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The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon that reanimates recently-deceased human beings as flesh- eating zombies. Three weeks into the crisis, it has been reported that millions of people have died and reanimated despite the government's best efforts; social order is collapsing. Rural communities and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country but urban centers are helpless and overrun. At a television studio in Philadelphia, staff members Stephen Andrews and Francine Parker are planning to steal the station's traffic helicopter to escape the city. Police SWAT officer Roger DiMarco and his team raid a housing project where the residents are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to National Guardsmen. Some of the armed residents fight back. The raid descends into chaos when Wooley, a brutal and racist trooper, begins firing randomly at the mostly black and Latino residents before being killed himself. Other residents are killed by both the SWAT team and their own reanimated dead. During the raid, Roger meets Peter Washington, part of another SWAT team, and they partner up together. Roger tells Peter that his friend Stephen intends to flee and suggests Peter come with them. They are informed by an elderly priest of a group of zombies in the basement, which they assist in the grim job of destroying. Later that night, Roger and Peter rendezvous with Francine and Stephen and leave Philadelphia in the helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, which they make their sanctuary. They devise an operation to block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead from penetrating. Peter and Stephen also cover the access to the stairwell. During the operation, Roger has a near-death experience and becomes reckless as a result. He is soon bitten by the zombies. After clearing the interior of zombies, the four enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them, furnishing their makeshift apartment with the mall's many commodities. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds, reanimates and is killed by Peter. After several months, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed and a large portion of the population has become zombies. Francine, now showing her pregnancy, presses to leave the mall. Supplies are loaded into the helicopter. Stephen also gives Francine flying lessons. Having seen the helicopter, a nomadic biker gang arrive to conquer the mall, destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies back inside. The looting bikers enrage Stephen and he foolishly starts a gun battle with them. Stephen is shot before being bitten by the undead. As some of the bikers are eaten by zombies, the rest retreat with their stolen goods. Now reanimated, Stephen, acting on a remnant of his memories, tears down the wall covering the stairwell and leads the undead to Francine and Peter. Peter kills Stephen while Francine escapes to the roof. Peter locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide but when zombies burst in, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Francine. The two then fly away in the helicopter to an uncertain future, leaving the now-abandoned mall to be overrun by the zombies. 

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It tells the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and one of its most prolific early contributors, William Chester Minor, a retired United States Army surgeon. Minor was, at the time, imprisoned in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, near the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire, England. The 'professor' of the American title is the chief editor of the OED during most of the project, Sir James Murray. Murray was a talented linguist and had other scholarly interests, and he had taught in schools and worked in banking. Faced with the enormous task of producing a comprehensive dictionary, with a quotation illustrating the uses of each meaning of each word, and with evidence for the earliest use of each, Murray had turned to an early form of crowdsourcing (a word not coined until the 21st century)—enlisting the help of dozens of amateur philologists as volunteer researchers. 

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Rigoletto stars Joseph Paur as Ari Ribaldi and Ivey Lloyd as Bonnie Nelson, a singer. Bonnie reads a part of Rigoletto each night to her younger brother. The film time shifts to the 1930s, during America's Great Depression. The following scene shows an old house which newcomer Mr. Ribaldi purchases. The next day, Bonnie performs in a singing contest. While Bonnie does not win, she manages to attract the attention of a mysterious man. He says nothing to her and only nods and leaves. That night as the children walk home, they spot the old house which has been renovated. The townspeople also spot the house and think it is unusual for a house to be renovated so fast. The same moment, the town banker sells the mortgage on one of his houses and the Nelson family are evicted. Bonnie's mother immediately leaves to locate the person who bought their house. She knocks on the door only to find the same man who was watching Bonnie's contest: Hans the Butler. He is tense, but welcomes Mrs. Nelson inside and shows her to The Master of the home (Mr. Ribaldi), when she is sternly instructed to stop at the rug. The man remains seated in the darkness. He answers to Mrs. Nelson's demands by returning their home directly to them in exchange for an agreement in which Bonnie would "work" for him. Mrs. Nelson asks why she can't do the job instead of her daughter. He evades the question which alarms Mrs. Nelson. She refuses, which enrages Ribaldi and he has her thrown out of the mansion, but not before she catches a glimpse of Ribaldi's scarred face. Later, she tells Bonnie the bad news but Bonnie asks her permission to accept the job. Mrs. Nelson reluctantly agrees and sends Bonnie to the mansion. For the moment, her only chores are to assist Hans. He informs Bonnie that she is free to go into any room in the house, except for the master suite, though he has to resort to bribery to keep from explaining why. However, she walks into the forbidden area once she hears a woman taking singing lessons from Mr. Ribaldi. He angrily grabs Bonnie but the woman (Gabriella) sends him away "to pout". Meanwhile, many in the town are risking foreclosure as a result of the Depression and suspect the mysterious Ribaldi, who initially did the very same thing to The Nelsons. The people in town also begin receiving unknown sources of financial assistance. Some receive checks to pay for expensive medical procedures to heal crippling illnesses and others find employment. The townspeople suspect nothing of any of this. The children become curious and decide to prowl the mansion late at night. Their pranks are halted when the "bloodsucker" abducts a young girl who had walked with a limp. A riot occurs over the missing child, who reappears unharmed (and with no limp.) Trouble still plagues the citizens who place the blame on Ribaldi and his apparent antisocial behavior. They manage to disqualify Bonnie from the competition unless she stops visiting him. She refuses but Ribaldi insists she goes and casts her out of the mansion. However, both Ribaldi and Hans are astonished at her choice. Hans takes Bonnie to the competition at the state capital and prepares to sing a song written by Ribaldi. Georgie walks into the mansion and finds Ribaldi by himself. She asks for singing lessons, but Ribaldi says it is not a good day. He offers to take her part of the way home but Georgie insists on taking a dangerous shortcut near a hydroelectric dam. She slips by a torrent and falls in the water. The film returns to the competition, and it is now Bonnie's turn to sing. Later, Mr. Ribaldi has an unconscious Georgie in his arms as he limps into town to find help. The townspeople think he caused her injury and so attack him. The town banker manages to stop the attack, but not before Ribaldi is badly battered. They proceed to the mansion in search of his bank book, leaving behind Ribaldi, Mrs. Nelson, and a few bystanders. The film cuts to Bonnie, who finishes singing. She receives a standing ovation and first place. In the next scene, the angry mob breaks into the completely empty house, trashing it, only leaving once they find the bank book, to their delight. Upon reading it, however, they are shocked, disappointed, and saddened. The only transactions they find show that he has paid their medical bills. The banker then admits to increasing their house payments, and the mob leaves in disgust. The banker and his son take Mr. Ribaldi to the hospital. Bonnie and Hans return only to find that Mr. Ribaldi died a few hours before. They hold a funeral. Afterward, Hans says that he is returning home to a "former employer". After Hans departs, some of the people walk past the mansion. They hear familiar piano music. Bonnie walks in to discover a man who resembles Ribaldi, but with no scars. The man seems to have no knowledge of previous events, but then returns something Porter has left behind, despite them apparently having never met before. Hans and Gabriella appear, and Bonnie asks for the man's name. He says, "Some people call me Rigoletto. But you probably don't believe that, do you?" The movie ends with Bonnie reading the final lines of the story Rigoletto, and her brother asks, "Do you believe that, Bonnie?" "I do," she replies, and the film ends on a close-up of the book. 

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At the beginning of the novel, Mr Lewisham is an 18-year-old teacher at a boys' school in Sussex, earning forty pounds a year. He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, who is paying a visit to relatives. His involvement with her makes him lose his position, but he is unable to find her when he moves to London. After a two-and-a-half-year break in the action, Mr Lewisham is in his third year of study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington. He has become a socialist, declaring his politics with a red tie, and is an object of interest to Alice Heydinger, an older student. However, chance brings him together again with his first love at a séance. Ethel's stepfather, Mr Chaffery, is a spiritualist charlatan, and Mr Lewisham is determined to extricate her from association with Chaffery's dishonesty. They marry, and Mr Lewisham is forced to abandon his plans for a brilliant scientific career followed by a political ascent. When Chaffrey absconds to the Continent with money he has embezzled from his clients, Lewisham agrees to move into his shabby Clapham house to look after Ethel and Ethel's elderly mother (Chaffrey's abandoned wife). Wells's friend Sir Richard Gregory wrote to him after reading the novel: "I cannot get that poor devil Lewisham out of my mind head, and I wish I had an address, for I would go to him and rescue him from the miserable life in which you leave him."Mackenzie, Norman and Jeanne (1973), The Time Traveller: the Life of H.G. Wells London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 152. 

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Jeff Slade is a detective with the CID department of the local police force led by Kate Grisham; although unusually for such a position he is an armed officer, carrying a handgun as routine. Slade is a good detective who gets results although his approach is somewhat maverick and his methods do leave a lot to be desired and have more than once landed him in trouble. Amongst Slade's colleagues at the department is science officer Holly Turner who has a secret that Slade manages to uncover. Holly owns a working time machine that was built by her late father. The machine is able to take Slade and Holly back far enough in time to witness a crime as it happens and discover who committed it. As a result, Slade's track record with crime solving goes through the roof with case after case being solved in record time. 

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Tallulah Bankhead as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1939) Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid and Dan Duryea in the original Broadway production of The Little Foxes (1939) The play's focus is Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th-century society where fathers considered only sons as their legal heirs. As a result of this practice, while her two avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar have wielded the family inheritance into two independently substantial fortunes, she's had to rely upon her manipulation of her cautious, timid, browbeaten husband, Horace. He's no businessman, just her financial support; although he's pliable enough for her ambition, that ambition has driven him into becoming merely the tool of her insatiable greed. He uses a wheelchair. Her brother Oscar married Birdie, his much-maligned alcoholic wife, solely to acquire her family's plantation and cotton fields. Oscar now wants to join forces with his brother, Benjamin, to construct a cotton mill. They need an additional $75,000 and approach Regina, asking her to invest in the project. Oscar initially proposes marriage between his son Leo and Regina's daughter Alexandra—first cousins—as a means of getting Horace's money, but Horace and Alexandra are repulsed by the suggestion. Horace refuses when Regina asks him outright for the money, so Leo, a bank teller, is pressured into stealing Horace's railroad bonds from the bank's safe deposit box. Horace, after discovering this, tells Regina he is going to change his will in favor of their daughter, and also will claim he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal completely. When he has a heart attack during this chat, she makes no effort to help him. He dies within hours, without anyone knowing his plan and before changing his will. This leaves Regina free to blackmail her brothers by threatening to report Leo's theft unless they give her 75% ownership in the cotton mill (it is, in Regina's mind, a fair exchange for the stolen bonds). The price Regina ultimately pays for her evil deeds is the loss of her daughter Alexandra's love and respect. Regina's actions cause Alexandra to finally understand the importance of not idly watching people do evil. She tells Regina she will not watch her be "one who eats the earth," and abandons her. Having let her husband die, alienated her brothers, and driven away her only child, Regina is left wealthy but completely alone. 

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After her mother Aliane dies in a car accident, 13-year- old Amy Alden is brought from New Zealand to Ontario, Canada, by her estranged father Thomas Alden, a sculptor and inventor, to live with him and his girlfriend Susan. When a construction crew destroys a small wilderness area near the Alden home, Amy finds an abandoned nest of 16 goose eggs. Without Thomas, Susan, or her uncle David knowing, she takes the eggs and keeps them in a dresser in her father's old barn to incubate. When the eggs hatch, she is allowed to keep the goslings as pets. Thomas asks for help from local Animal Regulation officer Glen Seifert on how to care for the geese. Seifert comes over to the Alden house, and explains that the geese have imprinted on Amy as their mother. He explains that geese learn everything from their parents including migratory routes, but also warns Thomas that a private ordinance dictates that all domestic geese must have their wings pinioned (clipped) to render them flightless, which upsets Amy. Thomas throws Seifert off his property, only for Seifert to threaten the Aldens that if the birds start flying, he will have to confiscate them. Thomas decides to use an ultralight aircraft to teach the birds to fly and show them their migratory routes, but quickly realizes the birds will only follow Amy. Aided by his friend Barry, Thomas teaches Amy how to fly an ultralight aircraft of her own. David knows someone running a bird sanctuary in North Carolina, and arranges for the geese to go to the sanctuary. The birds have to arrive before November 1, or the sanctuary will be torn down by developers who plan to turn it into a coastal housing development. Amy and Thomas practice flying the aircraft, but Igor, the weakest of the geese, who has a limp, accidentally hits the front of Amy's aircraft and lands in an isolated forest. While the group goes off to search for the bird, Glen Seifert returns to the Alden farm and confiscates the other geese. The next day, the Aldens free the geese, and Amy leads them on their migration to North Carolina. Making an emergency landing at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station in western New York on the south shore of Lake Ontario, Amy and Thomas almost get arrested. They become national news, with residents cheering them on. Thomas and Amy meet an old woman with a vendetta against goose shooting, and she invites them to stay the night at her house. That night Amy asks Thomas why he seldom visited her and her mother. From her mother, she knows that her parents were artists, who tend to be selfish, and that her mother left for both of their sakes. Thomas tells her that he was afraid and angry at himself for letting them leave, so he spent the next ten years buried in his work. He apologizes to Amy. Thirty miles before reaching the bird sanctuary, Thomas's aircraft suffers a structural failure and crashes in a cornfield; having suffered a dislocated shoulder he tells Amy to finish the journey by herself. Thomas hitchhikes to the bird sanctuary. While waiting for the geese, Thomas, Susan, David, Barry, and many animal enthusiasts stand up to developers who are waiting to start the excavation of the site. Amy eventually appears with the geese, much to the joy of the townspeople and Amy's family, and to the dismay of the developers. The townspeople and the Aldens celebrate their victory. The following spring, all 16 geese return to the Aldens' farm on their own. 

