the ocean liner, she meets the young, good-looking and well- educated charmer Andy McAllister (Robert Montgomery). It is love at first sight for Bingo and Andy while on the boat, but because Andy lacks money to care for Bingo, Ben convinces the two to part in New York and see if they still miss each other after a few months. Life goes on in New York, but roughly a year later, the two reunite and declare that their feelings for each other have not departed. The two begin seeing each other again. Still, because she is very wealthy and he isn't, he is afraid of what people might think and tells her that he cannot marry her and live off her money. To complicate the situation further, Bingo's Uncle Ben discourages the relationship and "Uncle" Howard actually has feelings for Bingo herself. As Bingo is about to declare their intention to marry, Ben even offers Andy $20,000 to start a new life, knowing full-well that would cause him to leave Bingo. When Andy turns to second-string Marjory (Gwen Lee), an irate Bingo loses her temper and shoots him in the shoulder. They make up immediately after the shooting and forgive each other. Changing his mind about leaving her, Andy decides that Bingo is the woman for him and wants to marry her. Ben offers him a job in the oil wells making a substantial salary, and the two intend to live together now. ===== Jack Moniker is a Chicago firefighter who is injured on the job. Using his disability, he retires to the small Caribbean island of Saint Nicholas, and buys a small property. Anthony Croyden Hayes, appointed by the British crown as governor of St. Nicholas, is more concerned with vacationing than governing. Miss Phillipa Lloyd, who is visiting St. Nicholas with some friends, decides to stay permanently and becomes Jack's girlfriend. Jack befriends financially troubled reggae musician Ernest Reed and they form Club Paradise, which they market as a Club Med-style resort complete with a brochure that features photographs of Jack in various disguises on every page. This attracts a handful of tourists, including Barry and Barry who are there for the marijuana and the women. Much of the film involves the tourists' comic misadventures adjusting to island life and the low-rent facilities of Club Paradise. Also traveling to the island is The New York Times travel writer Terry Hamlin who ends up spending most of her time in the company of Governor Hayes. Adding to the fun is suburban housewife Linda White, who is vacationing with her husband Randy, who despite the very favorable surroundings and atmosphere, is not very randy. Voit Zerbe plays a key role, as a developer who wants to run Jack and Ernest off their property so he can build a massive high-end casino on the beach as part of a deal he's making with two business partners. To do that, he uses the help of the local prime minister Solomon Gundy and the prime minister's men to cause trouble and get Club Paradise to close "legally." Jack and Ernest go so far as to sneak aboard Zerbe's yacht to provide some "useful intelligence" for Governor Hayes by finding out what is going to happen to the future of Saint Nicholas. They skin dive to the yacht where they are captured by local police and thrown in jail. When Prime Minister Gundy's strong arm tactics don't work, he orders a military takeover of the island. Ernest builds up a resistance force, and St. Nicholas is soon threatened with the possibility of civil war, which is averted at the last minute with assistance from Jack and Governor Hayes. As Gundy's takeover fails, Zerbe and his partners leave Saint Nicholas and head for the Cayman Islands. ===== Ellie DeWitt (Rebecca De Mornay) is a former U.S. Marine who wants to become an FBI Agent. However, while she has great physical skills, she struggles at the academic level. Conversely, her roommate Janis Zuckerman (Mary Gross) is highly intelligent, but physically very weak. Overcoming the male recruits' assumptions of them, Ellie and Janis team up to help each other through the basic training so they can both become federal agents. During their training, Ellie and Janis must deal with an instructor who seems determined to fail the pair, a fellow trainee who seems more interested in flirting with Ellie (until Ellie asserts her Marine training and pins him against the wall in one exercise), and befriend a geeky co-trainee who seems unable to complete the smallest task. Joining forces, the three tackle the final practice simulation, (badly) forging the instructor's signature ('he sneezed') and breaking into the telephone room to discover the location of the "hostage" and use their radio to redirect the other agents to make sure they don't find the hostage first. The two graduate with honors and in the credits scene, both Ellie and Janis are assigned as partners to the Los Angeles office. ===== On September 10, 1929, American millionaire J. J. Bunyan hosts a dinner for other millionaires in New York. Acting on a suggestion from Mortimer Bayliss, the curator of Bunyan's art collection, the group decide to have fun with their money by making a sort of tontine: Bunyan and nine other millionaires contribute fifty thousand dollars each to a fund, and the last son of the men to get married will receive all the money plus the compound interest accumulated. The men are not allowed to tell their sons about the tontine. The story jumps to June 20, 1955. Retired butler Augustus Keggs is the landlord of three neighbouring homes in London suburb Valley Fields: Castlewood, Peacehaven, and The Nook. Keggs's former employer Lord Uffenham and Lord Uffenham's niece Jane live with Keggs in Castlewood. Lord Uffenham has rented out his large home, Shipley Hall (near Tonbridge), to Roscoe Bunyan, the late J. J. Bunyan's wealthy son. Jane is engaged to Stanhope Twine, an unpopular sculptor who lives in Peacehaven, though Stanhope does not have enough money to marry. Keggs was J. J. Bunyan's butler in 1929 and knows about the tontine. The fund has grown to approximately a million dollars. He tells Roscoe that he and Stanhope are the last unmarried sons. Keggs advises him to pay Stanhope twenty thousand pounds (under the pretext of getting a percentage of his future earnings) so that Stanhope can get married and Roscoe will receive the tontine money. Bayliss volunteers to speak to Stanhope for Roscoe. Keggs is annoyed when Roscoe only rewards him with fifty pounds for the information. Bayliss privately tells Keggs that he knows nobody named Twine joined the tontine, and Keggs confesses that the only other remaining son is actually named Bill Hollister. Keggs lied to Roscoe to help Jane, who wishes to marry Stanhope. Bayliss keeps his secret since he will enjoy seeing the greedy Roscoe lose twenty thousand pounds for nothing. Roscoe is secretly engaged to actress Emma Billson (Keggs's niece) and plans to end the engagement because of the tontine. He hires private detective Percy Pilbeam to get back his letters to her mentioning marriage to avoid a breach of promise case. Unlike Roscoe, Bill Hollister is not rich and works for art dealer Leonard Gish's Gish Galleries. Stanhope and Bill are acquaintances, and Bill helps Stanhope do business with Bayliss. Jane wants Mr Gish to sell pictures from the Uffenham family collection kept at Shipley Hall. Gish tells Bill to go to Shipley and ask Bayliss about the pictures. Bill meets Jane at Barribault's and falls in love with her. Jane also feels drawn to Bill, though she keeps in mind that she is engaged to Stanhope. At Shipley Hall, Bayliss tells Uffenham and Bill that Uffenham's pictures are all fake. When Bill abruptly asks Jane to marry him over the telephone, she gasps and ends the call. Uffenham, who likes Bill, advises him to be more tactful and warns him that Jane is engaged to Stanhope. Bayliss delivers Roscoe's check to Stanhope. Afterwards, Bayliss tells Roscoe that Keggs lied and Stanhope is not part of the tontine. To inspire Jane to feel concern for Bill, Uffenham hits him with a tobacco jar. This is successful, and Jane and Bill admit their feelings for each other. Stanhope has ended his engagement with Jane in order to travel the world freely with his new money. Keggs offers to tell Roscoe the real identity of the other remaining contender for the tontine, if Roscoe pays him a hundred thousand dollars out of the tontine proceeds. Roscoe agrees and they sign a contract. Keggs tells Roscoe about Bill. Following Keggs's suggestion, Roscoe hires Bill at a large salary to be Bayliss's assistant so that Bill can afford to marry Jane. Percy Pilbeam recovers Roscoe's letters. Roscoe gives him another job, to recover and destroy Keggs's contract, which Pilbeam manages to accomplish. Bayliss informs Uffenham that some of his pictures are actually valuable after all. Bill learns about the tontine but still wants to marry Jane right away, which moves Jane. Keggs realizes that Pilbeam was hired by Roscoe to destroy their contract, and also learns that Roscoe was engaged to Emma and ended the engagement because of the tontine, and had his letters destroyed to avoid a breach of promise case. Uffenham suggests that Keggs bring Emma's parents, Flossie Billson (Keggs's sister) and retired boxer Battling Billson, to confront Roscoe. The intimidating appearance of Mr Billson compels Roscoe to renew his engagement to Emma, and split the tontine money evenly with Bill and pay Keggs. Bayliss decides not to tell Bill or Roscoe that Bill's father didn't actually contribute to the tontine and Roscoe didn't have to split the money with Bill. ===== At Hollywood's Esoteric Pictures studios, W. C. Fields, playing himself, is seen admiring a billboard advertising his previous film, The Bank Dick (1940). He encounters various hecklers and minor calamities, including a rude, sassy diner waitress (Jody Gilbert). His devoted niece, Gloria Jean, is on her way to rehearse some songs at the studio, where she demonstrates her classically trained coloratura soprano. Fields himself is also there to pitch a script to Esoteric producer Franklin Pangborn. Fields and Pangborn read through the script, which comes to life in a series of scenes: Fields and Gloria Jean are flying to an exotic location on an airplane, which Fields specifies has an open-air rear observatory platform. Fields has run-ins with a couple of eccentric characters in which he tangles with a large, angry man in the lower berth and manages to hit him with a mallet and convince him that someone else did it. At one point Gloria Jean asks Uncle Bill why he never married, and he answers, "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for." Fields then jumps out of the plane after his flask falls out the open window, and his niece cries out in horror. But he lands safely in a "nest" high atop a cliff, a home populated by a beautiful, young, naive girl (Susan Miller) and her cynical mother (Margaret Dumont). Meanwhile, the plane lands, and Gloria Jean sings a traditional Russian song to a group of peasants. She reunites with Fields in the village, and they return to the "nest" when Fields learns the older woman is wealthy. Fields is about to marry her when Gloria Jean takes him aside and convinces him that this is a bad idea, and they make a swift exit. At this point, Pangborn has had enough of the absurdity of the script and tells Fields to leave the studio. Fields goes to an ice cream parlor to drown his sorrows. In a rare aside to the camera, Fields remarks, "This scene is supposed to be in a saloon, but the censor cut it out!" At the studio, when Gloria Jean learns Fields has been sent away, she tells the flustered Pangborn that if her uncle is fired, then she quits. She and Fields make plans to travel, and she goes into a shop to buy some new clothes. Fields is illegally parked and had also banged into the bumper of a police car. Just then, a middle-aged woman (Kay Deslys) asks for help getting to the Maternity Hospital, where her daughter is about to give birth. Fields volunteers, the woman gets into his car, and Fields speeds through the streets and expressways of Los Angeles, where he tangles with pedestrians, cars, and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. When his passenger passes out, Fields drives even more urgently. He arrives at the hospital, wrecking his car in the process, and his passenger is shaken but unhurt. Gloria Jean, who has just arrived by taxi, asks Uncle Bill if he's all right. He replies, "Lucky I didn't have an accident. I'd have never gotten here." Gloria Jean smiles and says to the audience, "My Uncle Bill... but I still love him!" ===== Freddie Widgeon is renting a villa called Peacehaven in the idyllic South London suburb of Valley Fields, and working, unhappily, in the office of Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith, solicitors. Soapy Molloy has just moved out of the house next door (Castlewood), to be replaced by the novelist Leila Yorke. Leila is published by Popgood and Grooly (a publishing firm also mentioned in other novels including Uncle Dynamite and Galahad at Blandings), which is largely owned by Oofy Prosser. It turns out that Soapy has left some diamonds or "ice" (stolen from Oofy's wife Myrtle) in the bedroom of Castlewood. His wife Dolly, just released from jail, is determined to get it back. After several failed attempts, she comes up with the idea of trying to drive Leila out of her house by arranging for many people to knock on her door bearing cats, and later dogs. Meanwhile, Freddie is keen to escape from his office job and go to Kenya to run a coffee plantation. He thinks he can finance this using oil stocks sold to him by Soapy. As usual he is in love, with Sally Foster, Leila's secretary. Sally is aware of Freddie's reputation with women and is unamused when he is repeatedly found in compromising situations with the glamorous Dolly. In another sub-plot, Leila wants to find her estranged husband Joe. To this end she hires Chimp Twist. She also engages him to search for the cat perpetrator. Dolly, Soapy and Chimp all break into Castlewood in an attempt to find the jewels, but they are surprised by George, Freddie's policeman cousin. The ice ends up in the hands of Freddie, who hopes that Oofy will reward him (Soapy's stock having turned out to be predictably worthless). But Oofy typically refuses. In the end, Mr Cornelius, the Valley Fields house agent, who's just come into a fortune, gives him the cash and all's well that ends well. ===== Myra Schoonmaker is staying at Blandings Castle, her London season having been cut short by Connie. Connie is not happy that Myra wants to marry the impoverished East End curate Bill Bailey. Lord Emsworth is not happy with his sister, with his latest secretary Lavender Briggs and with the houseguest Duke of Dunstable. Adding to the unpleasantness, Lady Constance invites a party of Church Lads to camp out at the