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Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a surveillance expert who runs his own company in San Francisco. He is obsessed with his own privacy; his apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door and burglar alarm, he uses pay phones to make calls, claims to have no home telephone, and his office is enclosed in wire mesh in a corner of a much larger warehouse. He has no friends, his mistress Amy knows nothing about him, and his one hobby is playing along to jazz records on a tenor saxophone in the privacy of his apartment. Caul insists that he is not responsible for the actual content of the conversations he records or the use to which his clients put his surveillance activities. However, he is racked by guilt over a past wiretap job, following which three people were murdered. This sense of guilt is amplified by his devout Catholicism. Caul, his colleague Stan and some freelance associates have taken on the task of bugging the conversation of a couple as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco, surrounded by a cacophony of background noise. Amid the small-talk, the couple discuss fears that they are being watched, and mention a discreet meeting at a hotel room in a few days. The challenging task of recording this conversation is accomplished by multiple surveillance operatives located in different positions around the square. After Caul has merged and filtered the different tapes, the final result is a sound recording in which the words themselves are clear, but their meaning remains ambiguous. When the client is not in his office, Caul refuses to leave the tape with the client's assistant. The assistant warns him not to get involved, telling him that the tapes are "dangerous". Caul feels increasingly uneasy about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape. He plays the tape again and again, gradually refining the recording. Using a filter, he reveals a key phrase hidden under the sound of a street musician: "He'd kill us if he got the chance." Caul avoids handing in the tape to the aide of the man who commissioned the surveillance. Afterward, he finds himself under increasing pressure from the client's aide and is himself followed, tricked, and bugged. The tape of the conversation is eventually stolen from him in a moment when his guard is down. He goes to the client ("the Director", played by Robert Duvall) to find he has received the tapes, and learns that the woman in the recording is the client's wife, apparently having an affair with the other man in the tapes. Caul books a hotel room next to one mentioned in the recording of the conversation. He uses equipment to overhear the client in a heated argument with his wife. When he goes to the balcony to watch the events through the windows out of curiosity, he sees what he believes to be the wife being murdered and retreats in shock. Caul later attempts to confront the client, but the client is absent. While departing, Caul catches sight of the wife, alive and unharmed, in a limo. He learns that his client was killed in an "accident," and discovers the truth: the couple were talking about killing the woman's husband, and the murder Caul witnessed was actually that of his client and not the wife. It is revealed to the viewer that the man in the recording actually said, "He'd kill us if he got the chance." Caul gets a phone call from his client's assistant, who tells him not to look any further into the matter, and says, "We'll be listening to you." Caul goes on a frantic search for a listening device, tearing up his apartment, to no avail. He sits amid the wreckage, playing the only thing in his apartment left intact: his saxophone. 

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The comedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago. Growing up in Brooklyn, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity. Annie and Alvy, in a line for The Sorrow and the Pity, overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan; McLuhan himself steps in at Alvy's invitation to criticize the man's comprehension. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy. Instead, they discuss his first wife, whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who didn't like sports and was unable to reach orgasm. With Annie, it is different. The two of them have fun making a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the unusual men in her past. He met her playing tennis doubles with friends. Following the game, awkward small talk led her to offer him first a ride uptown and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in "mental subtitles" as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annie's singing audition for a night club ("It Had to be You"). After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is "a wreck", while she relaxes with a joint. Soon Annie admits she loves him, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When she moves in with him, things become very tense. Eventually, he finds her arm in arm with one of her college professors and the two begin to argue whether this is the "flexibility" they had discussed. They eventually break up, and he searches for the truth of relationships, asking strangers on the street about the nature of love, questioning his formative years, and imagining a cartoon version of himself arguing with a cartoon Annie portrayed as the Evil Queen in Snow White. Alvy returns to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis and bad sex that is interrupted when Annie insists he goes over immediately to kill a spider in the bathroom. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together come what may. However, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken and unbridgeable divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they fly out to Los Angeles, with Alvy's friend, Rob. However, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing her to her record producer, Tony Lacey, Alvy unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal. Back in New York, he stages a play of their relationship but changes the ending: now she accepts. The last meeting for them is a wistful coda on New York's Upper West Side when they have both moved on to someone new. Alvy's voice returns with a summation: love is essential, especially if it is neurotic. Annie sings "Seems Like Old Times" and the credits roll. 

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Plotinus Plotinus (204/5–270) was the founder of Neo-Platonism. In the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus, the first principle became even more elevated as a radical unity, which was presented as an unknowable Absolute. For Plotinus, the One is the first principle, from which everything else emanates. He took it from Plato's writings, identifying the Good of the Republic, as the cause of the other Forms, with the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the Parmenides. For Plotinus, the One precedes the Forms, and "is beyond Mind and indeed beyond Being." From the One comes the Intellect, which contains all the Forms. The One is the principle of Being, while the Forms are the principle of the essence of beings, and the intelligibility which can recognize them as such. Plotinus's third principle is Soul, the desire for objects external to the person. The highest satisfaction of desire is the contemplation of the One, which unites all existents "as a single, all- pervasive reality." The One is radically simple, and does not even have self- knowledge, since self-knowledge would imply multiplicity. Nevertheless, Plotinus does urge for a search for the Absolute, turning inward and becoming aware of the "presence of the intellect in the human soul," initiating an ascent of the soul by abstraction or "taking away," culminating in a sudden appearance of the One. In the Enneads Plotinus writes: Carabine notes that Plotinus' apophasis is not just a mental exercise, an acknowledgement of the unknowability of the One, but a means to ecstasis and an ascent to "the unapproachable light that is God." Pao-Shen Ho, investigating what are Plotinus' methods for reaching henosis, concludes that "Plotinus' mystical teaching is made up of two practices only, namely philosophy and negative theology." According to Moore, Plotinus appeals to the "non-discursive, intuitive faculty of the soul," by "calling for a sort of prayer, an invocation of the deity, that will permit the soul to lift itself up to the unmediated, direct, and intimate contemplation of that which exceeds it (V.1.6)." Pao-Shen Ho further notes that "for Plotinus, mystical experience is irreducible to philosophical arguments." The argumentation about henosis is preceded by the actual experience of it, and can only be understood when henosis has been attained. Ho further notes that Plotinus's writings have a didactic flavour, aiming to "bring his own soul and the souls of others by way of Intellect to union with the One." As such, the Enneads as a spiritual or ascetic teaching device, akin to The Cloud of Unknowing, demonstrating the methods of philosophical and apophatic inquiry. Ultimately, this leads to silence and the abandonment of all intellectual inquiry, leaving contemplation and unity. 

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In the Maine town of Chamberlain, Carietta "Carrie" White is a 16-year-old girl who is a target of ridicule for her frumpy appearance and unusual religious beliefs, instilled by her despotic mother, Margaret. One day, Carrie has her first period while showering after a physical education class; the terrified Carrie has no understanding of menstruation as her mother, who despises everything related to intimacy, never told her about it. Carrie's classmates, led by a wealthy, popular girl named Chris Hargensen, throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. The gym teacher, Rita Desjardin, helps her clean up and tries to explain. On the way home, Carrie develops an unusual ability to control objects from a distance. Margaret furiously accuses Carrie of sin and locks her in a closet so that she may pray. The next day, Desjardin reprimands the girls who bullied Carrie and punishes them with a week's detention, with the penalty for skipping being suspension and exclusion from the prom; this punishment is given to Chris when she defiantly leaves. After an unsuccessful bid to get her privileges reinstated through her influential father, Chris decides to exact revenge on Carrie. Sue Snell, another popular girl, feels shame for her previous behavior and convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to invite Carrie to the prom instead. Carrie is suspicious, but accepts his offer, and begins sewing herself a prom dress. Meanwhile, Chris persuades her boyfriend Billy Nolan and his friends to gather two buckets of pig blood as she prepares a measure to rig the prom queen election in Carrie's favor. The prom initially goes well for Carrie: Tommy's friends are welcoming, and Tommy himself finds that he is attracted to her. Chris's plan to rig the election is successful, and at the moment of the coronation, Chris, from outside, dumps the blood onto Carrie's and Tommy's heads. Tommy is knocked unconscious by one of the buckets and dies within minutes. The sight of Carrie drenched in blood invokes laughter from the audience. Unable to withstand the humiliation, Carrie leaves the building. Outside, Carrie remembers her telekinesis and decides to enact vengeance on her tormentors. Using her powers, she hermetically seals the gym, activates the sprinkler system, and causes a fire that eventually ignites the school's fuel tanks, causing a massive explosion that destroys the building. Those present at the prom are killed by either electric shock, the fire, or the smoke. Carrie, in an overwhelming fit of rage, thwarts any incoming effort to fight the fire by opening the hydrants within the school's vicinity, then destroys gas stations and cuts power lines on her way home. As she does all this, she broadcasts a telepathic message, making the townspeople aware that the carnage was caused by her, even if they do not know who she is. Carrie returns home to confront Margaret, who believes she has been possessed by Satan and must be killed. Margaret tells her that her conception was a result of what may have been marital rape. She stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, but Carrie kills her by mentally stopping her heart. Mortally wounded, Carrie makes her way to the roadhouse where she was conceived. She sees Chris and Billy leaving, having been informed of the destruction by one of Billy's friends. After Billy attempts to run Carrie over, she mentally takes control of his car and sends it racing into the tavern wall, killing both Billy and Chris. Sue, who has been following Carrie's "broadcast," finds her collapsed in the parking lot, bleeding out from the knife wound. The two have a brief telepathic conversation. Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, but realizes that Sue is innocent and has never felt real animosity towards her. Carrie forgives her, then dies crying out for her mother. A state of emergency is declared. As the survivors make plans to relocate, Chamberlain foresees desolation in spite of the government allocation of finances toward rehabilitating the worker districts. Desjardin and the school's principal blame themselves for what happened and resign from teaching. Sue publishes a memoir based on her experiences. As a "White Committee" report concludes that there are and will be no others like Carrie, an Appalachian woman enthusiastically writes to her sister about her baby daughter's telekinetic powers and reminisces about their grandmother, who had similar abilities. 

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The real Watership Down, near the Hampshire village of Kingsclere, in 1975 

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In 1954, six strangers arrive at a secluded New England mansion. Greeted by Wadsworth the butler and Yvette the maid, each guest receives a pseudonym: Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet. A seventh guest arrives—Mr. Boddy, whom Wadsworth reveals has been blackmailing the others: Mrs. Peacock is accused of taking bribes for her husband, a US senator, but denies any wrongdoing and claims she has paid the blackmail to keep the scandal quiet; Mrs. White is suspected in the death of her husband, a nuclear physicist; Professor Plum has lost his medical license due to an affair with a patient; Miss Scarlet runs an underground brothel in Washington, D.C.; Colonel Mustard, though initially suspected of being one of Miss Scarlet's patrons, is a war profiteer; and Mr. Green is a homosexual, a secret that would cost him his State Department job if anyone found out. While threatening to expose the guests if he is arrested, Mr. Boddy gives them each a weapon—a candlestick, a knife, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope, and a wrench. Demanding that someone kill Wadsworth, Mr. Boddy turns out the lights. A gunshot rings out and the lights are turned back on to reveal Mr. Boddy apparently dead, without any indication as to how. Wadsworth explains to the guests that his wife had committed suicide due to Mr. Boddy's blackmail (because she refused to name friends who were socialists) and he has summoned the guests to force a confession out of Mr. Boddy and turn him over to the police. The group suspects the cook, but they find her dead as well, having been stabbed by the dagger. Mr. Boddy's body disappears, but the guests find his blood-covered body in the lavatory, having been killed with the candlestick. Wadsworth locks the weapons in a cupboard. A stranded motorist arrives and Wadsworth locks him in the lounge. While the guests search the mansion in pairs, an unknown individual burns the blackmail evidence, unlocks the cupboard, and kills the motorist with the wrench. Discovering a secret passage, Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet find themselves locked in the lounge with the motorist's corpse, until Yvette shoots the door open with the revolver. A cop investigating the motorist's abandoned car arrives to use the phone. The mansion receives a call from J. Edgar Hoover, which Wadsworth takes alone. After distracting the cop successfully, the guests resume their search until another unknown figure turns off the electricity. Yvette, the cop, and a singing telegram girl are murdered with the rope, lead pipe, and revolver, respectively. Wadsworth and the others regroup after he turns the electricity back on, and he reveals he knows who the murderer is. Recreating the night's events, Wadsworth explains that the five other victims were Mr. Boddy's informants. An evangelist interrupts the gathering, but Mrs. Peacock shuns him by closing the door and Wadsworth continues his explanation. In the theatrical screening, audiences would be shown one of three endings. All three are included in the home media release, with interstitial title cards stating that "Ending A" and "Ending B" were possible endings, while "Ending C" was how events actually occurred. 