lake, young boys who enjoy taunting Emsworth. When Connie says she will be away for a day having her hair done in Shrewsbury, Myra contacts Bailey, arranging to meet in a registry office and get married. Bailey, with his friend Pongo Twistleton and Pongo's Uncle Fred, waits at the selected spot, but Myra does not appear. Uncle Fred is an old friend of Myra and her father, and he likes Bailey. Fred then meets Emsworth, who is in London to attend the Opening of Parliament), and invites himself to Blandings to help Emsworth, the unhappy earl. He brings Bailey under the name of "Cuthbert Meriweather", an old friend returned from Brazil. At the castle, Bailey and Myra are reunited, after learning each was waiting at a different registry office. The Church Lads trick Emsworth into diving into the lake to rescue one of their number, which turns out to be a log. This leads the Duke of Dunstable to again question Emsworth's sanity, always manifest in Emsworth’s affection for his pig. Emsworth, at Fred's suggestion, takes his revenge on the Church Lads by cutting the ropes of their tent in the small hours. Dunstable plans to steal the pig and sell it to Lord Tilbury for £2000. Lavender Briggs proposes to do the work of stealing the pig for £500; Dunstable will not sign a contract, so she insists he make a clear verbal agreement. Briggs enlists the pig man Wellbeloved to help and she has a second assistant available. She goes to London to deposit the cheque. Myra tells Uncle Fred that Briggs is blackmailing her beloved Bailey, as she has recognised him, into helping with the pig scheme. Before Fred can come up with a plan, Bailey confesses all to Lord Emsworth, who in his wrath fires both Briggs and Wellbeloved. Emsworth then relates all of this to his sister, including Meriweather’s true identity. Connie orders Fred and Bailey out of the castle; they stay, as Fred threatens to reveal to the county that Beach cut the tent ropes, which would lead to embarrassment and the loss of a superlative butler. Upset at her failure in finding a good match for Myra, Connie cables James Schoonmaker to come to her aid from his home in New York. When George Threepwood tells Dunstable that he has photographed his grandfather in the act of cutting the tent ropes, Dunstable realises that Briggs is no longer needed, as he can blackmail Emsworth into parting with the pig with the photos. He meets up with Tilbury at The Emsworth Arms, where Lavender Briggs, returned from her day in London and unaware she has been fired, overhears him telling Tilbury he has cancelled her cheque; Dunstable raises the price for Tilbury to £3000 for the pig, which Tilbury will consider. After Dunstable leaves, Briggs approaches Tilbury, her former employer, with her offer to steal the pig for Tilbury at a lower price; he accepts and pays her. On leaving the inn, Briggs meets Uncle Fred, who tells her that Emsworth has fired her; he advises her to head back to London to deposit Tilbury's cheque. She wants this money to open her own secretarial service. Schoonmaker arrives, answering Connie's request. Fred intercepts him at the railway station and takes him to the Emsworth Arms, where they catch up on old times. Fred informs his old friend of Myra's engagement to Archie Gilpin, which she did after breaking off with Bailey for his rash confession). Schoonmaker reveals he loves Connie, but lacks the courage to propose. Fred tells him that she has feelings for him, encourages Schoonmaker to propose to her. Later Gilpin tells Fred he has once again become engaged to Millicent Rigby, with whom he had had a minor falling out, and now finds himself engaged to two girls at once; he needs £1000, to buy into his cousin Ricky's onion- soup business and support his future wife. Fred encourages Archie to break it off with Myra. Uncle Fred tricks Dunstable into thinking Schoonmaker is broke, and persuades him to pay out £1000 to get his nephew Archie out of his engagement to Myra. Fred persuades him that Bill Bailey is a more suitable match for Myra. Connie is in tears on hearing Myra is engaged to Bailey, which gives Schoonmaker the nerve to propose to Connie. With help from Lavender Briggs, Fred plays for Dunstable the tape-recording of him scheming to steal the pig. In return for Fred keeping that quiet, Dunstable turns over the photos of Lord Emsworth to Fred. Fred keeps the tape so Dunstable will not stop the cheque to his nephew Archie. With Bill and Myra off to a registry office, Archie back with Millicent and set up in business, Connie and Schoonmaker engaged and Dunstable well and truly scuppered, Fred smiles at the services he has done for one and all. ===== On the last day of his Paris holiday, Gerald "Jerry" Shoesmith, editor of Society Spice, loses his wallet, which contains his keys. It is brought to an overly bureaucratic police sergeant, who will not return it for three days. American journalist Katherine "Kay" Christopher suggests he sleep at Henry Blake-Somerset's apartment, though Henry is cold and aloof. It is revealed that Henry is Kay's fiancé. Jerry tells Kay that he wants to marry her, but she remains with Henry. Kay's brother and Jerry's friend, Edmund Biffen "Biff" Christopher, is prone to drinking and getting into fights while drunk. He has fled Paris for London after punching a policeman. At Barribault's Hotel, Biff is served by waiter William "Willie" Pilbeam, whose son Percy runs a private detective agency, and whose niece Gwendoline Gibbs is secretary to Jerry's formidable employer Lord Tilbury. Biff discovers he has inherited millions from his godfather, Edmund Biffen Pyke, but on conditions that will be explained in a coming letter. In the meantime, Biff is low on funds and moves into Jerry's modest flat in Halsey Court. Once engaged to Tilbury's niece Linda Rome, Biff hopes to win her back. Tilbury was the late Pyke's brother and wants Biff's inheritance. Tilbury also loves Gwendoline. Biff is struck by Gwendoline's beauty and joins Gwendoline and Percy for dinner. Biff gets drunk and plans to punch a policeman with a ginger moustache, so Jerry locks Biff in his room. The next day, Biff is grateful; he has learned his money is in a spendthrift trust and will not be given to him until he turns thirty, and he will get nothing if he is arrested before then. Biff's thirtieth birthday is in a week. Jerry hates editing a gossip paper, so Biff says that when he is rich, he will buy the intellectual Thursday Review and make Jerry editor. Coincidentally, Tilbury fires Jerry. Jerry briefly returns to Paris to retrieve his wallet and asks Kay to help watch over Biff. Biff reconciles with Linda and wants to reform for her. Tilbury hires Percy to get Biff arrested. Biff gives Gwendoline lunch to be polite. Percy wants to hire Biff to drink with a Russian spy called Joe Murphy (who is actually just a freelance journalist and heavy drinker). Biff declines, but changes his mind when Linda ends their engagement since she saw him with Gwendoline (though Percy later refuses to pay Biff). Percy informs Gwendoline about everything to warn her that Biff will not be rich. Kay comes to London, and she and Jerry see Biff return to the flat drunk and with a black eye. Jerry decides to steal Biff's trousers to keep him from going out and leave all their spare trousers with his uncle John Shoesmith. Henry suspects Kay loves Jerry. Tilbury goes to Jerry's flat in the morning and tells Biff, who is in sleepwear, to split the money evenly, or else he will argue in court that the late Pyke was mentally incompetent to make a will. Tilbury leaves, and Jerry advises Biff not to agree. Jerry leaves after Biff realizes his trousers are gone. Tilbury returns, and Biff, desperate to see Linda, threatens him into giving him his trousers. Tilbury telephones Percy to bring him trousers, but Percy misunderstands and brings Gwendoline's dog Towser. Tilbury gives Percy his house key to fetch a pair of trousers, but Percy is offended by Tilbury's insults and instead sells his own trousers to Tilbury for a high price. Tilbury soon stops the cheque. Realising he has forgotten lunch with Ivor Llewellyn, who pays a lot to advertise in Tilbury's papers, Tilbury telephones Gwendoline. She told Llewellyn that Tilbury was at home due to illness, and suggests that Tilbury hurry home, since Llewellyn intends to visit. Tilbury thanks her and brings his solicitor, Cyril Bunting, to pose as the butler, since the staff resigned over Tilbury's bad temper. Henry looks for Jerry, and Percy threatens him into giving him his trousers. Jerry and Kay approach the flat and Henry hides in a bedroom. He overhears Kay confess her love for Jerry. After Kay leaves, a boy employed by Percy delivers a pair of trousers, which Henry puts on before coldly exiting. Linda has married Biff. Biff does not remember how he got his black eye and thinks the police might be looking for him, so Linda hid him at Tilbury's house, since she thought it was unoccupied. At Tilbury's house, Biff threatens to tell Llewellyn about Tilbury's deception unless Tilbury takes only five percent of the inheritance. Tilbury grudgingly agrees. Percy comes because of the stopped cheque but gets locked in the cellar and arrested. Bunting warns that Percy can sue Tilbury. However, Gwendoline blackmails Percy out of it, and she gets engaged to Tilbury. The police are looking for Biff, but it turns out that the ginger-moustached policeman wants to thank Biff, who saved him in a brawl. ===== Our plucky narrator Corky, researching for an article in the East End, has his pocket picked and finds himself unable to pay a bill at an inn. Kicked out by the landlord, he is rescued and avenged by a huge, red-headed man - none other than "Battling" Billson. He gives Billson Ukridge's address, and next day is landed with looking after Flossie's ghastly mother and ghoulish brother Cecil, despite having no recollection of who Flossie may be. He beards Ukridge later, and is reminded of Billson's girl, who, it seems, is preventing the huge sailor from returning to the ring, for fear of him damaging his face. Ukridge wants Billson to fight, in a deal which would net them £200, and dealing with the mother, who Flossie can't stand, is Ukridge's way of bringing her on side. Billson enters the ring and starts strongly, but soon fades, and looks certain to lose. At the last moment, he rallies spectacularly, and destroys his opponent. Corcoran goes home happy for his friend's success, but Ukridge arrives later bewailing cruel fate. The £200, it seems, was a bribe to throw the fight, which Billson had been on the verge of doing when his opponent stepped on his ingrowing toenail, enraging the big man and making him win the fight - which netted a mere £20. Billson was introduced in "The Debut of Battling Billson", and would return in several other Ukridge stories. ===== The main character of the series is astronaut Adam Archer. As the sole survivor of an ill-fated journey to Mars, Adam Archer meets the alien entities known as the Cosmic Fetus Collective, who transform him into a cosmic being and instruct him in the uses of his new powers. Archer is sent back to Earth as the first human to be touched by universal enlightenment. The series starts four years later. Archer has become a famous superhero, but is distrusted by government and the public. The military have provided him with a base, Infinity Tower, from where Archer and his three sisters, Neela, Angie and Stella, protect the Earth from the invasion of robot zombies. Neela, an astronaut and military commander, resents that her brother's powers overshadow her own talents and that she is forced to keep an eye on him instead of pursuing her own career. Angie, a fighter pilot, is a rebellious spirit, while Stella, who oversees communication with her brother, is clear-headed and rational. On his adventures, Adam comes into conflict with many bizarre supervillains like Basil Cronus, a floating skull in jar on a quest for the ultimate high, Friedrich Nickelhead, Discordia and her father the Tormentor and his army of Superman-Mice. On his first adventure, Adam saves the giant, dog-like alien Maxim, who turns out to know about the Cosmic Fetus Collective. Maxim was enhanced by his own species and sent to Earth to contact Archer and prepare him for his destiny. He is rather disappointed with the human race though, who are further from enlightenment than he would have hoped. Nevertheless he is fully committed to his task as a mentor to Adam. There is a space-god named Iboga who plays an important part in the series cosmology. Neela has left her family and joined up with a private consortium who want to fly to the stars. Villainess Discordia's head exploded during her trial, but Nickelhead has sent his servant to collect her body. Adam has saved the world from an alien invasion, only to be met with distrust and lawsuits. Archer has become annoyed with humanity's distrust of him and their worship of superhero Crashman, but Maxim is about to show him more about his origin. ===== The book begins during Marcel's summer holiday. He describes his almost daily hunting trips with his father Joseph and his uncle Jules, and his growing friendship with a country boy named Lili. On the night before he is to return to the city to begin school, he plans to run away with the help of Lili. He leaves a note for his family saying goodbye and climbs through the window. As the night goes on, Marcel begins to grow scared, even seeing a ghost and changes his mind and returns before he is discovered (although it implied that his father had discovered the letter through a few jokes he makes). When he returns to the city, he is under extreme scholarly pressure due to his candidacy for a prestigious scholarship. He longs to return to the countryside and his wish is granted when they return for the Christmas holiday, much to Marcel's delight. Although only a few kilometers outside Marseilles the journey to the holiday home is time consuming as public transport takes them a short portion of the way and the rest is a walk along an 8 km, winding road carrying all their possessions. After the Christmas holiday, the family expresses desire to return more often to the countryside, but Joseph does not see the logic in leaving the city on a Saturday to get to the countryside in the late afternoon or evening and then return on Sunday. Later Marcel's mother takes it upon herself to befriend the headmistress and convinces her to give Joseph's Monday morning duties to another teacher, allowing the family to stay at the villa until Monday morning. Soon they begin to go almost every weekend. One day, when travelling to their house, the family encounters one of Marcel's father's former pupils, Bouzigue, who now works in maintaining a canal which runs from the hills into Marseilles. The canal runs across private estates and so