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Raised in Palermo, Sicily, Italian-American Nico Toscani develops a fondness for Aikido martial arts, soon traveling to Japan for him to study the technique. In 1969, Toscani is recruited by CIA agent Nelson Fox to participate in top-secret operations on the borders of Vietnam and Cambodia. Four years later, Toscani quits the force after being disturbed by his supervisor Kurt Zagon's use of torture. By 1988, he immigrates to Chicago with his mother Rosa and eventually marries his first wife Sara. Toscani also joins up with the Chicago Police Department, becoming a respected police sergeant and beat cop. On one of his assignments, Toscani along with his partner Delores "Jacks" Jackson and Detectives Lukich and Henderson stop the shipment of alleged alkaloids to Salvadoran drug traffickers Tony Salvano and Chi Chi Ramon and discover in their contraband C-4 explosive charges. Federal agents take the matter to the command of Neeley and Halloran, but they are ordered to set the Salvadorans free, which makes Toscani angry. After discovering through Father Joseph Gennero that he has refugees in the church under the care of Father Tomasino and Sister Mary, Toscani and Jackson begin to have suspicions. The next morning, a bomb detonates in the Church, resulting in dozens of injuries and deaths among the congregants, with Father Gennero as on of the fatalities. Concluding that it was Salvano and Chi Chi who planted the bomb, Toscani tries to report this to the FBI only to be rebuffed. At night, Toscani is contacted by Fox, who tells him that he is in danger and that if he wants to keep his family alive, he has to take them to a safe place, the police and the FBI arrive and take Toscani. Deputy Crowder and agents Neeley and Halloran decide to forcefully remove Toscani for meddling averse in Tony Salvano's affairs. Jackson tells them, Toscani and Lukich that one of the victims turned out to be an assistant to Senator Ernest Harrison, who is investigating the drug trafficking network at the CIA, Toscani sends Lukich to take care of Sara and Rosa with Uncle Branca while he and Jackson decide Nico and Jacks discover through sister Mary that Father Tomasino knew about the drug trade at the CIA and that he was going to hand over documents to the assistant from Harrison. Toscani takes Neeley pistol-point to the weapons store and discover C-4's shipment, the employee tells them that it was the CIA under the command of Nelson Fox. Toscani decides to speak to an old intelligence friend named Watanabe so that informing him, Toscani and Watanabe discover that Fox is involved with Zagon. Jackson is contacted by Sister Mary to come to Father Tomasino and Jackson's apartment, alerting Toscani and Lukich At night, Zagon's assistant and the rest of his thugs arrive at Father Tomasino's apartment and Zagon, Salvano and Chi Chi decide to interrogate him. The team arrives and Toscani and Lukich enter Father Tomasino's room, there, they have a fight With the CIA thugs and the Salvadorans, Chi Chi hurts Lukich but Jackson enters and kills him, Zagon shoots Jackson and Toscani has to flee but is chased by Zagon, Salvano and Zagon's assistant up to the subway. Jackson survives thanks to her bulletproof vest and this information reaches the ears of Branca, who informs Nico. Toscani decides to watch the CIA offices but is caught by Fox. Toscani tells Fox that no CIA agent has ever been caught, much less tried, and they think they are "Above the Law". The conversation between Toscani and Fox is interrupted when Zagon, Salvano, Zagon's assistant along with a bartender arrive at the scene. Fox is assassinated, Toscani kills Salvano by taking him behind the car and he falls from the trunk to the subway tracks, getting electrocuted and dying instantly, Toscani tries to escape Zagon and the rest of his men but is caught. Toscani is taken to the hotel kitchen where Zagon intends to kill Harrison. Zagon tortures Toscani but he manages to free himself and kills Zagon's assistant, the bar waiter and the rest of his men, Toscani confronts Zagon and grabs him by the neck and breaks it; with all the CIA assassins dead, Nico meets up with Jacks, Lukich and Neeley. Harrison and his entire commission arrive at Toscani's house and the senator promises that justice will be done for what happened. The film ends with Toscani saying in his clarifications that there will be agents who are doing illegal things behind their supervisors and they believe that they will they will have gotten away with it and that they are above the law. 

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Chicago DEA agent John Hatcher returns from Colombia, where drug dealers killed his partner Chico. As a result of Chico's death and years of dead end work, John retires and heads to his family's home town of Lincoln Heights in suburban Chicago. He visits the local school to meet his old friend and former U.S. Army buddy Max Keller who works there as a football coach and physical education teacher. As John and Max celebrate their reunion at a club, a gunfight breaks out between local drug dealers and a Jamaican gang at the venue. The gang, known as the Jamaican Posse, is led by a notorious psychotic drug kingpin named Screwface full of West African Vodun and sadism. John arrests one of Screwface's henchmen as the gunfight ends. News of Posse crimes occurring in Chicago and across the United States spread as the Posse expands its operations and recruits more members. The next day, Screwface and his henchmen do a drive-by shooting on the house where John, his sister Melissa, and Melissa's 12-year-old daughter Tracey live. Tracey is injured and hospitalized in critical condition. John encounters a gangster named Jimmy whom he is forced to kill. A Jamaican gangster named Nesta arrives and is subdued by John, who asks about Screwface. Nesta gives information but tells him to go after Screwface alone and jumps out the window to his death. The next day, John discovers a strange symbol engraved on a carpet, and with the help of Jamaican voodoo and gang expert Leslie Davalos, a detective for the Chicago Police Department, he learns that it is an African blood symbol used to mark their crimes. John decides to come out of retirement to join Max in a battle against Screwface. At the same night of their rendezvous, John gets a phone call from Melissa, which is cut short when Screwface and his men invade the Hatcher household, but they leave upon his arrival and Melissa is unharmed. The next day, John and Max encounter another batch of Screwface's henchmen which results in a car chase. The chase ends in a high-end store wherein two henchmen are wounded and one henchman is killed by Hatcher, amidst the chaos of shoppers fleeing the scene. During a meeting with Leslie, she informs John that the only way to stop the Jamaican Posse is to bring down Screwface. That evening, Screwface ambushes John under the guise of a construction crew; by planting a molotov cocktail in his car, but John manages to escape before the car explodes. The two team up with Charles, a Jamaican- American detective of the Chicago police, who has been trailing Screwface for five years, and trying to get to the root of the drug problem in the city. They acquire weaponry from a local weapons dealer, and, after testing the arsenal, they head for Kingston, Jamaica to find Screwface. Upon arrival, Max and Charles ask people in the streets for information about Screwface. A Jamaican local presents them a photo of a woman who is acquainted with Screwface. John meets her in a nightclub, and she provides him details of Screwface such as her frequent hangouts with him, his drug business, and the address of his mansion, as well as the death of her sister in Screwface's hands. The woman also informs John of a cryptic clue: the secret of Screwface's power is that he has two heads and four eyes. By nightfall, John, Max, and Charles (disguised as members of the Posse) head for Screwface's mansion, where a party is being held. Secretly infiltrating the premises through a nearby plantation, John assassinates three roving henchmen on the estate's balcony with his silenced sniper rifle, plants a bomb at a nearby power station and infiltrates the inner grounds by climbing across roofs. While Max and Charles keep a lookout, John detonates the bomb, causing the party to erupt into violence and gunfire. With Max and Charles opening fire on the Posse gang, John enters the building and disposes of many henchmen. He finds a sacrificial area, but is captured by Screwface and his remaining henchmen. John manages to break free and kill or wound every henchman before decapitating Screwface in a sword fight. Upon returning to Chicago, the trio displays Screwface's severed head to the Chicago Posse to try blackmailing them into ending their crimes and leaving town. However, Charles is impaled by a man who is revealed to be Screwface's twin brother. The gang believes that Screwface has returned from the dead using voodoo. A gunfight breaks wherein Max holds off the henchmen despite being shot in the leg while John disposes more gang members before he engages Screwface's twin brother in a sword fight.″During the fight between John and the twin, the latter reveals that he and Screwface lied about being one man over the years with varying gangs and victims to dissuade suspicion and that he was the one responsible for the Posse crimes across the United States″ The fight moves to a nightclub owned by the twin wherein Hatcher gives him more fatal injuries by gouging his eyes and breaking his spine before dropping him down an elevator shaft, impaling him in the process. As the surviving Posse members look at their dead boss, their fates remain ambiguous although the death of the Screwface twins implies their arrest by law enforcement. John carries Charles' body with Max limping next to him as they walk off into the night. 

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In 1983, Mason Storm, a Los Angeles police detective working for the LAPD's Internal Affairs Division, investigates a mob meeting that takes place by a pier. He records a shadowy figure who assures the mob they can rely on his political support. Storm is spotted, but escapes. Unaware that he is monitored by corrupt cops, Mason informs his partner, Becker and his friend Lt. O’Malley that he has evidence of corruption. While he goes shopping, a store is robbed, and one of the robbers shoots the clerk. Mason stops them and goes home, intent on celebrating with his wife, Felicia. Mason hides the videotape in his house. When he goes upstairs, a hit squad composed of corrupt policemen, including Jack Axel and Max Quentero, break in and proceed to murder Mason's wife and shoot him. Mason's young son, Sonny, hides until the danger passes then he runs away. The corrupt policemen frame Mason, making it look like a murder-suicide. At the same time, assassins kill Storm's partner. At the hospital, Mason is first pronounced dead, but is then discovered to be alive, although unconscious. To prevent the assassins from finishing the job, Lieutenant O'Malley tells the medics to keep Mason's status a secret. Seven years later, Mason wakes from his coma. Andy, one of his nurses, makes a phone call, which is intercepted by corrupt police officers. They send Axel to finish the job and kill the nurses to whom Mason might have talked. Mason realizes that he is still in danger, but his muscles have atrophied to where he can barely use his arms. He staggers to an elevator, and when Andy sees her co-workers killed, she helps Mason escape. Needing time to recuperate, Andy brings Mason to a friend's house, where Mason uses his knowledge of acupuncture, moxibustion and other meditation techniques to recover his strength. While training, Mason hears a commercial for Senator Vernon Trent and recognizes the voice from the pier. Mason contacts O'Malley, who supplies him with weapons and tells him that his son is still alive—O'Malley adopted Sonny and sent him to a private school so that he would be out of danger. After O'Malley leaves, Senator Trent's men find the house and attempt to kill Andy and Mason, but they both manage to escape. Posing as a real estate agent, Mason recovers the hidden videotape from his old house. He meets O'Malley in a train station, where O'Malley brings Mason's now- teenage son. They do not see each other, because as Mason arrives, O'Malley is already dead, having been shot by Max after giving the tape to Sonny for safe- keeping while having provided a distraction for him to get away. When Mason arrives, he sees Sonny running away from Quentero and Nolan. Mason catches up with the men, subdues Nolan by breaking his leg and throwing him in a trash bin. He then reaches Quentero before Sonny is grabbed, and the two fight one another. Mason beats up Quentero and recognizes him as one of the men who took part in the assault on Mason's home and the murder of his wife. Mason then proceeds to snap Quentero's neck, killing him and saving his son. Mason then goes after Senator Trent. At the Senator's mansion, Mason sneaks in and manages to eliminate the Senator's men one by one. Mason fights with Axel in the billiard room and avenges Felicia by jamming a piece of a pool cue into Axel's neck, killing him. Next, Mason leaves a death taunt to Capt. Hulland, another corrupt cop who betrayed Storm to Trent, and stalks Hulland through the house before cornering the corrupt captain near the fireplace. Mason then strangles Hulland with his necktie and breaks his neck, killing him. Mason finally confronts Senator Trent and holds him at gunpoint when the police storm the mansion. However, they reveal that they had already seen the film and knew that Mason was set up. Trent is arrested, and Mason is reunited with Andy and his son and walks off as the image from the videotape is played on the news, showing Trent coming out of the shadows briefly, wondering who is taping him. 

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The battleship arrives at Pearl Harbor, where then-President George H. W. Bush announces that the ship will be decommissioned in California. Casey Ryback, a Chief Petty Officer assigned as a cook, prepares meals in celebration of the birthday of Commanding Officer Captain Adams, against the orders of Executive Officer Commander Krill, who is having food and entertainment brought by helicopter. Krill provokes a brawl with Ryback. Unable to imprison Ryback in the brig without clearance from the captain, Krill detains Ryback in a freezer and places Marine Private Nash on guard. A helicopter lands on the ship's deck with a musical band, along with Playboy Playmate Jordan Tate and a group of caterers, who are in fact a band of mercenaries led by ex-CIA operative William "Bill" Strannix. Strannix's forces seize control of the ship with Krill's help. Several officers are killed, including Captain Adams. The surviving ship's company are imprisoned in the forecastle, except for some stragglers in unsecured areas. Ryback hears the gunshots and persuades Nash to call the bridge, inadvertently alerting Strannix of this loose end. Strannix sends two mercenaries to eliminate Ryback and Nash. Nash is killed, but Ryback slays the assassins, runs into Tate, who was narcotized during the takeover, and reluctantly allows her to tag along. Strannix and his men seize control of the ship's weapon systems, shooting down a jet sent to investigate, and plan on covering their escape by using missiles to obliterate tracking systems in Pearl Harbor. Strannix intends to sell the ship's Tomahawks by unloading them onto a submarine he previously stole from North Korea, as revenge for the CIA trying to assassinate him prior to the events of the film. Strannix contacts Admiral Bates at the Pentagon to make demands, but then learns that Ryback has escaped. Krill discovers that Ryback is a former Navy SEAL with extensive training in counterterrorism tactics. Ryback contacts Bates and is told that the Navy plans to send a SEAL team to retake the ship. Ryback moves throughout the ship, eliminating any hijackers he comes across. To keep the missile-theft plan in place, Krill activates the fire suppression system in the forecastle, leaving the crew members to drown. The terrorists expect that Ryback will try to save his colleagues, and set up an ambush. Ryback and Tate come upon six imprisoned sailors. Together, they overcome the ambush and shut off the water in the forecastle. Ryback shuts down Missouris weapon systems to allow the incoming Navy SEALs to land, but the submarine crew shoots down the helicopter carrying the Navy SEALs with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The Pentagon responds by ordering an air strike that will sink the Missouri. Strannix regains control of the ship's weapon systems and loads the Tomahawks onto the submarine. With the aid of a retired World War II gunner's mate among the rescued sailors, Ryback uses the battleship's 16 inch guns to attack the submarine, killing Krill and everyone on board. His plan foiled, Strannix launches two retaliatory nuclear-tipped Tomahawks towards Honolulu. As the sailors recapture the ship, Ryback finds his way into the control room, where he encounters Strannix, and the two engage in a knife fight. Ryback gains the upper hand and kills Strannix, then uses the launch code disk needed to self- destruct the Tomahawk missiles. A jet destroys one of the missiles, and the other is deactivated just in time; the Navy calls off its airstrike. The remaining crew members are freed as the ship sails towards San Francisco harbor. A funeral ceremony for Captain Adams is held on the deck of Missouri, showing Ryback saluting the captain's casket in his formal dress uniform with full decorations. 