he is issued with a key which allows him to pass through several locked doors along the towpath. The employee points out to the family that this is a shortcut which will allow them to reach their house in a fraction of the journey time and offers them his spare key. Marcel's father, being honest and upright realizes that this would amount to trespassing, but while passing through the canals, Joseph is able to spot construction issues that Bouzigue himself did not. He is then convinced, by Bouzigue and himself, that he would even be doing a service to the people. He nevertheless accepts the key. Despite his reservations, the family use the key more and more and the reduced journey time allows them to visit the holiday home every weekend. Joseph even begins to record his observations in a small notebook. They still have an apprehension each time they unlock a door fearing they will be caught. As time passes, however, they encounter the owner of one property and the groundsman of another, who are friendly and quite happy that they cross their land. At the beginning of the summer holidays they make the journey again and Marcel's mother feels a great fear and trepidation of meeting the owner. When they reach the final door they discover it has been padlocked. They are confronted by the caretaker of the final property and his dog who has been watching them for some time and who decides to make an official report. He forces the family to open up all of their belongings, humiliating them, then seizes Joseph's notebook and terrifying Marcel's mother and little sister. Marcel's father is devastated, believing a complaint could damage his career prospects and he could possibly lose his job as a school teacher. Bouzigue and two other employees of the canal however, confront the caretaker threatening him with prosecution for having unlawfully padlocked one of the company's doors. Bouzigue reveals to the family that the man is not a nobleman, but made his fortune from cattle. He and his fellow employees seize the report and destroy it. The book jumps forward five years to a fifteen year old Marcel at his mother's funeral. It also tells of Lili and Paul (Marcel's younger brother): Paul was a goatherd in the countryside of the Provence, until his sudden death at the age of 30. Lili is killed in 1917, during the First World War. Marcel is the only one left of their childhood company, now a successful film director. His company has purchased a large old house in the Marseilles area to turn into a film studio. When walking through the grounds he sees a familiar door and realizes that this is the last property on his childhood journey to his holiday home. In a burst of rage he picks up a rock and smashes the door and thus ends a bad spell. ===== Lenny Smart and Kendle Bains are flatmates and work together as travel agents in Manchester. Thirtysomething Lenny attempts, with the help of old friend Gilby, to turn sensitive 23-year-old Kendle into a "real man". In one episode, Kendle receives a telescope for a birthday present and subsequently ends up looking into all the windows opposite, Gilby, Becky and her friends end up fighting over what to look at. ===== Ukridge's friend Jimmy Corcoran is persuaded to hire a typist to speed his writing. He meets Dora Mason, former secretary to Ukridge's Aunt Julia and now partner in a typing firm, and finds she gained her partnership based on a promise from Ukridge that he will provide the £100 she needs to buy the share. Shocked, Corcoran asks his friend how he hopes to find the money. Ukridge reveals that Hank Philbrick, an old friend from Canada has made it big, and has been persuaded by Ukridge to buy an English country house; Ukridge has contracted with an agent, who will split the hefty commission with Ukridge. Corcoran meets Ukridge late one night, and finds with him the Canadian, who is in a state of severe inebriation. Ukridge tells Corky that he has been drinking heavily since he came into his fortune. Some days later, Ukridge arrives at his friend's house, distraught. The Canadian, in ill health after his binge, has been advised by a doctor to repair to warmer climes, and plans to leave for Egypt, scuppering Ukridge's scheme. A magazine editor asks Corky to attend a small dance held by the Pen and Ink Club; he goes, in some trepidation that Julia Ukridge, president of the club, will remember their previous meeting. She does, and confronts him, but on seeing his press invitation is calmed. Another author, Charlton Prout, secretary of the club, takes Corky into a side room to talk; when they emerge, the hall is packed. To the dismay of the Pen and Ink people, a party of 700 revellers have mysteriously bought tickets for the bash, for the Warner's Stores company outing. Ukridge later reveals that he sold the tickets for the party, paying his debt of honour to Dora and netting a further £50 for himself. ===== Solas (Alone) tells the story of María (Ana Fernández) and her mother Rosa (María Galiana). María is one of four adult children, all of whom moved as far as they could get from their parents and the farm where they grew up. Before the movie starts, the father (later revealed to be a violent, cruel, abusive man) has fallen ill and been brought to a hospital in Seville, where María lives. Rosa has been staying at the hospital with him, but the doctor tells her to leave before she falls ill herself. María takes Rosa to stay with her in the rundown suburban apartment where she lives, and Rosa rides the bus every day to visit her husband. María is intelligent and wanted an education, but her father wouldn't allow it. Now, at 35, she works for a cleaning service; she is lonely, poor, angry and bitter. She discovers she is pregnant by a man who doesn't want a baby and tells María to get an abortion. When she tells him she wants to have the baby and raise it with him, the man rejects her. In her anger and despair, María starts drinking heavily. As her mother Rosa returns from shopping one day, she meets María's neighbor (vecino) Don Emilio (Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa), a kind old widower living alone with his dog. A friendship blossoms between them: he lends Rosa some money when she runs short at the supermarket, and she cooks for him after he burns a stew he forgot was cooking. He falls in love with Rosa, but Rosa is faithful to her abusive husband. (At one point she says to María about her father, "He must not have an easy conscience. I do.") Rosa's husband recovers and she returns with him to the country, not knowing about María's pregnancy. María tells Don Emilio about the baby and tells him she plans to abort it. In a long, emotional scene, he offers to be like a grandfather to the child if she decides to keep it, but María has been so badly treated by the men in her life that she has trouble believing him. The movie ends with María visiting her parents' grave with her baby girl and Don Emilio. He is going to sell his apartment in Seville and the three of them will move into Rosa's house in the country to raise the baby. ===== Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her consists of five stories or vignettes, tied together loosely to envision the complexity of incomplete communications about life, family, and love. We glimpse the lives of five women, each facing problems such as loneliness, dissatisfaction, longing, and or desire. In the film's prologue, Kathy (Amy Brenneman)—a police detective—and her partner are investigating the apparent suicide of an unknown woman. Dr. Keener (Glenn Close), a middle-aged doctor, attempts to care for her aging mother while coping with her own loneliness. She avoids intimacy, but also longs for it; we see both frustration and anticipation as she waits for phone calls from male colleagues. Dr. Keener decides to seek comfort or escape in Christine (Calista Flockhart) who reads tarot cards. Christine's partner Lilly (Valeria Golino) is critically ill with an unnamed disease, possibly cancer. Rebecca (Holly Hunter) is a successful bank manager who's "not big on regrets". After a three-year involvement with married Robert (Gregory Hines), she becomes pregnant. Before Rebecca visits Dr. Keener to get an abortion, she has a fling with Walter, (Matt Craven), a subordinate. Rose (Kathy Baker) is a single mother who is writing children's books. She develops a sweet crush on a new little-person neighbor (Danny Woodburn), who catches Rose spying on him. Rose later experiences the shock of learning about her son's extensive sexual activity. Kathy's sister, Carol Faber (Cameron Diaz), is a lovely blind woman who has an active social life. Kathy is attracted to the medical examiner in the suicide case, and her story ends with him taking her out on a date. In an epilogue, Dr. Keener drops into a bar, where she meets the male character, Walter, from previous stories (possibly the younger male alluded to in Christine's tarot card reading). Carmen, a woman who appears in five scenes in the five different stories, the first is walking past Dr. Keener's house, another is walking beside Rebecca, a third time is in the grocery store while Rose is shopping, the fourth time is walking past Christine's apartment building at night as Christine looks down from her balcony, and the final time is the post mortem examination by detective Kathy alongside Dr. Sam (Miguel Sandoval). Carol's imaginative story towards the end of the film helps explain the instances throughout the movie where she appears. According to Carol, she was back in town to reconnect with her ex, whom she had been talking to for months until her move back to Los Angeles. In each scene, she is, as Carol deduces, preparing for the big date with her ex. In the first scene she is in, she is probably looking for a place to rent; the second, she is seen carrying her ill-fated red dress; the third she is shopping for toiletries; the fourth she is seen walking back to her place, in which she looks visibly heartbroken, and final scene, in the coroners lab, echoes the beginning of the film, where she is found dead. Carol's story ends with what Kathy already concluded, she committed suicide over a love she, as Carol claims, could not revive, like the baby she had lost many years before. ===== Kitty (Adele Rein) and Tigercat (Cathy Crowfoot) are two lesbians obsessed with one another.New York TimesDVD Verdict ===== The novel follows Menolly, now apprenticed into the Harper Hall, a type of music conservatory for harpers (minstrels/educators) and other music professionals, as she begins her musical training to become a harper herself one day. The story begins within hours of the final events of Dragonsong, rounding out the tale of Menolly's coming of age. Menolly arrives at Harper Hall to find herself the center of unwanted attention and conflict. As the Hall's first female apprentice, the Masters are divided on whether or not she is worth training, causing Menolly to be greeted with various degrees of ambivalence. Due to her gender, she is not allowed to share a dormitory with her fellow all-male apprentices and must be housed with the female students, none of whom are serious musicians and all of whom shun Menolly as an outsider. Conversely, because she dorms with the students, the apprentices reject her, claiming she is not truly one of them, and leaving Menolly confused as to her true place in Harper Hall. In spite of these challenges, Menolly excels at all aspects of her apprenticeship while continuing to compose original tunes. She also becomes helpful to the Dragonriders by teaching them what she knows about fire-lizards, and presents Masterharper Robinton and his Journeyman Sebell with fire-lizards of their own. One night Menolly is woken by her frantic fire-lizards, who show her a terrifying vision of a Dragonrider and his dragon falling from the sky in flames. It is later revealed that the telepathic Dragons actually witnessed this event halfway across the world and transmitted the image to the fire-lizards, who in turn showed Menolly. The incident confirms suspicions that fire-lizards share a telepathic link with dragons and that they may have other undiscovered gifts. By the end of her first week, all the Masters agree that there is nothing they can teach Menolly, as she essentially completed her apprenticeship under her first Harper Petiron long before she came to Harper Hall. Much to her surprise, Menolly is promoted to Journeyman. ===== The People That Time Forgot is a direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot and continues the lost world saga begun in the earlier story. Burroughs continues the revelation of his lost world's unique biological system, only hinted at in the previous installment, in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis. This system forms a thematic element serving to unite the three otherwise rather loosely linked Caspak stories. ===== The book follows two seemingly separate stories: ===== During the Walpurgis Night in the woods adjacent to the village of Passo Borgo, located at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, a couple of young lovers, Tania and Milos, secretly meet and make love. After fighting, Tania removes the cross Milos had given her. On her way home, Tania is chased by a supernatural owl that kills her. Some time later, Jonathan Harker, a young librarian hired by Count Dracula, a nobleman from the area, arrives at the village. Tania's body mysteriously disappears from the cemetery. In the meantime Harker, before going to Count Dracula's castle, takes the opportunity to visit Lucy Kisslinger, his wife Mina's best friend as well as the daughter of the local mayor. Upon arriving at the castle, Harker is greeted by Tania, reanimated as a vampire, who tries from the very beginning to seduce him; however they are interrupted by Dracula's entrance welcoming Harker. Dracula shows Harker the library he is to catalogue. The following night Tania, having burnt Harker's photo of his wife Mina, tries again to seduce and bite Harker, partially undressing in front of him, but a furious Dracula intervenes, throwing her across the room. Dracula bites Harker's neck, but allows him to live. Dracula meanwhile visits Renfield in his cell and frees him from his chains; Renfield acknowledges Dracula as "Master". That night Harker glimpses Dracula climbing unnaturally up the outside wall of the castle. The following day, a weakened but still conscious Harker attempts to escape, but as soon as he is outside the castle a large wolf with a white lock changes into Dracula, who savages him. Meanwhile, Mina, Harker's wife, arrives in the village and is a guest for a few days at the home of her dearest friend Lucy Kisslinger, who also gets bitten and turned. The day after, Mina, worried about her husband, goes to Count Dracula's castle. Their encounter makes her forget what happened during her visit. She is completely under the count's influence; the count had orchestrated the events leading up to their encounter; in fact Mina looks exactly like his beloved Dolingen de Gratz, who died some centuries ago. Returning to the Kisslinger house, Mina learns of the death of her dear friend Lucy. The sequence of such strange and dramatic events summons the aid of Van Helsing, vampire expert of the techniques used to eliminate them. Van Helsing, aware of the circumstances, decides to act swiftly and prepares the tools needed to combat vampires. He inspect Lucy's crypt and finds it empty, then kills the undead Lucy as she tries to attack Mina. He then directs himself to the center of evil, Count Dracula's castle. Meanwhile, Dracula goes to the village and kills a group of men gathered at the tavern who were plotting to betray him, while Van Helsing, inside the castle, is able to definitively kill Tania, Renfield, and a now-undead Harker. Dracula, intent on his desire to reunite with his beloved wife, leads Mina, completely hypnotized, to the castle where Van Helsing is waiting. He has decided to engage in a deadly fight with his evil foe. During the struggle Van Helsing loses his gun loaded with a silver bullet coated in garlic, but Mina, shaking off Dracula's spell, picks up the gun and kills Dracula with it. The special silver bullet transforms Dracula into ashes and Mina limps out of the graveyard, Van Helsing along with her. After they leave, however, Dracula's spirit lifts the ashes into the air and, uniting, they shape into a large wolf that leaps forward. ===== The movie sheds light on the inhabitants of Western Sydney, an area known for its cultural diversity and in the eyes of some its ethnic related gang violence. It revolves around Naima (Julie Kanaan), her romantic interest Rafi (Matuse) and her brother Ishak (NOMISe) living their run-of-the-mill middle class conservative Lebanese Muslim existence. Sharief (Anthony Hawwa) is the film's standover man, a Lebanese youth gang leader who causes trouble for Ishak, his brother Musa (Mohamed Jajatieh) and cousin Hakim (Marouf Alameddine). ===== Forced to flee his birthplace on the windswept coast of Brittany to escape the Baron de Tournemine, who killed his mother, and to seek his lost father, Mathurin Kerbouchard looks for passage on a ship and, although forced to serve as a galley slave initially, travels the coast and attains the position of pilot, frees a captured Moorish girl, Aziza, and her companion, then frees his fellow slaves and with their help sells his captors into slavery and escapes to Cádiz in Moorish Spain, where he looks for news of his father. Hearing that his father is dead, Mathurin goes inland and poses as a scholar in Córdoba, but his scholarship is interrupted when he becomes involved in political intrigue surrounding Aziza and is imprisoned by Prince Ahmed. Scheduled to be executed, Mathurin escapes eastward to the hills outside the city, but before he leaves soldiers arrive and ransack and burn the place where he is staying, leaving him for dead. Mathurin returns to Córdoba and, aided by a woman he chances upon named Safia, he takes a job as a translator. However, the intrigue in which she is involved threatens their lives, and they must flee the city. Safia, through connections of her own, has gathered news of Mathurin's father, and tells him that his father may be alive but was sold as a slave in the east. Leaving Spain, they take up with a merchant caravan and travel by land across Europe, stopping along the way at various places to trade or to fight off thieves. Reaching Brittany, the caravan tempts a raid from the Baron de Tournemine, but they are ready for his attack and, routing his forces, press on, joined by another caravan, to sack the baron's castle. Mathurin personally kills his enemy, avenging his mother, and, leaving the caravan, takes Tournamine's body and throws it into a fabled swamp rumored to be a gate to Purgatory. Riding eastward, Mathurin befriends a group of oppressed peasants before rejoining the caravan as it approaches Paris. Safia has learned that Mathurin's father is at Alamut, the fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain (Assassin), but warns that going there is dangerous. She leaves the caravan and remains in Paris, but Mathurin must go on and seek his father. Both caravans will travel eastward and cross the Russian steppes together. In Paris, Mathurin talks with a group of students but offends a teacher and must flee again for his life. Chancing upon the fleeing Comtesse de Malcrais, Suzanne, whom he assists in escaping from Count Robert. They meet up with the caravans again at Provins, where they are joined by a company of acrobats (including Khatib) and additional caravans from Italy, Armenia, the Baltic, Venice, and the Netherlands. The caravans join together and travel to Kiev to trade their woolen cloaks and other goods for furs. Denied passage down the Dnieper by boat, the caravans head southward from Kiev. Crossing the Southern Bug and approaching the Chicheklaya, they encounter hostile Pechenegs. Stalling for time as the caravan drives south toward the Black Sea, Kerbouchard exchanges pleasantries with the Khan, fights a duel with Prince Yury, and receives a drink, but as he leaves the camp the Khan warns him that the Petchenegs will attack the caravan in the morning. Kerbouchard returns to the caravan, which has nearly reached the Black Sea, and assists as they contrive rudimentary fortifications, hoping to hold their ground against the Petchenegs until boats arrive to take them to Constantinople. A protracted battle ensues, by the end of which most of the caravan merchants are killed, but Suzanne may have escaped in a small boat, and Mathurin, wounded, hides in the brush and nurses himself gradually back to health, barely surviving to emerge, reclaim his horse, and ride to Byzantium by land, clothed in rags. Casting out Abdullah, a fat storyteller, and taking his place in the market in Constantinople, Mathurin makes a couple of gold coins and an enemy named Bardas. Leaving the market with a man named Phillip, he spends the coins on clothing. In a wine shop, he meets Andronicus Comnenus and captures his interest. Perceiving that rare books are valuable in the city, Mathurin then takes to copying from memory books that he copied in Córdoba. Contacting Safia's informant, he learns that his father is indeed at Alamut, but that he attempted to escape and may be dead. Nevertheless, he is determined to go and find out. Going to an armorer who maintains a room for exercising with weapons, he meets some of the Emperor's guard and drops hints to one of them of the books he is copying, so that the emperor will hear of him. Invited to meet the emperor, Mathurin offers him advice and a book and tells the Emperor of his desire to rescue his father from Alamut. Two weeks later, the emperor supplies Mathurin with a sword, three horses he had lost when the caravan was taken, and gold. Invited to dinner with Andronicus, Mathurin learns from him that Suzanne has returned safely to her castle and strengthened its defenses with survivors from the caravan. Bardas makes trouble, and Mathurin and Phillip must leave the party, but Mathurin has a vision and foretells Andronicus' death. Mathurin advises Phillip to leave the city and go to Saône, and he himself receives a warning note from Safia, telling him not to go to Alamut. Leaving Constantinople, Mathurin travels by boat across the Black Sea to Trebizond and adopts the identity of ibn-Ibrahim, a Muslim physician and scholar, travelling over land to Tabriz, where he finds Khatib, who tells him rumors that his father is being treated terribly by a powerful newcomer to Alamut named al-Zawila. Invited to visit the Emir Ma'sud Kahn, Mathurin presents a picture of himself in his identity as ibn-Ibrahim, physician, scholar, and alchemist, and, learning that ibn-Haram is in the city, decides to pass on from Tabriz toward Jundi Shapur, the medical school that provides his pretense for travelling through the area. Leaving Tabriz, Mathurin and Khatib travel alongside a caravan as far as Qazvin, where ibn-Ibrahim receives gifts and an invitation to visit Alamut. Before he leaves for Alamut, Mathurin makes the acquaintance of the princess Sundari, from Anhilwara, and, learning that she is being forced to marry a friend of the king of Kannauj, promises, if he escapes Alamut alive, to come to Hind and rescue her from this fate. Traveling with Khatib to a valley outside Alamut, where they arrange to meet again afterward, Mathurin packs rope, nitre crystals, and other ingredients from a Chinese recipe he had seen in a book in Córdoba, and gathers also various medicinal herbs, before riding up to the gates of Alamut. He is admitted but immediately taken captive and brought before Mahmoud, who reveals that he ran into trouble with Prince Ahmed, and that the prince and Aziza are both dead. According to Mahmoud, Sinan does not know that Mathurin has been brought to Alamut. Locked in his quarters, Kerbouchard finds the rope has been removed from his pack. Unable to escape, he speaks out his window to a guard, hoping that Sinan's spies will report his presence, and that Sinan will want to meet with an alchemist and physician such as himself. The next morning, after mixing the saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur from his saddlebags, repacking the resulting powder, and mixing several preparations from the herbs, he is confronted by Mahmoud and provokes him. Brought before Sinan, Mathurin reveals to him some of the details of his past that Mahmoud had kept secret and broaches the subject of alchemy, hoping to be kept around a little longer. Promising to see him later, Sinan sends him back to his quarters and also sends a copy of a book he had requested of Ma'sud Kahn in Tabriz. Mathurin does get to see Sinan for most of a day, performing alchemy experiments and exchanging ideas. Afterward, Mahmoud comes for him with armed guards and escorts him (along with his bags, which contains his surgery equipment) to a surgical room, telling him that he has been brought to Alamut on an errand of mercy to save a slave's life, by making him a eunuch. The slave is his father. Pretending to cooperate, Mathurin covertly cuts his father's bonds with a scalpel then, spilling boiling water on some of the guards, draws his sword and engages the remaining guards. Other soldiers, presumably those of Sinan, break into the room, and Mathurin and his father escape down the corridor and through an aqueduct into the hidden valley. In the garden among some spare pipes, Mathurin packs his prepared powder into pipes, plugs the ends, and fashions wicks from fat-soaked string, and they hide there until the middle of the next day. Meeting a young girl in the rain, Mathurin trusts her with the gist of his situation and asks if there is any way out. She tells of a gate whereby the gardener, closely guarded, takes out the leaves he rakes up, and, eager to escape, she agrees to meet them near the gate. Soldiers searching the garden pass by their hiding place, and that evening they rush the gate and, assisted by a handful of slaves who are present, slay the guards, but the gate is closed on them. Placing his prepared pipe bombs, Mathurin lights the fuses and, as soldiers approach, tells everyone to stand back. With the gate destroyed and the soldiers stunned by his blast, they escape out and down the side of the mountain. Slaying another dozen soldiers, Mathurin and his father, with the girl in tow, meet Khatib with the horses and ride off. Reaching the city where Khatib had been hiding, they are confronted by Mahmoud and another dozen soldiers. Mathurin fights a quick duel with Mahmoud and kills him. At the end of the book, the girl from the valley, whose home was near the gulf, rides toward Basra with Mathurin's father, who will seek the sea again. Mathurin rides toward Hind, to fulfill his promise to Sundari. ===== Chris Pepper (Lawford) and Charlie Salt (Davis) own a nightclub in Swinging London, operating under the suspicious eye of the intrepid Inspector Crabbe. One night, Pepper finds an Asian girl on the floor of the club. Assuming she's drunk or high, he makes a date with her and thinks she responds. It turns out the girl is dying, and her death sets off a chain of events that puts the unlucky Salt and Pepper onto a plot to overthrow the British government, with the girl's dying words the key. ===== Keeping The Promise tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Matt (Brendan Fletcher) and his father, (Keith Carradine) who, as early settlers, together build a wooden cabin in Maine in 1768. However, Matt's father must head back to Quincy, Massachusetts, to get Matt's mother, sister, and newborn sibling who were all left behind so Matt and his father could build shelter for them. Matt's father promises to return in seven weeks and Matt is left alone with his father's old watch (a family heirloom) and a hunting rifle to guard the family's newly built homestead and field crops. Unfortunately, Matt finds himself enduring many hardships for which he is unprepared. His hunting rifle is stolen by a stranger named Ben Loomis; while chasing after Ben: Matt trips and falls into a river. Luckily, Matt's misadventure has not gone unnoticed and he is pulled from the water. The Indians he has learned to fear, through tales that his father had told him, save his life in this part of the story. His injured leg is treated by the Indian chief named Saknis. While recovering, Matt begrudgingly allows Saknis to take his book (Robinson Crusoe) for saving his life. Saknis later returns with book and asks Matt whether a knife or a book would win a fight - Matt says the knife would win, Saknis points out that the words of the white man have already won the land away from his people. Saknis commands that Matt is to teach his grandson to read. Although uncertain of how to teach anyone, especially the unwilling Attean, Matt accepts the task out of obligation, as he owes his life to the man. Meanwhile, his father returns to his family only to find there is a fever in the village which kills their neighbour's daughter, the family leave quickly knowing that the town will probably be closed to stop the spread of fever. On their way the newborn and the mother come down with fever, this delays them and when they reach the boat for its last crossing before winter they are turned back because of the baby's illness. The Mother recovers, but unfortunately the baby doesn't and has to be buried as they travel the land route. Back in Maine, Matt does not immediately befriend Attean, although the two young boys eventually form a strong friendship as they help each other through difficult circumstances. When Matt's family has not yet returned