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Aegis Oil operates Aegis 1, an oil refinery and several oil rigs in Alaska. They purchased the oil rights from the local Alaskan Natives 20 years ago, but stand to lose them if the refinery isn't on-line by a certain deadline. With 13 days to go, and billions of dollars at stake, the company cuts corners and uses faulty equipment. Hugh Palmer, a rig foreman, is aware of this; as he predicts, his rig catches fire. It takes Forrest Taft, a specialist in dealing with oil drilling-related fires, to extinguish the fire. Taft refuses to believe Hugh's story of faulty equipment at first, but later discovers that it is true after accessing the company's computer records and finding that the next shipments of new, adequate equipment have been delayed way past the deadline. Michael Jennings, the ruthless CEO of Aegis, deludedly believes that Hugh's carelessness is to blame for the rig fire and, after discovering his efforts to alert the EPA about the use of substandard equipment, arranges for him to be ‘dealt with’ by his henchmen MacGruder and Otto. Jennings is alerted to Taft's activities and orders that Taft be eliminated as well. MacGruder and Otto brutally ransack Palmer's cabin for the evidence against Jennings, and torture and murder Palmer without finding it. Taft is set up for a trap by investigating a supposedly damaged pump station. He is badly wounded by an explosion, but survives and is rescued by Masu, the daughter of Silook, the chief of her tribe. MacGruder and Otto are unable to locate Taft's body, and Jennings assumes that he is still alive. Taft is being cared for by Silook's tribe. After unsuccessfully trying to leave using a dogsled, Silook has Taft undergo a vision quest in which he sees the truth. When made to choose between two women, Taft opts for the elderly, clothed grandmother, forgoing the erotically-charged nude Iñupiaq seductress. The grandmother warns Taft that time is running out for those who pollute the world. Taft realizes that his only option is to see the refinery closed. He takes off, with MacGruder and Otto hot on his trail. At Silook's village, they demand to know where Taft is. Silook refuses to give the information and is fatally shot by MacGruder. Jennings berates MacGruder for killing Silook in front of his entire tribe. They bring in a group of New Orleans-based mercenaries led by Stone to finish off Taft before Aegis 1 can go on-line. Accompanied by Masu, Taft collects weapons and explosives and manages to enter the refinery complex, and begins to effectively sabotage the refinery. MacGruder (who is killed by Taft in the process of getting thrown into the helicopter's tail rotor blades for killing Hugh and Silook), Otto (who was killed earlier at Hugh's cabin), Homer Carlton (who is killed along with a mercenary when they shoot a Claymore mine left in the elevator believing Taft is in it), Stone (who is killed by Taft with his own shotgun when he confronts him at the platform) and Jennings’ ruthlessly efficient female assistant Liles (who crashes her truck into a gasoline tank in an escape attempt), are powerless to defeat him and are all killed in various gruesome ways; the FBI also pulls out, revealing in the process that Taft might be ex-CIA. Taft and Masu confront Jennings, string him up, and drop him into a pool of oil, effectively drowning Jennings in his own wealth. They then escape as a series of explosions destroy the rest of Aegis 1. As an epilogue, Taft, far from being arrested for sabotage and multiple murders (self defense), is asked to deliver a speech at the Alaska State Capitol about the dangers of oil pollution, and the companies that are endangering the ecosystem. During the speech they show a scene of one of the first commercial hydrogen fuel cell systems developed by Perry Energy Systems. 

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Jack Cole was once a CIA operative known as "The Glimmer Man," because he could move so quickly and quietly through the jungle that his victims would only see a glimmer before they died. Having retired from Central Intelligence, Coleversed in Buddhism and unaccustomed to working with othershas become a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Cole is partnered with tough, no-nonsense detective Jim Campbell...who has little patience for Cole's New Age philosophies and "outsider" attitude. Cole and Campbell must set aside their differences when they're assigned to track down a serial killer known as "The Family Man," named for his habit of killing entire households. The Family Man's latest victims turn out to be Cole's former wife Ellen and her current husband Andrew Dunleavy. When Cole's fingerprints are found on Ellen's body, he and Campbell suspect that Smith - Jack's former superior in the CIA - may be connected with the killings. Cole contacts Smith, who (unbeknownst to him and Campbell) has been working with local crime boss Frank Deverell. Cole and Campbell receive a tip which leads them to Christopher Maynard. Maynard insists that the Family Man murders were actually committed by more than one killer. Only the slayings that occurred prior to Jack's arrival in Los Angeles were Maynard's work; more recently, a second party has been massacring households and blaming it on Maynard...whom Cole is forced to shoot in self defense. Seeking a lead on the "other" Family Man, Cole goes to the home of Celia Rostov: Deverell's Russian translator and a recent victim of the serial killer. Jack finds out that the Rostovs had tickets to Russia, paid for by Deverell's company. The Family Man makes an unsuccessful attempt on the lives of both Cole and Campbell, blowing up the latter's apartment. It is revealed that the Family Man works for both Deverell and Smith, who have murder contracts out on both of the detectives...and also on Johnny, Deverell's own stepson. Cole and Campbell chat with Johnny's girlfriend Millie, who tells them where to find Johnny. The detectives trick and kill a hitman sent by Johnny's stepfather. Johnny informs Campbell and Cole that Donald Cunningham, Deverell's private security chief, is the other Family Man...whose killings were confused with Maynard's. Johnny also reveals Smith's partnership with Deverell. The detectives confront Smith, who reveals that Deverell has been smuggling chemical weapons into the USA from Russia...and selling said arms to the Serbian underworld. Smith is arranging contacts for the deal, which is being cut by the Russian Liberation Fighters (aka the Organizatsiya). The sale has been scheduled to take place at a welfare hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. When Cole and Campbell storm the hotel to disrupt the weapons deal, Cunningham kills Deverell (because Deverell set up Cunningham for the LAPD, in order to clear himself of the arms-running charges) and wounds Jim. Cole fights Cunningham, who is finally tossed through a window and impaled on a wrought iron fence. Campbell half-jokes that Cole has brought him nothing but bad luck ever since they became partners. Cole says he'll keep that in mind, as Campbell is driven off to the hospital. 

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In the peaceful Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, toxins are being dumped into abandoned mines, causing environmental havoc, but the locals, mindful of their jobs and the power of the mine owners, can do nothing. EPA CID agent Jack Taggert is sent to investigate, after a fellow agent is found dead, probably not by accident. The EPA has received an anonymous letter from Jackson, Kentucky, and Taggert goes there undercover to continue his colleague's investigations. It is discovered that Hanner Coal Company, owned by Orin Hanner Sr., is being paid to dump toxic waste into an abandoned coal mine shaft, so Jack is assigned to go to the small town of Jackson, where his cover is that of assistant and volunteer carpenter to a local church. He stays in a room in the church's basement, and begins his cover work by repairing the roof at a house where one of the children is sick because of the pollution. He attempts to question the family, but they do not have much to say. He has little better results elsewhere; even the man who tipped off the EPA is decidedly taciturn. While testing the water, Taggert wanders into a local marijuana field, and is accosted by the growers. After disarming them, he tells them that he has no interest in arresting them. The men responsible for the other agent's death soon notice Taggert's presence. As a newcomer to the small local community, he is threatened by Hanner's son Orin, Jr. (Brad Hunt), the incompetent local tool of the company, the corrupt local Sheriff Lloyd Foley, and several thugs that work for them. The thugs in question start by leaving two rattlesnakes in his dwelling; Taggert responds by capturing the snakes alive and leaving them in the pickup that the thugs were driving, causing them to crash. Soon after, five of them attack him while he is buying supplies, and receive a severe beating as a result. Orin then orders one of his truck drivers to arrange an "accident" by running him off the road, but Taggert escapes alive while the driver is killed. While these conflicts are occurring, Taggert strikes up a relationship with Sarah Kellogg, a young woman who lives in the town. She is regarded as an outcast because of her father's murder, a crime of which she was accused but not convicted. Eventually, she agrees to testify against Orin and his people, much to the anger of her brother Earl, who actually committed the crime, after their father found out about his sexual abuse against her. He sets the church on fire, in the process killing the preacher who was helping Taggert, and then attempts to collapse the mine with Taggert inside it. Taggert escapes, but several mercenaries are killed, including Earl. With evidence and a witness, Taggert calls the FBI to take Sarah into protective custody. However, they are revealed to be corrupt, and a firefight ensues. Taggert kills one agent, then sends the second back to Orin with a message that he'll be coming for him next. However, when Orin is arrested and charged, he gets off with a slap on the wrist for the environmental violations. Taggert goes back into the town and fights his way past the last of Orin, Jr's thugs, then demands the truth from him. Orin agrees to turn state's evidence, implicating his father on racketeering, conspiracy, and murder charges. Taggert goes to a casino to arrest Orin, Sr. Upon hearing about the reception awaiting him in federal prison, Orin produces a gun and resists, but Taggert shoots him in the shoulder and he is taken into custody. Taggert then returns to Jackson, where he is reunited with Sarah. 

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12-year-old J.J. Somerled (Frankie Nasso) runs away because his mother died and he has been placed in the care of an abusive foster mother. He takes his electronic keyboard, and lives in Central Park in New York City. He learns a lot, and meets a lot of people there including a person called "The Guardian" (Harvey Keitel). 

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A SWAT team converges on the house of a United States Senator, who is being held hostage. The bomb squad arrives; Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) finds a bomb in the basement and works to disarm it while the SWAT team is in a shootout with the hostage takers. Glass disarms the bomb but deems it too easy, believing it was designed to mislead him. The real bomb detonates, killing everyone inside. A year later in San Francisco, narcotics cops Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) and partner Art "Fuzzy" Rice (Nas) arrest a suspect on drug charges. Ray lets a woman go who pleads for her and her child; Fuzzy tells Ray to get some help for his "demons" - he has never mourned the car bombing death of his wife and son. They see people entering a warehouse late at night and investigate. Ray apprehends a woman and three men converge on him; Fuzzy is shot by their leader (Dennis Hopper) and the three men flee. Ray arrests the woman, Claire (Jaime Pressly), but she refuses to say anything about the men. She is wearing an odd-looking bracelet which Nettles takes to the bomb squad for Glass to look over. The bracelet is found to contain detonation cord and Semtex explosive. The leader tells the police they have one hour to release Claire; when they do not, he bombs a bar. Ray takes Glass back to the warehouse where they find a French cigarette and matchbook from a jazz club. They go to the club and kill one of the bombers, disarming his bomb. Ray questions Claire again; she reveals the bomber's names - Alex Swan, the leader, and Vershbow, the surviving member. She claims that no matter what happens, she will be killed for getting caught, and has decided to cooperate. Swan intends to plant a bomb at the police station, but Vershbow gets cold feet and forces Swan to give him the bomb at gunpoint. The police corner him and Glass apparently prevents the detonation, but Swan detonates several more bombs using a pay phone. Swan arranges a massive bombing with a crew led by (Ice-T). Ray convinces the police to release Claire, hoping to avert another bombing, and they give her a tracking device. Once she meets up with Swan, however, she disables the tracker and works with him. They discuss their upcoming "masterpiece," and Claire goes to a phone booth to activate the bomb. She detonates a car bomb in Swan's car, instead. Confused, Glass tells Ray they must both be dead. Seeing City Hall on TV, Ray remembers Claire's story about her husband and realizes she was the mastermind all along. They rush to City Hall and split up - Ray goes to the basement and Glass to the roof. Ray is forced to disarm a bomb with advice over the radio from Glass, who coaches him to relax and forget his grief, but the device is a decoy. Glass disarms the real bomb on the roof. 

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Detroit Police Department's detective Orin Boyd (Steven Seagal) is a cop in Detroit's 21st precinct, who saves the Vice President of the United States (Christopher Lawford) from a right-wing Michigan militant group trying to kill him. As Boyd saved the Vice President's life via disobeying orders and killing all the militants, captain Frank Daniels (Bruce McGill) transfers Boyd to the 15th precinct — Detroit's worst precinct. Boyd's new captain, former internal affairs officer Annette Mulcahy (Jill Hennessy), knows of his reputation, and she tells him that she will not tolerate it. Annette sends Boyd to an anger management class where he meets Henry Wayne (Tom Arnold), the high-strung host of a local talk show called Detroit AM. Boyd comes across local drug dealer Latrell Walker (Earl "DMX" Simmons) and his fast-talking sidekick T.K. Johnson (Anthony Anderson) doing a shady deal with a man named Matt Montini (David Vadim). After a brief fight, Boyd discovers that Montini has been working undercover trying to nail Walker and Boyd ruined the sting, and that does not sit well with Montini's musclebound partner Useldinger (Matthew G. Taylor). Sergeant Lewis Strutt (Michael Jai White) steps in to cool things down when Boyd gets in a fight with Useldinger. After Boyd stumbles upon the theft of $5,000,000 worth of heroin from evidence storage, Boyd and new partner George Clark (Isaiah Washington) begin focusing their efforts on Walker and T.K. Intrigued by what little they have on Walker, they investigate why he has been visiting Shaun Rollins (Mel Jason "Drag-On" Smalls). Henry discovers is that Walker is not a drug dealer. Walker is a computer expert and billionaire whose real name is Leon Rollins — he is Shaun Rollins' brother. Boyd confronts Leon, who explains that a group of corrupt cops needed a fall guy for a deal gone bad and pinned it on Shaun. It is further revealed that Strutt is the leader of the group, which also includes Montini and Useldinger. Leon and his friend Trish (Eva Mendes) have been videotaping the activities of Strutt's gang, hoping that it might help prove Shaun's innocence and get him out of jail. Boyd calls Frank and tells him that Strutt will be having a meeting at a warehouse in about an hour, to sell the heroin that was stolen. Strutt plans to try to sell it to Leon and T. K., not knowing that Leon is working against him. Frank promises that he will be there with some backup. Boyd and Daniels show up, but Strutt tells Frank to keep Boyd under control. Boyd realizes that it is Frank who is behind everything. Clark blows open the door and barges in with backup, including police chief Hinges (Bill Duke). Useldinger shoots Boyd and as he is about to shoot him again, George shoots Useldinger dead. Chief Hinges kills Frank by shooting him four times with a shotgun. After a fight with Boyd, Strutt grabs a case full of money and runs up to the roof, where a helicopter is waiting. Montini gets the upper hand in his fight with Leon after he damages Leon's vision with indigo fabric dye. Leon manages to stab Montini in the leg with a piece of broken glass, before killing him by having his neck impaled on a clothes rack. As the helicopter ladder is dragging Boyd across the roof with Strutt hanging on to the ladder, Strutt falls and is impaled on a metal pipe. At dawn, Leon gives Hinges the videotape that proves the corruption, hoping that the tape will help prove Shaun's innocence. Hinges does not believe the courts will care about the tape, so Hinges had Shaun released from county about an hour before. Boyd decides to stay with the 15th precinct with George as his partner, and T. K. becomes Henry's television co-host. 