after many months Attean invites Matt to join his tribe, who are moving west to new hunting grounds. Although Matt is good friends with Attean and enjoys Indian culture, he has not forgotten his family. Matt has to decide whether to join the Indian tribe, or return to his cabin and wait for his family to return. Near the end of the story, Attean goes on a vision quest and becomes a brave. He visits Matt and gives him a pair of snowshoes for the winter and asks him to come with the tribe. Matt decides to wait for his family, although parting from his new friend, Attean, is difficult. The two boys trade gifts, Matt gives Attean the book of Robinson Crusoe and Attean leaves his dog behind with Matt. Sure enough, Matt's family returns in the winter snows, guided for the last few days by Ben Loomis, who makes himself absent as soon as the family are reunited. ===== Born in New York in 1917, attractive Clarabel Hoyt, the heroine of the book, is encouraged by her ambitious mother to marry "a great man," a man able and willing to make a success of his life. She succeeds in persuading her daughter to end her relationship with a young teacher with a promising career ahead of him and marry into one of the pre-eminent, old money families instead. Eventually succumbing to her mother's wishes, Clara, still a virgin, marries Trevor Hoyt, a banker, and in due course their daughter Sandra is born. Clara, however, is not content spending her husband's money and living a life of luxury and ease. When her old school friend Polly suggests that she should work for Style, a fashion magazine, Clara eagerly accepts the offer and soon becomes a household name as a trendy journalist. During World War II, while Hoyt is stationed in London and Clara remains in New York, both spouses are unfaithful to each other. On her husband's return, however, Clara is faced with the double standards of morality which exempt the man from any consequences of his infidelity while ascribing to the woman the role of sinner, of the "war wife who cheats on her fighting husband" or, as Trevor puts it, of the "cool bitch". Subsequently, and much to her mother's dismay, Clara divorces her husband, a generous divorce settlement ensuring that she does not quite have to "face the chilling prospect of depending on her own talents to support herself". She becomes editor-in-chief of Style by exposing her predecessor's alcoholism and eventually starts an affair with Eric Tyler, the owner of the magazine. At the same time she gently but firmly turns Tyler Publications into an empire aligned with the Democratic Party. She also pulls the strings in making Eric Tyler a candidate for the U.S. Senate. However, driven by some inexplicable force, Tyler holds the "wrong" speech on tax reform, voicing what he really thinks on the matter and thus forfeiting all his chances of ever becoming a politician. It is with considerable difficulty that Clara answers Tyler's question whether she loves him--she is aware of the fact that her rather forced "Of course, I love you" is actually a lie. At this point in her life she very strongly questions her ability to love at all. Nevertheless, Clara marries Eric Tyler, but the ailing tycoon suffers two strokes and dies. Clara is now faced with a lengthy lawsuit brought on by Tony Tyler, Eric's son by his first wife, who feels cheated out of the family money. Determined to fight to the end rather than compromise, Clara justifies, and also disguises, her luxurious lifestyle by continuing her late husband's foundation and openly and generously supporting philanthropic causes so that her public image turns into that of an "angel of beneficience". Clara also likes to see herself as a patron of the arts, and it is in this capacity that she meets, and gets to know more intimately, Oliver Kip, an expert on the Italian Renaissance. She genuinely falls in love with him and wants to "belong to Oliver, to be appreciated by his cool, appraising eyes, to be added to his collection of beautiful objects". Their affair, however, is short-lived because he informs her that his life "is not the kind that can be improved by being shared" and also because the abuse of his power within the Tyler Foundation forces her to pay him off and hush up the scandal in order to save the foundation's reputation. In the final scene of the novel, set in 1961, Clara is on the phone with John F. Kennedy, whose election she has supported, accepting Kennedy's offer to be made ambassador to the (fictional) island of Santa Emilia in the Caribbean. ===== Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is giving his annual performance reviews but, instead of evaluating the employees' job performances, he asks their opinions about a phone message from his own boss, Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin). Jan's message sternly tells Michael not to bring up their recent romantic encounter when she does his performance review, but feeling their workplace standing is on the line, the employees cater to Michael's desires by telling him the message shows Jan has feelings for him. During Michael's performance review, Jan insists he remain strictly professional and present his ideas for improving business. He plunders the employee suggestion box for ideas, but the suggestions - which Jan insists he read in front of her - mostly concern Michael's personal hygiene and include a directive to "Stop sleeping with your boss." As Jan storms out of the office, Michael continues demanding to know why she won't have a relationship with him. Jan finally breaks down and vents her feelings about Michael, both positive and negative, and says she is not ready for another relationship. Michael is satisfied by the rejection, since she implied he was worth having a relationship with. From a tense exchange with Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) realizes Dwight thinks it is Friday instead of Thursday. Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) and Jim reinforce this misconception with casual conversation. During his performance review, Dwight asks for a raise, claiming he has never missed a day of work, even breaking into the office to work on holidays. Dwight's calendar confusion continues into the following day, and so he fails to turn up for work that morning, leading Michael to comment skeptically on Dwight's claim of never missing a day of work. ===== Dunder Mifflin's tech support employee, Sadiq (Omi Vaidya), arrives at the Scranton branch to set up a system that allows Michael Scott (Steve Carell) to monitor his employees' emails. When everyone in the office finds out, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) worries that Michael will discover the party he is throwing that night, to which Michael is not invited. Inevitably, Michael notices and tries to get Jim to admit that he's having a party, while Jim acts nonchalantly as if nothing is happening. In order to keep Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) from exposing the party, Jim tells him that it is a surprise party for Michael. Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) notices some things that lead her to suspect that Dwight and Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) are dating. However, she discreetly abandons her suspicions when she asks Phyllis Lapin (Phyllis Smith) if she noticed any office romances and Phyllis guesses that Pam meant her and Jim. Jim and Pam bond when she sees Jim's room for the first time and looks through his high school yearbook. After ruining an improv class, Michael decides to crash Jim's party, much to the staff's dismay and Dwight's naïve delight. Michael awkwardly tries his hand at karaoke but Jim then joins in, easing the tension considerably. The documentary crew catches Angela and Dwight making out in Jim's backyard. ===== The office staffers hold a "Secret Santa" gift exchange at their Christmas party. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) received Pam Beesly's (Jenna Fischer) name, and puts a great deal of effort into her gift (a teapot filled with some mementos and a personal letter from him to her). Michael Scott (Steve Carell) buys a $400 video iPod as his gift to Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak), far exceeding the $20 limit. He is disappointed by the handmade oven glove he receives from Phyllis Lapin (Phyllis Smith) and insists on turning the exchange into a "Yankee Swap". This goes amiss as many of the gifts, such as a decorative name plate with Kelly Kapoor's (Mindy Kaling) name on it, are specific to the recipients. The staff competes for the iPod, and Pam opts to swap for it rather than keep Jim's gift. Jim's present for Pam ends up with Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Jim coaxes Dwight to do a post-swap with him, but Dwight refuses, saying he plans to use the teapot for nasal cleansing. Pam elects to trade the iPod for Jim's gift after her fiance Roy tells her he was planning on getting her an iPod and has no other decent ideas for gifts, but to spare Jim's feelings she tells him she swapped out of appreciation for the effort he put into it. While she goes through the various aspects of her gift, Jim sneaks the letter for her into his pocket. After ruining his staff's mood, Michael disobeys company policy by buying alcohol for the party to compensate. Everyone ends up having a good time, with the exception of Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), who is furious over not receiving appreciation for her efforts toward arranging the party, as well as Kelly kissing Dwight, whom Angela is secretly dating. The party ends with a drunken Meredith Palmer (Kate Flannery) exposing herself to Michael, who takes a picture and then leaves. ===== The film follows a group of students at fictional Winfield College who butt heads with their faculty advisor while producing an annual stage show. They decide to enlist help from a former student Chuck Daly (Dick Powell), who is now a big Broadway producer, to direct their show. What they don't know is that Daly's last three shows were big flops. Inevitably, Daly and students clash with the stodgy professor. After some turn of events and plot twists, the production is finally mounted in New York City with great success. Daly's reputation is rehabilitated. ===== In the "Swingology" classroom at Katnip Kollege, the Professor (a parody of Kay Kyser) requires each student to sing his lessons to a jazz rhythm, all the while singing "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down." Johnny Cat just doesn't have it, and as a result, he has to stay after class wearing the dunce cap. Kitty Bright returns his fraternity ring as she leaves the room, telling him to call her when he learns how to swing. That night, as all the other cats jam at an outdoor caterwaul, Johnny is suddenly inspired by the rhythm of a cuckoo clock. He runs to join the group and shocks everyone with a flawlessly jazzy rendition of "Easy as Rollin' Off a Log" sung (and trumpeted) to Kitty. At the end of the song the two cats fall into each other's arms, "rolling" off the log they were using as their stage. ===== Pavel Kadochnikov (right) in Secret Agent (1947) Soviet intelligence officer Aleksey Fedotov by the name of Heinrich Eckert departs for German occupied Vinnytsia. His purpose is to obtain the secret correspondence of General Kuhn with the Hitler's headquarters. When his radio operator, sent to Aleksey, is executed, Fedotov is forced to search for a contact through the local underground, but accidentally he discovers that one of the underground workers is a provocateur. ===== The film is based on a real event in 1994, in which two 14-year-olds—Arbel Aloni and Moshe "Moshiko" Ben-Ivgi—murdered a taxi driver (named Derek Roth). In the film, their names have been changed to Ido Ben Ze'ev and Rafi, respectively. Ido comes from a wealthy family and acts as leader, while Rafi lives with his single mother and follows Ido. The children start committing crimes such as vandalism and theft, with the knowledge of Ofer Reinitz, a police officer, and the school councilor, Naomi. They work together to put the children in juvenile jail, although Ido's father Gidi, who is a prominent lawyer and personal friend of Ofer's from the army, does not believe the accusations against his son and stops the children from being persecuted on several occasions. After they murder a taxi driver for thrills with an old revolver, both Ido and Rafi are arrested. ===== The film begins with a narrator telling us that Cromwell's tyranny is coming to an end, when we see several men approaching on horseback. We learn that King Charles II and several of his Cavaliers have been on an exploratory tour in England, checking to see if the populace is ready to back his return. At the moment he is being hounded by a troop of Roundheads. King Charles stops to bid one of his supporters, a Royalist Lord Lucius Vyne (Hugh Grant) who he gives one of his favorite rings, telling Lucius to send it if he ever needs his help. Taking the ring Lucius borrows the King's distinctive plumed hat and leads the King's pursuers away, allowing Charles and Lucius' cousin, Lord Richard Vyne to reach a waiting boat bound for France. Lucius manages to lose the Roundheads in a cavernous entrance of a quarried chalk cliff face. In the next scene Lady Panthea Vyne (Lysette Anthony) is tricked into marriage by a lecherous older tax collector Drysdale (Ian Bannen) who had been seeking her hand in marriage. He promises to intercede and save her brother Lord Richard who, he tells her, is about to be executed. Drysdale tells her he can save her brother if she agrees to marry him. Leaving the church she and her new husband, no sooner reach their waiting coach that he attempts to unbutton her dress. Her small Cavalier King Charles Spaniel barks at Drysdale, who throws it to the floor of the coach and stomps it to death. Just then a gun ball blows a chunk of wood from the coach beside Drysdale's head. The mysterious masked highwayman known as "Silver Blade" (secretly her cousin Lucius) puts a stop to Drysdale's advances and helps our heroine to bury her dog. She tells Silver Blade of her plight; he whispers that Drysdale has lied, telling her that her brother is already dead. "Silver Blade" then duels with Drysdale, who Panthea warns Silver Blade is the best swordsman in England. Silver Blade soon runs him through and then takes Panthea home. The event will come back to haunt them both. Next her aunt, Lady Emma Darlington (Claire Bloom) talks her into coming to live with her as Panthea is all alone now that her father and brother are dead, nevermind her dead husband. At a royal reception we learn that Aunt Emma was the King's 'second' mother. The King invites Panthea to be a lady of the queen's bed chamber. With Panthea attracting all of the males' admiring glances plus her now becoming part of the new queen's court, the King's mistress Lady Castlemaine (Emma Samms) is livid. About then Panthea asks her Aunt who is 'that' lady, pointing to Lady Castlemaine. Her aunt tells her to look away. Next Lady Castlemaine's guest Rudolph introduces himself, reminding Panthea and her aunt that he is Panthea's cousin on her distaff side. He then introduces Lady Castlemaine, when suddenly Lady Darlington grabs Panthea and abruptly turns her back and walks away. Lady Castlemaine is fit to be tied, and swears to take revenge for the slight. Cousin Rudolph plots to inherit the title as Duke of Manston Hall, which is Panthea's home and also Lucius' hiding place. Lucius, instead of claiming his royal title, is in true Robin Hood fashion working against the King's secret enemies. Panthea, who has been in love with Silver Blade since the day he saved her, learns he is in grave danger and is about to be captured in a trap set for that night. She rides to warn him and saves the day after declaring her love for him. However, soon after the King leaves for France, she falls victim to the schemes of Lady Castlemaine who is after her head. Meanwhile, Lady Castlemaine learns of the coach incident and pays the coachman, now a sergeant in the King's Guards, to accuse Panthea of murder. She sets her trap and soon Panthea is fighting for her life in court. After she is condemned to death Lucius attempts her rescue and ends up arrested as well. He passes the King's ring to Panthea's maid, telling her to take it to the King, but Rudolph sees the sparkling ring and takes it from Lucius. On the morning of his execution Lucius tricks his jailer, and he and his men fight their way out of their jail and ride to the Tower of London to Panthea's rescue. As the hulking Axeman is in mid swing, an arrow from Lucius strikes his shoulder, causing his blow to miss Panthea's head, but Lucius and Panthea are surrounded; escape is seemingly impossible, but meanwhile in an amazing Deus Ex Machina, the plodding Rudolph, who can't wait till he is sure Lucius is dead, barges in before the King and demands to be declared the Duke of Manston Hall. The King, who has seemingly forgotten his friend, spies the ring and soon shows up at the tower, just in time to save the day. Lucius and Panthea are married and all ends well. ===== Henry Paradene, a retired musical comedy actor, has inherited a large country house he can hardly afford to maintain, Ashby Hall near the town of Ashby Paradene in Sussex. Henry's niece Jane Martyn, a secretary for the UK office of Newsweek, is spending the summer with him. Jane's brother Algernon “Algy” Martyn does not work and spends his time coming up with money-making schemes. Henry does not allow Algy at Ashby Hall (since Algy is eager to ask Henry for loans), so Algy lives off his friend Thomas “Bill” Hardy in Valley Fields. On her way to see Algy, Jane asks Bill to help a cat out of a tree, and Bill falls in love with her. Later, Jane has lunch with her fiancé Lionel Green, an interior decorator and antique furniture salesman, after six months of being apart, but Lionel is not enthusiastic to see her and annoys her by bringing his business partner Orlo Tarvin to join them. A wealthy American named J. Wendell Stickney lives in New York with his widowed aunt by marriage, former chorus girl Kelly Stickney. A distant relative of Henry Paradene, Wendell takes pride in being part of the Paradene family. Henry hopes to sell his house to Wendell, and has Wendell and Kelly visit. Algy is visited by a broker's man named Clarence Binstead who works for the firm Duff and Trotter (a company from Quick Service and Money in the Bank). Algy owes the company for alcoholic drinks, and Binstead's presence puts pressure on Algy to pay his debt. Bill goes to Ashby Paradene in the hope of seeing Jane and meets her again; she learns that, under the pen name Adela Bristow, he wrote a thriller novel both she and her uncle enjoyed reading, Deadly Ernest. Wendell, a collector of French eighteenth-century paperweights, covets one such paperweight kept in Ashby Hall. Henry would like to sell it but legally cannot, since it is an entailed family heirloom (though it seems Henry can legally sell Ashby Hall). Kelly suggests Wendell buy the paperweight from Bill and have Bill pretend it was stolen. She takes the paperweight and gives it to Wendell to mail to New York, but Wendell fears being caught as a thief when he sees Bill, mistakenly believing that Bill is a detective for the trustees ("some legal firm or other", according to Henry) of the entail. Wendell is too nervous to mail the paperweight, but fears Henry will change his mind about selling it, and so will not let anyone else mail it for him. Henry wants to marry Kelly; he eventually tells her that he wishes to sell the house to Wendell in order to have enough money to marry her, and she agrees to marry him anyway. Algy wants money to buy a house in Valley Fields and sell it to a company that desires the land for a block of flats, and decides to seek a loan from Wendell. Bill is disheartened to learn that Jane is engaged; however, this engagement ends, as Jane learns from Orlo Tarvin that Lionel is engaged to a millionaire's daughter and did not have the nerve to tell her. Jane has discovered the paperweight is missing and believes Wendell stole it; hoping to get near Wendell to ask for a loan, Algy offers to steal the paperweight back for her (though this does not occur, as Henry later admits the scheme to Algy). Algy also tells Jane that Bill loves her. Bill gets a letter from his New York literary agent saying that Deadly Earnest has become successful and suggests Bill go to New York for his career. Wendell decides to put the paperweight in a safe deposit box at his bank, but he sees Bill again and loses his nerve. Like Algy, Henry owes money to Duff and Trotter, and the company's broker's man Binstead is sent to Ashby Hall. An ex-fiancée of Binstead's works at the house, so he agrees, at Algy's suggestion, to have Bill, who wants an excuse to be near Jane, go in his place and pretend to be the broker's man. Wendell finally puts the paperweight in a safe deposit box in his bank, and, still thinking Bill is a detective, pays him a bribe through Algy. Algy now has the money he needs to invest in the Valley Fields house. Wendell plans to buy Ashby Hall, and Bill and Jane get engaged and intend to live in America. ===== Horace Appleby, who lives in London suburb Valley Fields, looks and acts like a butler, so he locates jewels for his burglar gang as a butler. He does not allow them to carry guns; American safe-blower Charlie Yost carried a gun, so Horace refuses to pay him. Other henchmen include Llewellyn "Basher" Evans, another safe-blower, and Ferdinand Ripley or "Ferdie the Fly", who can climb buildings. Horace goes to the races at Wellingford, Worcestershire. In nearby Mallow Hall lives Mike Pond, who recently succeeded his late uncle as owner of the house and Bond's Bank. He employs secretary Ada Cootes, and lives with his aunt Isobel Bond, who is confined to her room with a broken leg and has a nurse, Jill Willard. Someone steals Horace's wallet and Ada hits the thief, recovering the wallet. Horace thanks her and treats her to tea. Ada tells him about Bond's Bank, and Horace plans to rob it. He becomes butler at Mallow Hall to use it as a base of operations. Jill thinks he is a burglar, but she is annoyed with Mike, who once seemed to love her yet is now distant, and does not warn him. Horace has fallen for Ada and proposes to her; at first she is thrilled, but Jill warns her about Horace being a thief, and Ada turns him down. Jill eavesdrops on a conversation between Mike and the bank trustees, General Sir Frederick Featherstone and Augustus "Gussie" Mortlake. The bank is insolvent by a hundred thousand pounds. Originally the amount was even greater, but Mike gambled with the depositors' money to bring the amount down; he will go to prison if this is discovered. Mike also mentions that his uncle took out an insurance policy for him: Mike is insured for a hundred thousand pounds if someone injures him with the intent to kill. Jill is glad that Mike's distance was due only to business problems and wants to marry him, but Mike refuses since he may go to prison. Mike wishes someone would rob the bank to hide the truth. Jill suggests to Ada, who knows the combination to the bank's large safe, that they rob the bank. Horace shoots a window with a gun from the Hall's gunroom so the police will only focus on the house. Basher retires from crime, having become religious after a revival meeting, and gives up his ill-gotten gains; Charlie appears, takes the money as his cut, and takes Basher's place. When Charlie tries to rob Gussie Mortlake, Gussie thinks of hiring Charlie to shoot at Mike for the insurance money. A policeman comes by, but Gussie tells him everything is fine, and Charlie gratefully offers his services. Mike reluctantly agrees to Gussie's plan. Jill and Ada start burgling the bank and put money in a suitcase. Horace arrives with subordinates Ferdie, Montgomery "Smithy" Smith, and an American named Frank. Jill hides and Ada swoons inside the safe. The gang is stopped by the muscular Basher, who has threatened Charlie into staying away. The safe is open, but Basher quickly shuts it. Ferdie saw a girl inside, and Horace realizes it is Ada. He telephones Mike and admits he is burgling the bank, though Mike initially thinks Horace is drunk, and Aunt Isobel, in the background, says "Doesn't sound likely. Do butlers burgle banks?". Horace says that Ada got locked in the airtight safe. Mike provides the combination and Horace rescues Ada. Jill is discovered and Horace politely introduces her to the gang, though Frank flees. Jill is impressed with Horace and apologizes for warning Ada against marrying him; after he agrees to retire from crime, she talks to Ada, and Ada and Horace get engaged. Superintendent Jessop of the Wellingford constabulary appears, and Horace has Ferdie, Smithy, Jill, and Ada pretend they are performing an audit. Jessop leaves convinced. Mike arrives and Jill explains everything to him. Ada explains Jill's scheme to Horace. He tells Jill to bring the suitcase to the Hall. Jessop returns with his supercilious brother-in-law, Sergeant Claude Potter of Scotland Yard, and Horace claims that the bank was robbed after the audit. Potter is suspicious. Mike tries to cancel Gussie's plan with Charlie, but Charlie has given his task to Frank, and Frank will show up at the Hall's back door to shoot at Mike. Jessop and Potter come to the house, and Potter is just about to search the suitcase when the parlourmaid says that there is a man at the back door to see Mike. Potter goes though Mike begs him not to; Potter gets shot in the arm and is expected to be in hospital for a week. Now that the police are on to him, Mike fears he will go to prison if he keeps the suitcase, but the bank will fail if he returns it. Horace, Ferdie, and Smithy finance the bank with their savings and save Mike. ===== Blandings Castle lacks its usual balm for the Earl of Emsworth, as his stern sister Lady Constance Keeble is once more in residence. The Duke of Dunstable is also infesting the place again, along with the standard quota of American millionaires, romantic youths, con artists, imposters and so on. With a painting of a reclining nude at the centre of numerous intrigues, Gally's genius is once again required to sort things out. ===== Monty Bodkin's fiancée Gertrude Butterwick will not marry him without the consent of her father J. B. Butterwick, and he will not consent unless Monty can remain employed for a full year. Monty Bodkin has worked as a production advisor for the Superba-Llewellyn Motion Picture Corporation in Hollywood for a year, and returns to England hoping to marry Gertrude. However, her father, who dislikes Monty, insists the job did not count because Monty got it through dishonest means (by trading a certain Mickey Mouse doll to Ivor Llewellyn in The Luck of the Bodkins). To appease Mr Butterwick, Monty gets another job working for Ivor Llewellyn, this time as his secretary, after being hired by Llewellyn's domineering wife Grayce with help from Sally Miller. Sally told Grayce that Monty comes from a well-connected aristocratic family (which is not true). Sally was Monty's secretary in Hollywood and is now Mrs Grayce Llewellyn's secretary. Sally loves Monty but keeps this secret since he is engaged to someone else. Monty goes to work at Llewellyn's country house, Mellingham Hall, Mellingham, Sussex, where Llewellyn is writing a history of his film studio. Grayce has a joint account with Llewellyn and watches his spending to keep him from gambling. Monty lends Llewellyn money for gambling, and they become friends. Grayce has a valuable pearl necklace, and employs detective J. Sheringham Adair (actually the alias of criminal Chimp Twist) to watch it. Chimp comes to the house posing as Llewellyn's new valet. Grayce keeps Llewellyn on a diet and Chimp is supposed to report to her if Llewellyn does not stick to it, though he actually sneaks food to Llewellyn and charges him for it. Monty is irritated that Gertrude does not object to her father's stipulation that he work for another year. Wilfred Chisholm, a hockey player like Gertrude, wants to marry her. She likes him but feels she cannot break her promise to Monty, though she is displeased with his low opinion of her father. While Grayce is away visiting her daughter Mavis, Llewellyn takes the opportunity to go to a night club, which Grayce would never allow, with Monty and Sally. A police raid occurs, and Monty is able to escape after Sally pulls a dustbin with bottles over the head of Chisholm, who is a plainclothes policeman and tried to arrest Monty. This causes Monty to fall in love with Sally. She confided in Llewellyn about her feelings for Monty, and despite his promise not to tell Monty, he does so. Monty wants to marry her but does not want to hurt Gertrude's feelings by ending their engagement. Mavis tells Grayce that she thinks Monty is a burglar. The Llewellyns have invited to the house their new friends Soapy and Dolly Molloy, who are actually burglars intent on stealing the pearl necklace. Chimp Twist and the Molloys compete to steal it. Mavis plans to bring her new fiancé Jimmy Ponder to the house soon. This worries Llewellyn, since Ponder is a jewellery expert and will realize Grayce's pearl necklace, which is supposed to be given to Mavis when she marries, is fake. (Llewellyn sold the real one and replaced it with a replica.) Ponder was also swindled by Soapy in Cannes, so the Molloys will have to be gone before he arrives. Llewellyn asks Monty to lose the necklace while bringing it to the bank so Ponder will not discover it is