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In San Francisco, FBI agent Sasha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal) goes undercover as a Russian car thief and is brought in by criminal Nick Frazier (Ja Rule) to work for crime boss Sonny Eckvall (Richard Bremmer), who apparently shot and killed Sasha's wife. After some time, FBI Special Agent Ellen "E. Z." Williams (Claudia Christian) and her team show up to nail Nick, but things go bad, and Sasha gets shot. After eight months of recovery following his brief bout of being clinically dead from the shooting, Sasha is incarcerated along with Nick in the newly reopened Alcatraz prison. Run by the charismatic warden, Juan Ruiz "El Fuego" Escarzaga (Tony Plana), the place is known for its new state of the art death chamber where the condemned can choose from five different ways to die: lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, or electric chair. Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz), is the first death row prisoner brought to the new Alcatraz and also the first prisoner scheduled to be executed. An older man, he stole $200,000,000 worth of gold bricks in a heist that resulted in five deaths, and hid the loot at an unknown location. Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard (Stephen J. Cannell) and Supreme Court Justice Jane McPherson (Linda Thorson) have arrived to witness the execution, which is a result of June sentencing Lester. But she's not the only one interested in Lester. A small but well equipped team of terrorists who call themselves the "49ers" have parachuted onto the Alcatraz island, and gained control of it. Led by 49er One, a.k.a. Hubbard's assistant Donny Johnson (Morris Chestnut), and 49er Six (Nia Peeples), the team finds Lester, and they want him to give up the location of his hidden stash of gold. When Lester will not tell them, Donny shoots a nearby priest (Eva-Maria Schönecker), and threatens to kill others if the information is not delivered. Donny's plan is disrupted, however, when Sascha decides to step in and fight back. At this point, Sasha's true identity is revealed and he used Nick to get to Sonny Eckvall, whom he seeks revenge on for the death of his wife. When Sasha rescues Lester, the 49ers strap Jane to the electric chair and threaten to kill her, all while Ellen and her team prepare a rescue plan from the mainland. With the help of Nick and some of the other inmates such as Twitch (Kurupt) and Little Joe (Michael "Bear" Taliferro), Sasha sets out to rescue Jane and bring Donny down, before Alcatraz becomes everyone's final resting place. 

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In 1964, eleven- year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. Harriet is precocious, ambitious and enthusiastic about her future career. Encouraged by her nanny, Catherine "Ole Golly," Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career, to which she dedicates her life. She follows an afternoon "spy route", during which she observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. One subject that Harriet observes is a local store, where the younger son Fabio cannot make anything of his career in contrast to the hardworking and loyal Bruno, and where the stock boy Joe Curry or "Little Joe" is eating in the storeroom and feeding homeless kids instead of working. Harriet's best friends are Simon "Sport" Rocque, a serious boy who wants to be a CPA or a ball player, and Janie Gibbs, who wants to be a scientist. Harriet's enemies in her class are Marion Hawthorne, the teacher's pet and self-appointed queen bee of her class, and Marion's best friend and second-in-command, Rachel Hennessy. Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. She also resists "girlie" activities, as when her parents expect her to attend dance school and she stubbornly refuses. Ole Golly gets Harriet to change her mind on dance school by telling her the stories of Josephine Baker and Mata Hari. However, Harriet's life changes abruptly after Ole Golly's suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, proposes and she accepts; when Mrs. Welsch (who, ironically, had threatened to fire her earlier in a fit of panicked rage at finding Harriet missing in the middle of the night) exclaims, "You can't leave, what will we do without you?!," Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close. Her mother and father, who have been largely absentee parents during Ole Golly's tenure as nanny because of their obligations to work and social life, are at a loss to understand Harriet's feelings and are of little comfort to her. Later at school, during her period game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at her brutally honest documentation of her opinions of them. For example, in her notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father or saying Marion Hawthorne is destined to grow up to be a "lady Hitler". The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch, passing nasty notes about her in class, or trying to draw her out by selling stories about a new boy who wears purple socks. However, when the kids orchestrate a prank to spill ink on Harriet and make it look like an accident, this backfires when she slaps Marion in revenge, leaving a blue hand print on Marion's face. Harriet regularly spies on them through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, and though she is hurt and lonely, she still thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for carrying out some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet spends all her time in class writing in her notebook as a part of her plan to outfox the Spy Catcher Club. As a result of never doing her schoolwork and of skipping school for days at a time and taking to her bed out of depression, her grades suffer. This leads Harriet's parents to confiscate her notebook, which only depresses Harriet further. Harriet's mother takes her daughter to see a psychiatrist, who advises Harriet's parents to contact Ole Golly and encourage Harriet's former nanny to write to her. In her letter, Ole Golly tells Harriet that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you don't like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend." Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion and Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same. Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper, replacing Marion. The newspaper--featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents-- becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to make amends by printing a retraction, defeating Marion, and is forgiven by Sport and Janie. 

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In 1951, Robert "Dutch" Holland (James Stewart) is a professional baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals. A B-29 bomber pilot during World War II, retains a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve, but is in on inactive, non-drilling status. During spring training at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, he is recalled to active duty for 21 months. He reports to his posting at Carswell AFB, a bomber base in Fort Worth, Texas, to qualify in the Convair B-36. He arrives in civilian clothing for which he is rebuked by General Hawkes (Frank Lovejoy), the commander of SAC, and replies that his uniforms are "the wrong color" (implying he has been inactive at least since the Air Force discontinued the brown U.S. Army Air Forces uniform in favor of a blue service dress uniform three years earlier, in 1949). The General's character is clearly patterned after the real SAC commander of the time, General Curtis LeMay. Dutch is given a staff job with the bombardment wing at Carswell that involves a lot of flying. He soon has a B-36 crew of his own, selecting a former World War II colleague as his flight engineer, and becomes enamored with both flying and the role of SAC in deterring war. He is joined by his wife, Sally (June Allyson), who had not bargained on being an Air Force wife, and who struggles with his repeated absences and the dangers of flying. On any given night, Dutch might find his aircraft on airborne alert far from the continental United States, in secret, only telling his wife when he returns days later. Even so, Sally tells Dutch that she is happy as long as they can be together, no matter what he decides to do with his life. The B-36 is a complex aircraft when introduced, but improvements are being worked on all the time. One challenge was leakage from the fuel tanks, but a new fix is introduced to address this once and for all. On their next flight, Dutch's crew has to fly their B-36 from Carswell AFB to Thule Air Base, Greenland. The fix does not work and one of the engines bursts into flame, causing the entire left wing to catch fire. The crew is forced to abandon the aircraft and bail out over the ice and snow of Greenland before arriving at Thule. Dutch and his radar navigator stay on board for a forced landing, which causes Dutch to injure his right shoulder. Dutch becomes a favorite of General Hawkes, and he is rewarded with a revised assignment flying the new Boeing B-47 Stratojet at MacDill AFB, Tampa, Florida, across the bay from St. Petersburg where his old baseball team continues to conduct its spring training. Promoted to "full bird" colonel and made deputy wing commander of his B-47 wing at MacDill AFB, Dutch decides, to Sally's displeasure, to remain in the Air Force, rather than return to baseball at the end of his active duty obligation. On a full B-47 wing deployment exercise that involves flying nonstop from MacDill to Yokota Air Base, Japan, they encounter severe wind and storms. Low on fuel, they divert to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. As they prepare to land, Dutch realizes that his shoulder injury from the B-36 crash was worse than he thought, and his arm is almost immobile. He is unable to operate the engine power levers (throttles) during final landing phase, and he has to rely on his co-pilot to do so, while Dutch works the flight controls with his left arm and two feet. This injury not only bars him from further flying and causes the Air Force to medically discharge him, but it also appears to threaten his baseball career. General Hawkes suggests that he would make an excellent team manager. 

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Newly commissioned Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith reports to the minesweeper USS Caine, commanded by William De Vriess, also meeting executive officer Stephen Maryk and communications officer Thomas Keefer. De Vriess, popular with the men but disliked by Keith, is relieved by Phillip Francis Queeg, who immediately attempts to instill strict discipline on the Caine's lax crew. After a day of gunnery target towing, Queeg orders a turn to head back to Pearl Harbor, but distracts himself by berating Keith and Keefer over a crewman's appearance. Ignoring the helmsman's repeated warnings, he allows the Caine to turn in a full circle and cut the towline, setting the target adrift. Queeg tries to cover up the incident. The "strawberry investigation." Assigned to escort a group of landing craft during an invasion of a small Pacific island, Queeg abandons his mission before he reaches the designated departure point, and instead orders the dropping of a yellow dye marker, leaving the landing craft to fend for themselves. Queeg asks his officers for their support, but they remain silent and nickname him "Old Yellowstain," which nickname implies cowardice. Keefer, believing Queeg to be paranoid, encourages Maryk to consider relieving Queeg on the basis of mental incapacity under Article 184 of Navy Regulations. Though Maryk angrily rejects that possibility, he does begin keeping a medical log documenting the captain's behavior. When strawberries go missing from the officers' mess, Queeg convenes an elaborate investigation to determine the culprit, recalling an incident earlier in his career when he received a commendation for uncovering the theft of food. Despite the relative unimportance of the theft and the claim that the kitchen staff ate the missing strawberries, Queeg pushes ahead with his investigation, insisting that a duplicate cabinet key must have been made and used, and demanding an onerous search of the vessel. Convinced of Queeg's instability, Maryk asks Keefer and Keith to go with him to see Admiral Halsey about the matter. Arriving aboard Halsey's flagship, Keefer backs down, telling the others that Queeg's actions will be interpreted as attempts to instill discipline. As they leave, an aide tells them that a typhoon is approaching. At the height of the storm, Maryk urges the captain to reverse course into the wind and take on ballast, but Queeg refuses, having received no order from the fleet to change course or to maneuver at will. The ship's foremast and radar are carried away and the forward stack smashed by waves. The stern comes completely out of the water, the screws racing, and the destroyer takes alarming rolls that threaten to capsize her. Concerned that the ship will founder, the crew look to Queeg for guidance, but he appears to be frozen, either by indecision or fear. With Keith's support, Maryk relieves Queeg of command. The battered Caine returns to San Francisco, where Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. Wounded naval aviator Barney Greenwald, a lawyer in civilian life, reluctantly becomes Maryk's defense counsel after eight Navy lawyers turn down the assignment. At the court-martial, Keefer lies on the stand, claiming he never observed any mental illness in Queeg and never counseled Maryk to relieve him. A Navy psychiatrist testifies that Queeg is fit for command, but during Greenwald's questioning confirms that Queeg shows symptoms of a paranoid personality. Under Greenwald's relentless cross- examination, Queeg exhibits odd behavior on the stand – which he himself eventually realizes reflects badly on him – and Maryk is acquitted. Following the acquittal, the officers of the Caine hold a party, where Keefer receives a frosty reception from Maryk. A drunken Greenwald arrives and berates the officers for not appreciating Queeg's long service and failing to give him the support he asked for. He denounces Keefer as the real "author" of the mutiny, a man who "hated the Navy" and manipulated others while keeping his own hands clean. He then throws a glass of champagne in Keefer's face and departs, followed by the rest of the officers, leaving Keefer alone in the room. After the court-martial, Keith is assigned to a new destroyer commanded by the Caine's previous captain, Commander De Vriess. 

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Joe Gideon is a theater director and choreographer trying to balance staging his latest Broadway musical, NY/LA, while editing a Hollywood film he has directed, The Stand-Up. He is a workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes and a womanizer who constantly flirts and has sex with a stream of women. Each morning, to keep himself going, he plays a tape of Vivaldi and takes doses of Visine, Alka-Seltzer, and Dexedrine, always finishing by looking at himself in the mirror and telling himself "It's showtime, folks!". Joe's ex-wife, Audrey Paris, is involved with the production of the show, but disapproves of his womanizing ways. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Katie Jagger and daughter Michelle keep him company. In his imagination, he flirts with an angel of death named Angelique in a nightclub setting, chatting with her about his life. As Joe continues to be dissatisfied with his editing job, repeatedly making minor changes to a single monologue, he takes his anger out on the dancers and in his choreography, putting on a highly sexualized number with topless women during one rehearsal and frustrating both Audrey and the show's penny-pinching backers. The only moment of joy in his life occurs when Katie and Michelle perform a Fosse-style number for Joe as an homage to the upcoming release of The Stand-Up, moving him to tears. During a particularly stressful table-read of NY/LA, Joe experiences severe chest pains and is admitted to the hospital with severe angina. Joe brushes off his symptoms, and attempts to leave to go back to rehearsal, but he collapses in the doctor's office and is ordered to stay in the hospital for several weeks to rest his heart and recover from his exhaustion. NY/LA is postponed, but Gideon continues his antics from the hospital bed, continuing to smoke and drink while having endless strings of women come through his room; as he does, his condition continues to deteriorate, despite Audrey and Katie both remaining by his side for support. A negative review for The Stand- Up — which has been released during Joe's time in the hospital — comes in despite the film's monetary success, and Gideon has a massive coronary event. As Joe undergoes coronary artery bypass surgery, the producers of NY/LA realize that the best way to recoup their money and make a profit is to bet on Gideon's dying: the insurance proceeds would result in a profit of over half a million dollars. As Gideon goes on life support, he directs extravagant musical dream sequences in his own head starring his daughter, wife, and girlfriend, who all berate him for his behavior; he realizes he cannot avoid his own death, and has another heart attack. As the doctors try to save him, Joe runs away from his hospital bed behind their backs and explores the basement of the hospital and the autopsy ward before he allows himself to be taken back. He goes through the five stages of grief — anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance — featured in the stand-up routine he had been editing, and as he gets closer to death, his dream sequences become more and more hallucinatory. As the doctors try one more time to save him, Joe imagines a monumental variety show featuring everyone from his past where he takes center stage in an extensive musical number. In his dying dream, Joe is able to thank his family and acquaintances as he cannot from his hospital bed, and his performance receives a massive standing ovation. Joe finally dreams of himself traveling down a hallway to meet Angelique at the end, but the film then abruptly cuts to his corpse being zipped up in a body bag. 

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Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose are British Methodist missionaries in the village of Kungdu in German East Africa at the beginning of World War I in September 1914. Their mail and supplies are delivered by a small steam launch named the African Queen, helmed by the rough-and-ready Canadian mechanic Charlie Allnut, whose coarse behavior they stiffly tolerate. thumb When Charlie warns the Sayers that war has broken out between Germany and Britain, they choose to remain in Kungdu, only to witness German colonial troops burn down the village and herd the villagers away to be forcibly recruited. When Samuel protests, he is beaten by an officer, and becomes delirious with fever and soon dies. Charlie returns shortly afterward after having found his mine to have been destroyed by the Germans and being chased for his supplies, which include gelatin explosives. He helps Rose bury her brother, and they set off in the African Queen. While planning their escape, Charlie mentions to Rose that the British are unable to attack the Germans due to the presence of a large gunboat, the Königin Luise, patrolling a large lake downriver. Rose comes up with a plan to convert the African Queen into a torpedo boat and sink the Königin Luise. Charlie points out that navigating the Ulanga River to get to the lake would be suicidal: they would have to pass a German fort and negotiate several dangerous rapids. But Rose is insistent and eventually persuades him to go along with the plan. Eventually Charlie becomes inebriated and drunkenly insults Rose and her plan, who retaliates by dumping his supply of gin into the river. Charlie allows Rose to navigate the river by rudder while he tends the engine, and she is emboldened after they get through the first set of rapids with minimal flooding in the boat. But when they pass the fortress and the soldiers begin shooting at them, the bullets damage the boiler, although they are unable to shoot the boat severely due to the sun getting in their eyes. Charlie manages to reattach a pressure hose just as they are about to enter the second set of rapids. The boat rolls and pitches as it goes down the rapids, leading to more severe flooding in the boat. However, they make it through. While celebrating their success, the two find themselves in an embrace. Embarrassed, they break off, but eventually succumb and become lovers. The third set of rapids damages the propeller shaft. Rigging up a primitive forge on shore, Charlie straightens the shaft, welds a new blade onto the prop, and they are off again. right All appears lost when the boat becomes mired in the mud and dense reeds near the mouth of the river. They try to tow the boat through the muck, only to have Charlie come out of the water covered with leeches. With no supplies left and short of potable water, Rose and a feverish Charlie pass out, both accepting they will die soon. Rose says a quiet prayer. As they sleep, exhausted and beaten, torrential rains far upstream gently raise the river's level and float the African Queen off of the mud and into the lake. Once on the lake, they narrowly avoid being spotted by the Königin Luise. Over the next two days, Charlie and Rose convert some oxygen cylinders into torpedoes using gelatin explosives and improvised detonators. They push the torpedoes through holes cut in the bow of the African Queen as improvised spar torpedoes. The Königin Luise returns, and Charlie and Rose steam the African Queen out onto the lake in darkness, intending to set her on a collision course. A strong storm strikes which causes water to pour into the African Queen through the torpedo holes. Eventually the African Queen capsizes, throwing them both into the water. Charlie loses sight of Rose in the storm. Charlie is captured and taken aboard the Königin Luise, where he is interrogated by the captain. Believing that Rose has drowned, he makes no attempt to defend himself against accusations of spying, and the German captain sentences him to death by hanging. However, Rose is captured and brought to the Königin Luise just after Charlie's sentence is pronounced. The captain questions her, and Rose confesses the whole plot proudly, deciding they have nothing to lose. The captain sentences her to be executed with Charlie, both as British spies.Strictly, as civilians engaging in military activity without being members of an armed force, the two should have been considered to be francs-tireurs rather than spies. That, too, would have made them liable to execution under the then prevailing legal situation; at the time, the Imperial German Army executed numerous francs- tireurs in Belgium and France. Charlie asks the German captain to marry them before executing them. After a brief marriage ceremony, there is an explosion and the Königin Luise quickly capsizes. The Königin Luise has struck the overturned submerged hull of the African Queen and detonated the torpedoes. The newly married couple happily swims to safety. 

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Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) makes an urgent phone call from London to a Florida railway station where Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello) work as baggage clerks. Talbot tries to impart to Wilbur the danger of a shipment due to arrive for "McDougal's House Of Horrors", a local wax museum. The crates purportedly contain the remains of Count Dracula (Béla Lugosi) and the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange). However, before Wilbur can understand, a full moon rises and Talbot transforms into a werewolf. He proceeds to destroy his hotel room while Wilbur is on the line. Wilbur thinks the call is a prank and hangs up. Meanwhile, the museum owner, McDougal (Frank Ferguson), has arrived to claim the shipments. When Wilbur badly mishandles the crates, McDougal demands that the boys deliver them to his museum so his insurance agent can inspect them. Chick and Wilbur deliver the crates after hours. They open the first one and find Dracula's coffin. When Chick leaves the room to retrieve the second crate, Wilbur reads aloud the Dracula legend printed on an exhibit card. The coffin slowly creaks open. Wilbur is so frightened that his attempts to call Chick result in helpless sputtering. Before Chick returns with the second crate, Dracula climbs unnoticed out of his coffin and hides in the shadows. Wilbur claims that the coffin opened, but Chick shows him that it is in fact empty. While the boys open the second crate containing the Monster, Chick leaves the room to greet McDougal and the insurance agent. Dracula now hypnotizes Wilbur and reanimates the Monster. They both leave and by the time McDougal, the insurance agent, and Chick enter, both crates are empty. McDougal accuses the boys of theft and has them arrested. That night, Dr. Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert) welcomes Dracula and the Monster to her island castle. Sandra, a gifted surgeon who has studied Dr. Frankenstein's notebooks, has seduced Wilbur as part of Dracula's plan to replace the Monster's brutish brain with a more pliable one—Wilbur's. Wilbur and Chick are bailed out of jail. They assume that Sandra posted bond, but Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph), an undercover investigator for the insurance company, did so. Joan also feigns love for Wilbur, hoping that he will lead her to the missing "exhibits". Wilbur invites Joan to a masquerade ball that evening. Meanwhile, Lawrence Talbot has tracked Dracula and the Monster from Europe and has taken the apartment across the hall from Wilbur and Chick. Talbot asks Chick and Wilbur to help him find and destroy Dracula and the Monster. Wilbur believes, but Chick remains skeptical. That night Wilbur, Chick and Joan go to Sandra's castle to pick her up for the ball. Wilbur answers a telephone call from Talbot, who informs them that they are in fact in the "House of Dracula". Wilbur reluctantly agrees to search the castle with Chick and soon stumbles upon a basement staircase that leads to a boat and dock. Chick insists they search for Dracula and the Monster to prove to Wilbur that they do not really exist. Behind a revolving door, Wilbur experiences a few close calls with the monsters; whenever he tries to get Chick's attention, the monsters have disappeared. Meanwhile, Joan discovers Dr. Frankenstein's notebook in Sandra's desk and Sandra finds Joan's insurance company employee ID in her purse. As the men and women prepare to leave for the ball, a suavely dressed Dr. Lejos (a.k.a. Dracula) introduces himself to Joan and the boys. Also working at the castle is the naive Prof. Stevens (Charles Bradstreet), who questions some of the specialized equipment that has arrived. After Wilbur admits that he was in the basement, Sandra feigns a headache and tells Wilbur and the others that they will have to go to the ball without her. In private, Sandra admits to Dracula that Stevens' suspicions, Joan's credentials, and Wilbur's snooping in the basement have made her nervous enough to put the experiment on hold. Dracula asserts his will by hypnotizing her and biting her in the neck (in a continuity error, Dracula's reflection is visible in a mirror. Vampires do not have reflections, as stated in Dracula (1931)). Everyone is now at the masquerade ball. Talbot arrives and confronts Dr. Lejos, who is in costume as Dracula. Lejos easily deflects Talbot's accusations and takes Joan to the dance floor. Sandra lures Wilbur to a quiet spot in the woods and attempts to bite him, but Chick and Larry approach and she flees. While Talbot, Chick and Wilbur search for Joan, Talbot transforms into the Wolf Man and stalks Wilbur. Wilbur escapes, but the Wolf Man attacks McDougal, who is also at the ball. Since Chick's costume includes a wolf mask, McDougal accuses Chick of attacking him out of revenge. Chick escapes and witnesses Dracula hypnotizing Wilbur. Chick is also hypnotized and rendered helpless, while Dracula and Sandra bring Wilbur and Joan back to the castle. The next morning, Chick and Talbot, both fugitives, meet up in the bayou. Talbot confesses to Chick that he is indeed the Wolf Man. Chick explains that Dracula has taken Wilbur and Joan to the island and they agree to work together to rescue them. Wilbur is held in a pillory in the cellar. Sandra explains her plan to transplant his brain into the Monster. When she and Dracula leave him to prepare the Monster for the operation, Chick and Talbot sneak in to set Wilbur and Stevens free. Dracula and Sandra return to the cellar and find Wilbur missing; Dracula easily recalls Wilbur and he soon finds himself strapped to an operating table in the lab. The Monster is on an adjacent table, receiving electric shocks. As Sandra brings a scalpel to Wilbur's forehead, Talbot and Chick burst in. Talbot pulls Sandra away from Wilbur and Chick unintentionally knocks her out while fending off Dracula with a chair. Chick flees the lab, pursued by Dracula. Talbot is about to untie Wilbur when he once again transforms into the Wolf Man. Dracula returns to the lab and engages in a brief tug of war with the Wolf Man over Wilbur's gurney. Dracula flees and the Wolf Man gives chase. Chick returns to untie Wilbur just as the Monster, now at full power, breaks his restraints and climbs off his gurney. Sandra attempts to command him, but the Monster picks her up and tosses her out the lab window to her death. Chick and Wilbur escape the lab and run from room to room with the Monster following them. Dracula, while fighting with the Wolf Man, attempts to escape by transforming into a bat. The Wolf Man leaps, catches the bat and tumbles off a balcony onto the rocks below. Presumably, both are killed. Joan abruptly wakes from her trance and is rescued by Stevens. The boys run out of the castle to the pier, with the Monster still in pursuit. They climb into a small rowboat, while Stevens and Joan arrive and set the pier ablaze. The Monster wheels around into the flames (another continuity error, as the Monster is infamously afraid of fire and would not have walked into it), succumbing as the pier collapses into the water. Wilbur scolds Chick for not believing him. Chick insists that now that all of the monsters are dead, "there's nobody to frighten us anymore." They suddenly hear a disembodied voice (provided by an uncredited Vincent Price) and see a cigarette floating in the air. The voice says, "Oh, that's too bad. I was hoping to get in on the excitement. Allow me to introduce myself—I'm the Invisible Man!" The boys jump out of the boat and swim away while the Invisible Man laughs. 

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Tracy and Hepburn as Adam and Amanda Doris Attinger follows her husband with a gun in Manhattan one day, suspecting he is having an affair with another woman. In her rage, she fires wildly and blindly around the room and at the couple multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the shoulder. His lover escapes unscathed. The following morning, the married New York lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner read about the incident in the newspaper. Adam is an assistant district attorney, whereas Amanda is in private practice in her own one-lawyer office. They argue over the case. Amanda sympathizes with the woman, particularly noting the double standard that exists for men and women regarding adultery. Adam thinks Doris is guilty of attempted murder. When Adam arrives at work, he learns that he has been assigned to prosecute the case. When Amanda hears this, she seeks out Doris and becomes her defense lawyer. Amanda bases her case on the belief that women and men are equal, and that Doris had been forced into the situation by her husband's adultery and emotional abuse. Adam thinks Amanda is showing a disregard for the law, since there should never be an excuse for such behavior. Tension increasingly builds at home as the two battle each other in court. The situation comes to a head as Adam feels humiliated during the trial when Amanda encourages one of her witnesses, a woman weightlifter, to lift him overhead. Later, Adam, still angry, storms out of their apartment. When the verdict is returned, Amanda's plea to the jury to "judge this case as you would if the sexes were reversed" proves successful, and Doris is acquitted. That night, Adam, who has left their upper-floor apartment, looks through its window and sees the silhouettes of his wife Amanda and their neighbor Kip Lurie, a popular singer, songwriter and piano player who has shown a keen interest in Amanda all along, and repeatedly taunted Adam, as the two of them seem to be dancing and drinking together. Adam breaks into the apartment enraged, pointing a gun at the pair. Amanda is horrified and says to Adam, "You've no right to do thisnobody does!" Adam feels he has proven his point about the injustice of Amanda's line of defense. He puts the gun in his mouth. Amanda and Kip scream in terror. Then Adam bites a large piece off the gun and chews it. It is made of licorice. Amanda is furious with this prank and a three-way fight ensues. Now in the midst of a divorce, Adam and Amanda reluctantly reunite for a meeting with their tax accountant. Going through their expenses for the year, they talk about their relationship in the past tense. They talk about the farm they own and recall burning the mortgage. Tears begin to roll down Adam's cheeks, and, astonished and touched, Amanda gently bundles her sobbing husband out of the office and to the farm. While they are getting ready for bed — an antique, curtained four poster—Adam announces that he has been selected as the Republican nominee for County Court Judge. Amanda perches on the edge of the bed and jokes about running for the post as the Democratic candidate. Adam replies, no she won't, because then he would cry. He demonstrates how easily he can turn on the tears, remarking that men can do it too, they just don't think to. Amanda says that just goes to show that there is no difference between the sexes...Well, maybe there is a little difference. "You know what the French say," Adam declares 'Vive la différence!'...'Hurray for that little difference!'" as he jumps onto the bed and closes the curtains. 