fake. Mr Butterwick learns that Mrs Llewellyn hired Monty because she was impressed by his connections, so he informs her that Monty is not actually related to aristocrats. After Chisholm tells Gertrude that Monty was at a club with a girl, Gertrude decides to marry Chisholm. Monty drives to the bank with Dolly. Dolly surprises him by revealing a gun and demanding the necklace, but then she is surprised by Chimp who was hiding in the back seat of the car and also has a gun. Chimp takes the necklace and drives off, leaving Monty and Dolly to walk back to the Hall. Monty is not upset with Dolly and tells her the necklace is fake, which Chimp will soon discover. When Monty returns and claims the necklace was stolen, Grayce believes he is lying and wants to have him arrested for stealing the necklace. However, Mavis telephones her mother to tell her that Ponder said the pearls were fake, which he already spotted. Acting on Sally's advice, Llewellyn tries to blame Grayce by claiming she sold the real necklace since she would have to give it to Mavis. A telegram from Gertrude announces that she has broken off her engagement to Monty, allowing Monty to get engaged to Sally. Grayce decides to get a divorce, an event which Llewellyn, who has already divorced four times, regards as purely routine. Sally wonders if Llewellyn will finally stop getting married, which Monty doubts. ===== Ephraim Trout of Trout, Wapshott and Edelstein, a legal firm employed by Ivor Llewellyn, head of the Superba-Llewellyn studio of Hollywood, has handled Llewellyn's five divorces. Llewellyn is on his way to London on business, and Trout sees Llewellyn off at the Los Angeles airport. Trout warns him against any more impulsive proposals. Trout has managed to stay single since he belongs to a California group called Bachelors Anonymous, inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous. When one member feels the impulse to take a woman out to dinner, he seeks out the other members and they reason with him. He advises Llewellyn to consult the legal firm of Nichols, Erridge and Trubshaw in London, as they can find someone to act as a similar advisor for Llewellyn. Other members of Bachelors Anonymous convince Trout to follow Llewellyn to London to help. In London, Llewellyn meets Vera Dalrymple, the star of the Regal Theatre's stage comedy Cousin Angela, written by Joseph "Joe" Pickering (who makes his living working for the solicitors Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith, and Shoesmith, mentioned in other stories such as Ice in the Bedroom). Joe is interviewed by Sally Fitch (from Much Middlefold) for a women's paper, and they get along well. Vera monopolizes the show and Cousin Angela closes after only 16 performances. The Regal Theatre's stage-doorkeeper Mac (who appeared in A Damsel in Distress and Summer Lightning) gives his sympathy to Joe. While waiting to see Vera, a drunk man threatens Mac, so Joe throws him out. Joe learns from his friend Jerry Nichols, of the Nichols, Erridge and Trubshaw law firm, that he can earn a lucrative salary working for Llewellyn. Joe falls in love with Sally and makes plans to have lunch with her at Barribault's. Jerry tells Sally that she has inherited a legacy from a former employer, Letitia Carberry, supporter of the Anti-Tobacco League. Carberry left most of her money to the League but left Sally twenty-five thousand pounds on the condition that she not smoke for two years. Sally is to live in a posh Park Lane apartment with a private detective, Daphne Dolby, the owner of the Eagle Eye detective agency, who will know if Sally smokes. Daphne is engaged to Sir Jaklyn Warner, Baronet, because she is interested in his title and he in her money. Jaklyn, who is Sally's ex- fiancé, hears about Sally's inheritance. Sally accidentally falls asleep and misses lunch with Joe. Llewellyn explains the Bachelors Anonymous idea to Joe, and recognizes him as the man who threw him out at the theatre and kept him from having dinner with Vera. Impressed, Llewellyn hires him. Sally apologizes to Joe for missing lunch and agrees to dinner. Trout sees Llewellyn, who is concerned that Joe has fallen for Sally. This worries Trout, and to keep Joe from going to dinner, he slips Joe a Mickey Finn. Sally is disappointed when Joe fails to appear, believing it to be petty revenge for her missing lunch. Jaklyn proposes to her (for her money) and she accepts, not knowing he is engaged to Daphne. She mentions her engagement to Daphne, and Daphne realizes what occurred. With one of her operatives, the intimidating Cyril Pemberton, she makes Jaklyn join her at the registry office to get married. Sally refuses to listen to Joe and goes to Valley Fields to see her former nanny Jane Priestley, who turns Joe and Trout away. Trout's hand is bitten by a dog named Percy, and the dog's owner, Amelia Bingham, bandages his hand. She is a hospital nurse. Trout falls for her, and now approves of marriage. Llewellyn is astonished when Trout accepts dinner with Vera on Llewellyn's behalf. Joe suggests that Llewellyn get a check-up at a hospital to hide from Vera. Trout, who has resigned from Bachelors Anonymous, admits to slipping Joe a Mickey Finn and apologizes to him. Trout tells Sally everything, and she reconciles with Joe. Unaware that Jaklyn is now married, Trout pays him off with fifty pounds to prevent a breach of promise case. Daphne catches Sally smoking, and Joe is fired by Llewellyn, who impulsively proposed to his nurse at the hospital, Amelia. However, all ends well when Llewellyn learns Trout has got engaged to Amelia. Llewellyn decides to make Joe's play into a movie and pays him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and will become a member of Bachelors Anonymous when he returns to California with a letter of introduction from Trout. ===== On the eve of his 78th birthday, the ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour. His son Claude appears as a cold and unforgiving prosecuting lawyer, who revels in spiteful repartee. His second (illegitimate) son Kevin features as an idealistic soldier accused of the mercy-killing of an old man who was being hunted down. Sonia, the wife of Claude, shows sympathy with Kevin and seems eager to seduce him in protest at her husband's callousness. Clive also invents the character of Helen, as Claude's mistress, but she bears the features of Clive's dead wife Molly who committed suicide. Clive's imagination is also haunted by scenes of an autopsy on the corpse of an old man, a military round-up of elderly people who are detained in a sports stadium, and a dark tangled forest in which a hunted man metamorphoses into a werewolf. Before Clive loses consciousness, it is Kevin whom he sees as the werewolf in the forest; Claude shoots Kevin but seems to identify him with their father. On the following day, Clive welcomes Claude, Sonia and Kevin (in reality an astrophysicist) for an idyllic birthday lunch in the sunlit garden of his country mansion, and their relationships are characterised by mutual affection and good humour, albeit with signs of self-restraint in deference to the occasion. After lunch, in what he seems to envisage as a final parting, Clive unexpectedly asks them all to leave without a word. ===== The story opens circa 1980 at an abandoned chateau in the Swiss Alps, once a prestigious boarding school, L'Hirondelle. Internationally famous film siren, Lili, travels from there to a private meeting with the elderly Hortense Boutin, whom Lili knows was paying money on behalf of one of the school's students to a family which adopted the student's illegitimate child. Lili is the child, now grown up. The story flashes back to 1960, introducing schoolgirls Pagan Trelawney, Judy Hale, and Maxine Pascal. Each becomes entangled with a man – Pagan with Prince Abdullah of Sydon, Judy with banker Nick Cliffe, and Maxine with ice hockey player Pierre Boursal. All three romances fail, but one of the women becomes pregnant. Knowing it means ruin for the unwed mother, the three make a pact to protect her identity. All three present themselves to the local doctor, Dr. Geneste, and he agrees to assist in having the child adopted. When the doctor discovers the identity of the mother-to-be, he says, "Of the three of you, you are the one I least suspected." The child, Elizabeth Lace, is born on November 17, 1960. The mother's birth name is recorded as Lucinda Lace. An attempt by the school's headmaster Monsieur Chardin to expel the girls is thwarted when they unearth photographs of him in a homosexual tryst with the school's chauffeur, Paul. They blackmail Chardin into allowing them to stay and graduating them with honors. The child is placed with a foster family. On their behalf, Maxine's aunt, Hortense Boutin, agrees to pay money to Felix and Angelina Dassin, a French couple who consent to raise the child. The three girls, on the verge of success in their respective careers, receive a report that the child has been killed an auto accident. Consumed with guilt and shame, the three friends have a falling out and go their separate ways. In fact, Lili survived. Felix and Angelina were gunned down by Hungarian Soldiers after the accident. She was placed in a detention camp on the Eastern Bloc, where she spent the next ten years before finally escaping and eventually transforms herself into a film sex symbol. Employing a private investigator, Lili tracks the payments to her adopted parents to Hortense, and through her, finds out about the three school friends and their pact. She knows one of them is her mother. Pagan Trelawney is now Lady Swann, a British aristocrat and the wife of a cancer researcher; Judy Hale has become a journalist, war correspondent, and publisher of Lace magazine; while Maxine Pascal is now the Countess de Chazalle, a French socialite. Hortense insists to Lili that the child is dead. But Lili defiantly proclaims "They'll wish I was. They made their schoolgirl pact and sent me to Hell--I'll teach them what I learned there!" As she leaves, the revelation proves to be too much for Hortense to bear and she suffers a fatal heart attack and dies. After Hortense's funeral, which Maxine, Pagan and Judy all attend and where she witnesses the extent of their estrangement from one another, Lili inveigles herself in the lives of the three women, promising each of them something of value: for Judy, an exclusive interview for her magazine; to Pagan, a very sizable donation to her cancer society charity and for Maxine, to stop dating her son. But she also intends to ruin them if they do not reveal which of them is her mother. She assembles the three and challenges them with the mini-series' most famous line: "Incidentally...which one of you bitches is my mother?" The second part of the mini-series is driven largely by flashbacks to the three women's young adulthood, charting their career successes and returning occasionally to the present where all three are in the company of the woman who claims to be the abandoned daughter. Lili, at the end of the flashbacks, again tries to force a confession from them, but they still remain silent. Infuriated, Lili orders them to leave, but says she intends to keep the promises she made them regardless. As she ascends to her bedroom, she shocks the women by revealing the full details of her birth to the trio. Later in the hotel bar, Judy, Pagan and Maxine all confirm that Lili was telling the truth and they all humorously agree that she is better than all of them put together. Maxine comments that "Well, at least she brought us all back together. I missed you - I really did". That last declaration finally repairs their damaged relationship. They agree Lili must be told the truth with Judy stating that this time, Lili's real mother is on her own in doing so. Lili receives a phone call from the hotel manager, telling her that her mother wants to see her. A pair of high heels can be seen walking up the stairs. Finally, Judy Hale comes into the room and beckons Lili to come closer. Lili slowly rises and walks toward Judy, and the two embrace. ===== The story is another tale set at Blandings Castle, filled as ever with romance and imposters. Galahad Threepwood uses his charm and wit to ensure his brother Clarence continues to lead a quiet and peaceful life. ===== A group of Native American bear cubs defending themselves from their enemies, The Meanos, led by the evil sorcerer Dark Paw. Dark Paw and his henchmen were after the Paw Paws' three large wooden totems, Totem Bear, Totem Tortoise, and Totem Eagle. The totems also served as the tribe's protectors, coming to life when needed through means of Princess Paw Paw's Mystic Moonstone, which she wore around her neck, to defend the village. Much like other Hanna-Barbera programs of The Smurfs, The Biskitts, Shirt Tales, Snorks or Pound Puppies, the bears had names that denoted their personalities—Laughing Paw, Medicine Paw, Bumble Paw, etc. Brave Paw and Princess Paw Paw tended to be the leads, riding into adventures on their magical flying ponies, while aging Wise Paw served as tribal advisor. The mascot of the group was a tiny dog by the name of PaPooch. ===== The text begins with Niger talking to his father Oceanus. Oceanus asks him why he has left his usual eastward course and flowed westward, into the Atlantic. Niger tells him that he has come to request help. Niger's daughters are upset because they thought of themselves to be the most beautiful goddesses in the world, but they found out that paleness is more attractive and no longer feel beautiful. The moon goddess, Aethiopia, tells the daughters to find a country that ends in "tannia" and they will be beautiful once more. The daughters desperately tried finding the country and even went to Mauritania (North Africa), Lusitania (Portugal), and Aquitania (France). They prayed once more to Aethiopia and she told them the country is Britannia. She told them that the king was sun-like and he would be able to bleach the black away. Aethiopia stated that once a month for the next year, the daughters should bathe in sea-dew and at the same time next year, they will appear before the king again, and his light will make them beautiful and white. ===== Manta (Monarch of the Deep) is the last survivor of the ancient civilization of Mu, which used to exist in the Pacific Ocean. Mu was destroyed by a terrible explosion, but Manta was engulfed by a wave of mysterious radiation, and placed into suspended animation deep beneath the waves. He was discovered and awoken by Moray, a human female, who became his companion. He is amphibious, but (unlike Moray) cannot be away from water for long periods of time - lest he weaken and die. He can communicate with various animals, on land as well as in the sea. Moray (birth name unknown) was orphaned when her parents' plane crashed into the sea; the young girl was saved, and subsequently raised, by dolphins. Over the next few years, Moray learned to live in the ocean. Then she discovered and revived Manta, who became her companion. Both pledged themselves to protecting the sea-world from any who would threaten it. An excellent swimmer, Moray can hold her breath for incredibly long periods but (unlike Manta) is vulnerable to deep-water pressure. She wears a leg-baring red wetsuit with white trim, and a matching headband. Manta and Moray's other companions include Whiskers (a sea lion) and Guppy (a gray whale). ===== Zack Freeman's bum is constantly detaching itself from his body and running off. One night, when he follows his bum, he learns that there is a plot by bums to take over the world. Specifically, the bums plan to create a huge, worldwide fart by building up a massive quantity of methane gas in the "Bumcano". When the Bumcano blows, all humans will be rendered unconscious. While they are unconscious, the bums will seize their chance and switch places with their heads. Fortunately, Zack meets the "Bum-hunter" Silas Sterne and his daughter, Eleanor, and is introduced to the realities of life in a world where bums are constantly a threat. To prevent the Bumcano eruption, the friends enlist the help of the Kisser, the Kicker, the Smacker and Ned Smelly. The characters encounter a variety of bum-related places and things, including the "Great Windy Desert", "flying bum squadrons", Stenchgantor The Great Unwiped Bum and the Great White Bum. Naturally, every possible opportunity for toilet humour is milked in this book for children, which won a number of Children's Choice awards in Australia. YARA Older Readers' Award 2001 YABBA Older Readers' Award 2002 It is followed by Zombie Bums from Uranus (2003) and Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict (2005). ===== In the Soviet Union, American reporter McKinley "Mac" Thompson (Clark Gable) secretly writes unflattering stories about the Soviet Union, attributed to "Comrade X", for his newspaper. His identity is discovered by his valet, Vanya (Felix Bressart), who blackmails Mac into promising to get his daughter, a streetcar conductor named Theodore (Hedy Lamarr), out of the country. Theodore agrees to a sham marriage so she can spread the message of the benefits of Communism to the rest of the world. However, Commissar Vasiliev (Oscar Homolka) is determined to unmask and arrest Comrade X. Eventually Theodore sees the "wicked hypocrisy of Communism" and falls in love with Thompson. ===== In a corrupt Alabama town near the Army's Fort Benning, the law can do little to stop the criminal activities of Rhett Tanner, particularly in the wide-open "red-light district" area known for prostitution, taverns, and crooked gambling. Most of the police do not even try, since they are on Tanner's payroll. Local attorney, Albert "Pat" Patterson, initially neutral and complacent, is urged to run for State Attorney General and clean up Phenix City, but he wants no part of a thankless, impossible job. He is content to welcome home his son John from military service. However, soon violence breaks out trying to silence the reform-minded citizens committee. John gets caught in the middle when Clem Wilson, a thug who works for Tanner, and others assault innocent citizens. Patterson finally agrees to get involved in reforming the town, but as soon as he is elected nominee, he is killed. It is up to John to avenge his father, but his own family ends up at risk. ===== Russian agents searching for something underwater find a crate as Hong Kong police close in. They accidentally open the crate and baby dolls float to the surface before being detonated. Some Russian agents and a Hong Kong detective pursuing them survive. Downtown, Tommy Hendricks (Rob Schneider) is arranging a fashion show for "V-Six" Jeans. His partner, Marcus Ray (Jean-Claude Van Damme) shows up late after inspecting a warehouse of their goods where he sees several knock-offs, including the exploding dolls, peddled by a Hong Kong gangster, Skinny. Marcus and Tommy then participate in a rickshaw race during which Marcus' adopted brother and friend Eddie cheats to win by switching with a body double. The body double gets kidnapped by Russian agents (looking for Eddie) and Marcus gives chase. Ultimately, they kill the fake Eddie and Hong Kong police arrest Marcus and Tommy, but release them without charges. Back at their office, an executive from V-Six, Karen Leigh (Lela Rochon), claims a shipment of jeans was counterfeit and Marcus and Tommy are responsible for over $5 million of losses. She agrees to let it go if they go to the warehouse that switched the fake jeans and identify who did it. Meanwhile, the Russian bosses kill the agents who failed to reclaim the dolls and get tipped off by Skinny that V-Six is onto them and is going to their warehouse. When Tommy gets kidnapped at a restaurant, Marcus follows him and finds him talking to his CIA handlers. He is a CIA agent sent to discover the counterfeiters who used Marcus, "the king of knock offs," as his cover. That night, before they arrive at the warehouse, a truck bursts out. Marcus gets on top of it and when it ultimately crashes they find it full of tiny discs. Tommy's boss, Harry Johansson (Paul Sorvino), determines they are powerful "nanobombs" at their base inside a Buddha statue. Believing Eddie to be in on it, they go to see him. Eddie fingers Skinny as the counterfeiter; he found out they had bombs in the merchandise and tried to have it dumped in the ocean before the Russians found them. He opens a safe to give them proof, but it explodes, killing him. Tommy and Marcus have to fight their way out of the building. Tommy obtains security footage on the way out. Marcus kidnaps Skinny and takes him back to the CIA base in the Buddha. There, the security footage reveals Karen was in the warehouse just before they were. At the office, she handcuffs Tommy and prepares to kill him. After Marcus leaves, the Buddha explodes, and Marcus races to the office to save Tommy. After a fight, she reveals she's CIA as well, and the three team up. While Marcus changes, the Russians kidnap Karen and Tommy, and Marcus finds a bomb detector in Karen's things. He realizes the jean studs are the nanobombs and checks the computer for the shipping manifest. He and the Hong Kong detective from the opening scene race to the port where Karen and Tommy are being held. Tommy is relieved to see Harry on board, but Harry reveals he is a double agent intending to ransom companies for not detonating the nanobombs they have been secretly planting in manufactured goods all over the world. Marcus and the detective board the barge and fight through all of the Russians, eventually escaping just before Harry detonates it. Karen plants a handful of the nanobombs on Harry's boat as well, which explodes. They find the detonator in the water and take it. Two months later, Tommy and Marcus talk in a bar. Tommy still has the detonator. In a distant room, Harry, still alive, is planting nanobombs on a toy. Tommy carelessly activates the detonator, destroying the building Harry is in, in the distance. ===== The movie takes place in the summer of 2002 when Sean (Don Digiulio) inherits a farmhouse from his father. Sean was adopted at birth and until that point had no idea about his family. He and a group of friends decide to stay in the farmhouse located in West Virginia for a few days. When they arrive, they're attacked by three killer scarecrows. ===== Cameron Walker's (Goss) world revolves around him and his extended family living in Hamilton, Ohio, which includes wife Liz (Vigman), his son Ezra (Matthews), his daughter Marni (Jourdain) and his son Henry (Einhorn) who Cameron didn't know existed, his mother and stepfather, Colleen and Wendal Halbert (Wallace-Stone, Gail), and his other plethora of brothers and sisters. He is considered the only sane person in his family and tries to fix any problem that arises within the family. Cameron's sister and brother-in-law Sharon (Quinn) and Don Fenton (Lambert) seem to create more problems for him rather than themselves. The couple are almost always in deep denial about their personal issues, such as not having sex for several years. Jenna (Walsh), Sharon and Cameron's half- sister, is a single mother of one who is continuously attracted to the "bad boy" personality, such as "Whitey" (Pitts), and steers away from the "nice guy" types, like Wylie (Harrington). Their parents, Colleen and Wendal, love their family but have profound complications within their own relationship. Cameron constantly tries to help them solve their issues, but it doesn't always work out the way he expects. Cameron's great-aunt Rae (Hall) appeared intermittently, mostly in runaway gags and one-liners. A decrepit old woman, Rae was also a vocal anti-Semite who disliked Liz simply because she was Jewish. Throughout the series, Rae is the frequent butt of practical jokes and derisive comments. (This character is supposedly based on Goss' grandmother.) ===== After discovering new artifacts in the previous books, the team gets together again this time to search for the Zardalu unwittingly unleashed upon the galaxy during their previous adventure. This search leads them to the Zardalu Communion and the exploration of a huge space-time anomaly called the Torvil Anfract. The novel includes excerpts from the Hot Rocks, Warm Beer, Cold Comfort: Jetting Alone Around the Galaxy, a sort-of travel book by Captain Alonzo Wilberforce Sloane (retired). The sequel to this novel is Convergence. Category:1992 American novels Category:Novels by Charles Sheffield Category:1992 science fiction novels Category:American science fiction novels Category:Del Rey books ===== The book takes place millennia in the future with the same group of explorers introduced in the first two books of the series, Summertide and Divergence. After millions of years of apparent inaction, the Builder artifacts are changing quickly. After exploring several new artifacts, rediscovering the existence of a race thought to be dead for millennia, and finding that race's home planet in the midst of an enormous artifact, the adventures of this eclectic team become even stranger. In this book the characters explore several old artifacts to find that they have changed. These changes all seemed to be linked to a seemingly new artifact, which may affect the future of the entire Orion Arm of the galaxy. The sequel to this book and series finale is Resurgence. Category:1997 American novels Category:Novels by Charles Sheffield Category:1997 science fiction novels Category:Baen Books books ===== This novel portrays a love affair between Jadine and Son, two Black Americans from very different worlds. Jadine is a beautiful Sorbonne graduate and fashion model who has been sponsored into wealth and privilege by the Streets, a wealthy white family who employ Jadine's aunt and uncle as domestic servants. Son is an impoverished, strong- minded man who washes up at the Streets' estate on a Caribbean island. As Jadine and Son come together, their affair ruptures the illusions and self- deceptions that held together the world and relationships at the estate. They travel back to the U.S. to search for somewhere they can both be at home, and find that their homes hold poison for each other. The struggle of Jadine and Son reveals the pain, struggle, and compromises confronting Black Americans seeking to live and love with integrity in the United States. ===== Serial murderer and rapist Abbott Hayes disappears from the morgue and becomes the leader of several waves of zombies that attack his home town. Fourteen years after the last zombie attack, a businessman relocates bodies from a local cemetery to pave the way for progress, but sets in motion Abbott's next undead assault. ===== Alexander Armsworth and his family move into an antebellum Louisiana plantation. Alexander's mother and sister become set on restoring the home to its former glory, but Alexander is unsettled by the mysterious lights he sees around the property. He also meets his new neighbor, Blossom Culp, a superstitious girl raised by her spiritualist grandmother. In spite of Blossom's strange and sometimes annoying ways, she becomes a loyal friend. One night Alexander sees the mysterious lights once more and follows them into the old barn, where he finds the ghost of a young Creole girl, Inez Dumaine, and her dog. Inez's uncle was the notorious pirate Jacques Dumaine, former owner of the plantation. In life, Inez refused to reveal the location of her family's fortune to Jacques, who murdered her and her dog by throwing them down the well in the barn. As revenge, he cursed her ghost to remain on the property. In order to be free of the curse, Inez must solve a riddle and begs Alexander to help her, while warning him that if the riddle is not solved before All Saints' Eve (Halloween), she will be trapped forever and forced to reenact her murder every night. The riddle states: Sleeping lies the murdered lass. Vainly cries the child of glass. When the two shall be as one, the spirit's journey will be done. Realizes that Inez herself must be "the murdered lass," Alexander enlists Blossom and her grandmother to find the "child of glass." In a vision using Blossom's crystal ball, Alexander sees Inez alive with her mother, who makes Inez promise to look after her china doll Babette. Waking from the vision, Alexander realizes that the doll Babette must be the "child of glass." Meanwhile, Alexander's mother fires a disgruntled handyman, Amory Timmons, who burns down the barn as revenge. Alexander witnesses the fire and Amory attempts to murder him. Alexander escapes by running into the burning barn, but falls into the old well. Roused by the barn fire, Alexander's family realize that he is missing, while Amory has escaped. As the police search for Alexander and Amory, Inez's dog leads Blossom to the well house, where she sees the unconscious Alexander on a ledge. Blossom is the only one light enough to be lowered down the well to tie a rope to Alexander. While doing so, she discovers Babette on the same ledge. Both Alexander and the doll are taken safely from the well. Alexander and Blossom located Inez's family tomb and lay the doll on her grave, freeing her from the curse. However, Amory tracks Alexander and Blossom to the tomb and is on the verge of killing them both when Inez manifests as a terrifying, wailing ghost that scares him into fleeing. Inez thanks Alexander and Blossom for their help before going to her final rest. Before Inez departs forever, the doll rises from the grave and smashes on the floor, revealing that its head is full of diamonds—the long- lost Dumaine treasure that Inez was sworn to protect. Inez has given Alexander the treasure to help his family restore her home. =====