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Hard-drinking family man Egbert Sousé (W.C. Fields) has strained relations with his wife (Cora Witherspoon) and mother-in-law (Jessie Ralph) over his drinking, smoking, and taking money out of the piggy bank of his younger daughter Elsie Mae (Evelyn Del Rio) and replacing it with IOUs. When he tries to hit his younger daughter with a concrete urn, he is interrupted by his older daughter Myrtle (Una Merkel) introducing him to her fiancé, Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton). When A. Pismo Clam (Jack Norton), the director of a movie which is shooting in town, goes on a bender, producer Mackley Q. Greene (Dick Purcell) offers the job to Sousé. While on his lunch break, it appears that he has caught one of the two men who robbed the bank where his prospective son-in-law, Og, has a job as a teller. he grateful bank president Mr. Skinner (Pierre Watkin) gives Sousé a job as the bank's "special officer", a bank detective ("dick"). After being conned by swindler J. Frothingham Waterbury (Russell Hicks), Sousé convinces Og to steal $500 from the bank to invest in the questionable Beefsteak Mining Company. Og hopes to return the money to the bank four days later when he expects to receive his annual bonus, but bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) arrives to immediately audit the bank. Sousé invites him to the Black Pussy Cat Café, a saloon run by Joe Guelpe (Shemp Howard), and drugs him with knockout drops and has him examined by quack Dr. Stall (Harlan Briggs). Despite this, Snoopington is determined to do his duty and proceed with the audit. Og passes out when he sees the examiner in the bank, and Sousé tries to delay the audit further by depriving Snoopington of his glasses. As Snoopington is about to discover the missing funds, the swindler shows up to buy back the stocks from Og at a discount, but Sousé learns that the mine has struck it rich, and he and Og are now wealthy and no longer have to worry about the audit. Just then, the escaped bank robber, Repulsive Brogan, returns to rob the bank a second time, and escapes with the bank's money and Og's mining company stock, taking Sousé hostage. The robber forces him to drive the getaway car, with the police, the bank director, Og, and the movie producer giving chase, during which parts of the getaway car keep falling off. Sousé once again receives the credit for catching the thief, and receives $5,000 for the capture of Brogan, $10,000 from the movie producer for his screen story as well as a contract to direct a film based on it. Now that he is rich, Sousé lives in a mansion, his family is elegant and well-spoken and treats him with respect, but he still follows Joe Guelpe on his way to open the Black Pussy Cat Café. 

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In 1937, a woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator J. J. "Jake" Gittes to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Gittes tails him, hears him publicly refuse to create a new reservoir that would be unsafe, and shoots photographs of him with a young woman, which are published on the front page of the following day's paper. Back at his office, Gittes is confronted by a woman who informs him she is the real Evelyn Mulwray and that he can expect a lawsuit. Realizing he was set up, Gittes assumes that Hollis Mulwray was the real target. Before he can question him, Lieutenant Lou Escobar fishes Mr. Mulwray, drowned, from a reservoir. Now under retainer to the real Mrs. Mulwray, Gittes investigates his suspicions and notices that although there is a drought, huge quantities of water are being released from the reservoir every night. Gittes is warned off by Water Department Security Chief Claude Mulvihill and a henchman who slashes one of Gittes' nostrils. Back at his office, Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, who identifies herself as the imposter Mrs. Mulwray. She is afraid to identify her employer but tells Gittes to check the day's obituaries. Gittes learns that Mulwray was once the business partner of Evelyn's wealthy father, Noah Cross. Over lunch at his personal club, Cross warns Gittes that he does not understand the forces at work, and offers to double Gittes' fee to search for Mulwray's missing mistress. At the hall of records, Gittes discovers that much of the Northwest Valley has recently changed ownership. Investigating the valley, he is attacked by angry landowners who believe he is an agent of the water department attempting to force them out by sabotaging their water supply. Gittes realizes that the water department is drying up the land so it can be bought at a reduced price and that Mulwray was murdered when he discovered the plan. He discovers that a former retirement home resident is one of the valley's new landowners, who seemingly purchased the property a week after his death. Gittes and Evelyn bluff their way into the home and confirm that the real-estate deals were surreptitiously completed in the names of several of the home's residents. Their visit is interrupted by the suspicious retirement home director, who has called Mulvihill. After fleeing Mulvihill and his thugs, Gittes and Evelyn hide at Evelyn's house and sleep together. During the night, Evelyn gets a phone call and must leave suddenly; she warns Gittes that her father is dangerous. Gittes follows Evelyn's car to a house, where he spies her through the windows comforting Mulwray's mistress, Katherine. He accuses Evelyn of holding the woman against her will, but she says Katherine is her sister. The next day, an anonymous call draws Gittes to Ida Sessions' apartment, where he finds her murdered and Escobar waiting for his arrival. Escobar tells him the coroner's report found salt water in Mulwray's lungs, indicating that he did not drown in the fresh water of the reservoir. Escobar suspects Evelyn of the murder and tells Gittes to produce her quickly. At Evelyn's mansion, Gittes finds her servants packing her things. He realizes her garden pond is salt water and discovers a pair of bifocals in it. He confronts Evelyn about Katherine, whom Evelyn now claims is her daughter. After Gittes slaps her, she tells him that Katherine is her sister and her daughter; her father raped her when she was 15. She says that the glasses are not Mulwray's, as he did not wear bifocals. Gittes arranges for the women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's home in Chinatown. He summons Cross to the Mulwray home to settle their deal. Cross admits his intention to annex the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles, then irrigate and develop it. Gittes accuses Cross of murdering Mulwray. Cross has Mulvihill take the bifocals at gunpoint, and they force Gittes to drive them to the women. When they reach the Chinatown address, the police are already there and detain Gittes. When Cross approaches Katherine, Evelyn shoots him in the arm and starts to drive away with Katherine. The police open fire, killing Evelyn. Cross clutches Katherine and leads her away, while Escobar orders Gittes released. Lawrence Walsh, one of Gittes's associates, tells him: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." 

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Mike Hammer is a tough, Los Angeles- based private investigator who, with the assistance of his secretary/lover Velda, typically works on "penny-ante divorce cases". One evening on a lonely country road north of the city, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker wearing nothing but a trench coat, who has escaped from a nearby psychiatric hospital. Thugs waylay them, and Hammer awakens in some unknown location where he hears Christina screaming and being tortured to death. The thugs then push Hammer's car off a cliff with Christina's body and an unconscious Hammer inside. Hammer next awakens in a hospital with Velda by his bedside. He decides to pursue the case, for vengeance, a sense of guilt (as Christina had asked him to "remember me" if she got killed), and because "she (Christina) must be connected with something big" behind it all. The twisting plot takes Hammer to the apartment of Lily Carver, who says she is Christina's ex-roommate and lover. Lily tells Hammer she has gone into hiding and asks Hammer to protect her. It turns out that she is after a mysterious box that, she believes, has contents worth a fortune. Hammer soon finds himself being stalked by Charlie Max and Sugar Smallhouse, two hired killers working under gangster Carl Evello; they are also seeking the mysterious box. Hammer manages to track Carl, and confronts him during a party at his lavish mansion. Carl is initially impressed by Hammer's brazenness and offers to work out a deal, but swiftly rescinds. Carl retaliates by having Charlie and Sugar murder Hammer's close friend and mechanic, Nick. They then kidnap him and take him to an isolated beach house, where another of their bosses, Dr. G. E. Soberin, injects him with sodium pentothal and interrogates him. Hammer manages to kill Soberin’s thugs and escapes, but when he goes to his friend Lieutenant Pat Murphy for help, Murphy refuses and warns him that the case is involved with a top-secret government experiment akin to the Manhattan Project. Hammer goes back to the beach house and finds "Lily", who is revealed to be an imposter named Gabrielle, with Soberin. Velda is their hostage, tied up in a bedroom. Soberin and Gabrielle discuss splitting the value of the box, but instead, Gabrielle shoots Soberin. With his dying words, Soberin urges Gabrielle not to open the box. When Hammer comes into the room, she shoots him. Gabrielle then opens the box, which emits a blinding light. The highly unstable radionuclide material inside reaches explosive criticality as it becomes fully exposed, and Gabrielle bursts into flames, with the room and eventually the entire house becoming engulfed. Hammer, wounded, struggles to his feet, then searches for Velda. Together, the pair flee the flaming room and house, helping each other along the beach, away from the house, to the ocean. 

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Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is an affluent widow in Stoningham in suburban New England, whose social life involves her country club peers, college-age children, and a few men vying for her affection. She becomes interested in Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), her arborist, an intelligent, down-to-earth and respectful yet passionate younger man. Ron is content with his simple life outside the materialistic society and the two fall in love. Ron introduces her to people who seem to have no need for wealth and status and she responds positively. Cary accepts his proposal of marriage, but becomes distressed when her friends and college-age children are angry. They look down upon Ron and his friends and reject their mother for this socially unacceptable arrangement. Eventually, bowing to this pressure, she breaks off the engagement. Cary and Ron continue their separate lives, both with many regrets, but Cary's children soon announce they are moving out. Having destroyed her chance at happiness, her son buys her a television set to keep her company. Before doing so, however, her daughter apologizes to her mother for her prior impulsive and foolish reaction to Ron, saying that there is still time if she really does love Ron. Cary's doctor points out that Cary is now lonelier than she was before meeting Ron. When Ron has a life- threatening accident, Cary realizes how wrong she had been to allow other people's opinions and superficial social conventions to dictate her life choices and decides to accept the life Ron offers her. As he recovers, Cary is by his bedside telling him that she has returned home. 

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In the late 1890s, Cappadocian Greek Stavros Topouzoglou (Giallelis) lives in an impoverished village below Mount Argaeus in Ottoman Turkey. Stavros witnesses the Hamidian massacres against Greek and Armenian Christians. The life of the Cappadocian Greeks and Armenians of Kayseri is depicted, including the traditional cliff cave dwellings in which Stavros' grandmother lives. Stavros is entrusted by his father with the family's financial resources in a mission of hope to the Turkish capital Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930), where he is to work in the carpet business of his father's cousin (Harry Davis), although his own dream is to reach the faraway land of opportunity, America. His odyssey begins with a long voyage on a donkey and on foot through the impoverished towns and villages on the way to Constantinople. Out of his kind nature and naivete, he dissipates all the money and arrives at the cousin's home penniless. The older man is deeply disappointed at this turn of events since he was counting on the infusion of funds to rescue his failing carpet store. Nevertheless, he attempts to salvage the situation by proposing that Stavros marry a wealthy merchant's (Paul Mann) young daughter (Linda Marsh). Stavros realizes that such a marriage would mean the end of his American dream and adamantly refuses, abruptly leaving the angry cousin. Now homeless on the streets of the capital, Stavros survives by eating discarded food and working at backbreaking and hazardous jobs. After nearly a year of scrimping and self-denial, he has some savings, but his first sexual encounter with a young prostitute (Joanna Frank) leaves him, once again, penniless. Sinking even lower, he now finds himself living in an overcrowded subterranean hovel, which becomes a scene of chaos and bloodshed when it is attacked with gunfire by authorities purportedly searching for anarchists and revolutionaries. Severely injured in the mayhem, the unconscious Stavros is thrown among piles of dead bodies slated for disposal into the sea. He subsequently topples from the cart transporting the bodies and painfully makes his way to the cousin's residence. The relative takes pity on the young man and allows him to recover at his home. Deprived now of all resistance, Stavros agrees to marry his intended bride. Upon being questioned by her regarding his moodiness, however, he admits that he still plans to emigrate to America, using the dowry money to pay for his passage. At this point Stavros becomes reacquainted with Hohannes (Gregory Rozakis), a young Armenian, whom Stavros aided with food and clothing during his original voyage to Istanbul. Hohannes informs him that he is being sponsored to America by an employer seeking labor. Stavros manages to secure his own passage with the aid of the middle- aged wife (Katherine Balfour) of wealthy Armenian-American businessman Artoon Kebabian (Robert H. Harris), a client of his prospective father-in-law. He tells his intended bride that he cannot marry her, and subsequently embarks on the voyage on board SS Kaiser Wilhelm. There is, however, another major impediment. Kebabian, enraged to learn of a shipboard affair between his wife and Stavros, lodges a criminal complaint against him and rescinds his offer of a job in America, threatening Stavros with deportation back to Turkey. As everything looks bleak, however, the tubercular Hohannes, discovered by the immigration services, jumps off the ship out of the realization he can never enter America. This sacrifice enables Stavros to take Hohannes' place. With the climactic image of the Statue of Liberty as the boatload of immigrants docks in New York Harbor, Stavros puts his tribulations behind him, starting out as a shoeshine boy and gathering the pennies and dollars that will eventually bring his family to the land where their descendants, including Elia Kazan, will have the chance to fulfill their potential. 

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On their last evening of summer vacation in September 1962, recent high school graduates and longtime friends Curt Henderson and Steve Bolander meet two other friends, John Milner, the drag- racing king of the town, and Terry "The Toad" Fields, in the parking lot of the local Mel's Drive-In in Modesto, California. Curt and Steve are scheduled to travel "Back East" the following morning to start college. Despite receiving a $2,000 scholarship from the local Moose Lodge, Curt has second thoughts about leaving Modesto. Steve gives Terry his 1958 Chevrolet Impala to care for until he returns at Christmas. Steve's girlfriend, Laurie, who is also Curt's sister, arrives in her 1958 Ford Edsel. Steve suggests to Laurie, who is already glum about him going to college, that they see other people while he is away to "strengthen" their relationship. Though not openly upset, she is displeased, which affects their interactions the rest of the evening. Curt accompanies Steve, last year's high school student class president, and Laurie, the current head cheerleader, to the back-to-high-school sock hop. En route to the dance, Curt sees a beautiful blonde woman driving a white 1956 Ford Thunderbird; at a stoplight, she mouths the words "I love you" before disappearing around a corner. Curt becomes desperate to find her; one of his friends tells him "The Blonde" is the trophy wife of a local jeweler, but Curt does not believe it. After leaving the hop, Curt is coerced by a group of greasers ("The Pharaohs") into participating in an initiation rite that involves hooking a chain to a police car and ripping out its back axle. The Pharaohs tell Curt that "The Blonde" is a prostitute, but he refuses to accept that as true. Determined to get a message to the blonde woman, Curt drives to the radio station to ask the disc jockey "Wolfman Jack" (a real-life radio DJ of the period), who is omnipresent on the car radios, to read a message for her on the air. Inside the station, Curt encounters an employee manning a console of record and cassette players, who tells him the Wolfman does not work at the station, and that the shows are pretaped for replay at multiple stations. The employee accepts the message from Curt and promises to try to have the Wolfman air it. As he is leaving the station, Curt sees the employee talking into the microphone, and hearing the voice of the Wolfman on the air, smiles in recognition that he really has just met the Wolfman. The Wolfman reads the message for The Blonde, which asks her to meet Curt at Mel's or call him at the phone booth outside. Curt is awakened by the phone's ringing early the next morning. "The Blonde" doesn't reveal her identity, but says she knows Curt and maybe they will meet that night if he sees her cruising on her usual street. Curt replies that he probably will not, intimating that he has decided to go to college after all. Terry, in Steve's car, and John in his yellow 1932 Ford Deuce Coupé hot rod cruise the strip of Modesto. Terry, who is normally socially inept, picks up a flirtatious and somewhat rebellious girl named Debbie. John inadvertently picks up Carol, an annoying, precocious 12-year-old who manipulates him into driving her around all night. Another drag racer, the arrogant Bob Falfa, is searching out John to challenge him to a race. Steve and Laurie have a series of arguments and make-ups through the evening. They finally split and as the story lines intertwine, Bob Falfa picks up Laurie in his black 1955 Chevrolet One-Fifty Coupé. Bob finally finds John and goads him into racing. A parade of cars follows them to "Paradise Road" to watch. As Bob takes the lead, one of his tires blows out and causes him to lose control. His car swerves into a ditch, rolls over, and catches fire. Steve and John leap out of their cars and rush to the wreck while a dazed Bob and Laurie crawl out and stagger away just before it explodes. Distraught, Laurie grips Steve tightly and begs him not to leave her. He assures her that he will stay in Modesto. At the airfield later that morning, Curt says goodbye to his parents, Laurie, Steve, John, and Terry. As the plane takes off, Curt gazes out the window and sees the white Thunderbird driving in parallel to his plane's flight path. An on-screen epilogue reveals that John was killed by a drunk driver in December 1964, Terry was reported missing in action near An Lộc in December 1965, Steve is an insurance agent in Modesto and Curt is a writer living in Canada, presumably to avoid the draft. 

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In a small rural village with an African American population, a church group is holding a riverside baptismal service, and one of the faithful being immersed is the recently married Martha (Cathryn Caviness). However, Martha's husband Ras (Spencer Williams) is absent from the service – he claims he was hunting, but he actually poached a neighbor's boar. At home, Ras accidentally shoots Martha when his rifle drops on the floor and discharges. The church congregation gathers at Martha's bedside to pray for her recovery, and during this period an angel (Rogenia Goldthwaite) arrives to take Martha's spirit from her body. She is brought to the Crossroads between Heaven and Hell, and initially she is tempted by the slick Judas Green (Frank H. McClennan), who is an agent for Satan (James B. Jones). Judas takes Martha to a nightclub, where the floor show includes an acrobat and a jazz singer. Judas arranges to have Martha employed by the roadhouse owner Rufus Brown, but the angel returns and advises Martha to flee. As she is escaping, a nightclub patron mistakenly believes Martha is a pickpocket who robbed him. A chase ensues and Martha races back to the Crossroads between Hell and Zion, where Satan (along with a jazz band on a flatbed truck) is waiting for her arrival. The voice of Jesus Christ challenges the mob who go away. The sign at the Crossroad is transformed into the vision of Jesus Christ being crucified, and Christ's blood drips down on Martha's face. She awakens to discover she is home and her health is restored. Martha is reunited with her husband, who has now embraced religion. The angel who took Martha on her journey returns to bless the marriage.“The Blood of Jesus”-Overview, Turner Classic MoviesNew York Times / AllMovie Guide overview“The Bootleg Files: The Blood of Jesus,” Film Threat, September 1, 2006 

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In 1959 South Dakota, 15-year-old Holly Sargis is a teenage girl living in a dead-end town called Fort Dupree. She lives with her sign painter father, although their relationship has been strained since her mother died of pneumonia some years earlier. One day Holly meets a 25-year-old garbage collector named Kit Carruthers. Kit is a young, troubled greaser and Korean War veteran, who resembles James Dean, an actor Holly admires. Kit charms Holly, and she quickly falls in love with him. As Holly falls deeper in love for Kit, his violent and anti-social tendencies start to slowly reveal themselves. Holly's father disapproves of Holly and Kit's relationship and shoots her dog as punishment for spending time with him. Kit then comes to Holly's house and shoots her father dead. The couple fakes suicide by burning down the house and go on the run together, making their way towards the badlands of Montana. Kit and Holly build a treehouse in a remote area and live there happily for a time, fishing and stealing chickens for food, but are eventually discovered by bounty hunters. Kit shoots the three bounty hunters dead, and the couple flees. They next seek shelter with Kit's friend Cato, but when Cato attempts to deceive them and go for help, Kit kills him as well as a teenage couple who arrive to visit Cato shortly thereafter. Kit and Holly are hunted across the Midwest by law enforcement. They stop at a rich man's mansion and take supplies, clothing, and his Cadillac, but spare the lives of the man and his housemaid. As the fugitives head across Montana to Saskatchewan, the police find and pursue them. Holly, who is tired of life on the run and of her relationship with Kit, refuses to go with him and turns herself in. Kit leads the police on a car chase but is soon caught, and enjoys the attention he receives from police and reporters. The crowd engages with Kit as he is waiting in their custody, asking him questions and cracking jokes. Kit is later executed for his crimes, while Holly receives probation and marries her defense attorney's son. 

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Cantor Rabinowitz wants his son to carry on the generations-old family tradition and become a cantor at the synagogue in the Jewish ghetto of Manhattan's Lower East Side. But, down at the beer garden, thirteen-year-old Jakie Rabinowitz is performing so-called jazz tunes. Moisha Yudelson spots the boy and tells Jakie's father, who drags him home. Jakie clings to his mother, Sara, as his father declares, "I'll teach him better than to debase the voice God gave him!" Jakie threatens: "If you whip me again, I'll run away—and never come back!" After the whipping, Jakie kisses his mother goodbye and, true to his word, runs away. At the Yom Kippur service, Rabinowitz mournfully tells a fellow celebrant, "My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight—but now I have no son." As the sacred Kol Nidre is sung, Jakie sneaks back home to retrieve a picture of his loving mother. About 10 years later, Jakie has changed his name to the more assimilated Jack Robin. Jack is called up from his table at a cabaret to perform on stage. Jack wows the crowd with his energized rendition. Afterward, he is introduced to the beautiful Mary Dale, a musical theater dancer. "There are lots of jazz singers, but you have a tear in your voice," she says, offering to help with his budding career. With her help, Jack eventually gets his big break: a leading part in the new musical April Follies. Back at the family home Jack left long ago, the elder Rabinowitz instructs a young student in the traditional cantorial art. Jack appears and tries to explain his point of view, and his love of modern music, but the appalled cantor banishes him: "I never want to see you again—you jazz singer!" As he leaves, Jack makes a prediction: "I came home with a heart full of love, but you don't want to understand. Some day you'll understand, the same as Mama does." Jack and his mother (Eugenie Besserer) Two weeks after Jack's expulsion from the family home and 24 hours before opening night of April Follies on Broadway, Jack's father falls gravely ill. Jack is asked to choose between the show and duty to his family and faith: in order to sing the Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur in his father's place, he will have to miss the big premiere. That evening, the eve of Yom Kippur, Yudleson tells the Jewish elders, "For the first time, we have no Cantor on the Day of Atonement." Lying in his bed, weak and gaunt, Cantor Rabinowitz tells Sara that he cannot perform on the most sacred of holy days: "My son came to me in my dreams—he sang Kol Nidre so beautifully. If he would only sing like that tonight—surely he would be forgiven." As Jack prepares for a dress rehearsal by applying blackface makeup, he and Mary discuss his career aspirations and the family pressures they agree he must resist. Sara and Yudleson come to Jack's dressing room to plea for him to come to his father and sing in his stead. Jack is torn. He delivers his blackface performance ("Mother of Mine, I Still Have You"), and Sara sees her son on stage for the first time. She has a tearful revelation: "Here he belongs. If God wanted him in His house, He would have kept him there. He's not my boy anymore—he belongs to the whole world now." Jack Robin on stage, in a publicity shot representing the movie's final scene Afterward, Jack returns to the Rabinowitz home. He kneels at his father's bedside and the two converse fondly: "My son—I love you." Sara suggests that it may help heal his father if Jack takes his place at the Yom Kippur service. Mary arrives with the producer, who warns Jack that he'll never work on Broadway again if he fails to appear on opening night. Jack can't decide. Mary challenges him: "Were you lying when you said your career came before everything?" Jack is unsure if he even can replace his father: "I haven't sung Kol Nidre since I was a little boy." His mother tells him, "Do what is in your heart, Jakie—if you sing and God is not in your voice—your father will know." The producer cajoles Jack: "You're a jazz singer at heart!" At the theater, the opening night audience is told that there will be no performance. Jack sings the Kol Nidre in his father's place. His father listens from his deathbed to the nearby ceremony and speaks his last, forgiving words: "Mama, we have our son again." The spirit of Jack's father is shown at his side in the synagogue. Mary has come to listen. She sees how Jack has reconciled the division in his soul: "a jazz singer—singing to his God." "The season passes—and time heals—the show goes on." Jack, as "The Jazz Singer," is now appearing at the Winter Garden theater, apparently as the featured performer opening for a show called Back Room. In the front row of the packed theater, his mother sits alongside Yudleson. Jack, in blackface, performs the song "My Mammy" for her and for the world. 

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In the middle of the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker of Texas meet when Clyde tries to steal the car belonging to Bonnie's mother. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued by Clyde, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They pull off some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative. The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss. Clyde's older brother Buck and his wife, Blanche, a preacher's daughter, also join them. The women dislike each other on first sight, and their feud escalates. Blanche has nothing but disdain for Bonnie, Clyde and C.W., while Bonnie sees Blanche's flighty presence as a constant danger to the gang's survival. Bonnie and Clyde turn from pulling small-time heists to robbing banks. Their exploits also become more violent. When C.W. botches parking for a bank robbery, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face after he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, whom they capture and humiliate before setting him free. A raid later catches the outlaws off guard, mortally wounding Buck with a shot to his head and injuring Blanche. Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. barely escape alive. With Blanche sightless and in police custody, Hamer tricks her into revealing C.W.'s name, who was up until then still only an "unidentified suspect." Hamer locates Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. hiding at the house of C.W.'s father Ivan, who thinks the couple—and an ornate tattoo—have corrupted his son. The elder Moss strikes a bargain with Hamer: in exchange for leniency for the boy, he helps set a trap for the outlaws. When Bonnie and Clyde stop on the side of the road to help Mr. Moss fix a flat tire, the police in the bushes open fire and riddle them with bullets. Hamer and his posse come out of hiding and are shown looking pensively at the couple's bodies as a nearby flock of swallows fly away. 

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Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy and elderly General Sternwood, in the month of October. He wants Marlowe to deal with an attempt by a bookseller named Arthur Geiger to blackmail his wild young daughter, Carmen. She had previously been blackmailed by a man named Joe Brody. Sternwood mentions that his other, older daughter Vivian is in a loveless marriage with a man named Rusty Regan, who has disappeared. On Marlowe's way out, Vivian wonders if he was hired to find Regan, but Marlowe will not say. Marlowe investigates Geiger's bookstore and meets Agnes, the clerk. He determines that the store is a pornography lending library. He follows Geiger home, stakes out his house, and sees Carmen enter. Later, he hears a scream, followed by gunshots and two cars speeding away. He rushes in to find Geiger dead and Carmen drugged and naked, in front of an empty camera. He takes her home but when he returns, Geiger's body is gone. He quickly leaves. The next day, the police call him and let him know the Sternwoods' car was found driven off a pier, with their chauffeur dead inside. It appears that he was hit on the head before the car entered the water. The police also ask if Marlowe is looking for Regan. Marlowe stakes out the bookstore and sees its inventory being moved to Brody's home. Vivian comes to his office and says Carmen is being blackmailed with the nude photos from the previous night. She also mentions gambling at the casino of Eddie Mars and volunteers that Eddie's wife, Mona, ran off with Rusty. Marlowe revisits Geiger's house and finds Carmen trying to get in. They look for the photos, but she plays dumb about the night before. Eddie suddenly enters; he says he is Geiger's landlord and is looking for him. Eddie demands to know why Marlowe is there; Marlowe takes no notice and states that he is no threat to him. Marlowe goes to Brody's home and finds him with Agnes, the bookstore clerk. Marlowe tells Brody that he knows they are taking over the lending library and blackmailing Carmen with the nude photos. Carmen forces her way in with a gun and demands the photos, but Marlowe takes her gun and makes her leave. Marlowe interrogates Brody further and pieces together the story: Geiger was blackmailing Carmen; the family driver, Owen Taylor, did not like it and so he snuck in and killed Geiger, then took the film of Carmen. Brody was staking out the house too and pursued the driver, knocked him out, stole the film, and possibly pushed the car off the pier. Suddenly, the doorbell rings and Brody is shot dead; Marlowe gives chase and catches Geiger's male lover, who shot Brody thinking he killed Geiger. He had also hidden Geiger's body, so he could remove his own belongings before the police got wind of the murder. The case is over, but Marlowe is nagged by Rusty’s disappearance. The police accept that he simply ran off with Mona, since she is also missing, and since Eddie would not risk committing a murder in which he would be the obvious suspect. Mars calls Marlowe to his casino and seems to be nonchalant about everything. Vivian is also there, and Marlowe senses something between her and Mars. He drives her home and she tries to seduce him, but he rejects her advances. When he gets home, he finds Carmen has snuck into his bed, and he rejects her, too. A man named Harry Jones, who is Agnes's new partner, approaches Marlowe and offers to tell him the location of Mona. Marlowe plans to meet him later, but Eddie’s henchman Canino is suspicious of Jones and Agnes's intentions, and kills Jones first. Marlowe manages to meet Agnes anyway and receives the information. He goes to the location in Realito, a repair shop with a home at the back, but Canino - with the help of Art Huck, the garage man - jumps him and knocks him out. When Marlowe awakens, he is tied up, and Mona is there with him. She says she has not seen Rusty in months; she only hid out to help Eddie and insists he did not kill Rusty. She frees Marlowe, and he shoots and kills Canino. The next day, Marlowe visits General Sternwood, who remains curious about Rusty's whereabouts and offers Marlowe an additional $1,000 fee if he is able to locate him. On the way out, Marlowe returns Carmen's gun to her, and she asks him to teach her how to shoot. They go to an abandoned field, where she tries to kill him, but he has loaded the gun with blanks and merely laughs at her; the shock causes Carmen to have an epileptic seizure. Marlowe brings her back and tells Vivian he has guessed the truth: Carmen came on to Rusty and he spurned her, so she killed him. Eddie, who had been backing Geiger, helped Vivian conceal it by helping to dispose of Rusty's body, inventing a story about his wife running off with Rusty, and then blackmailing her himself. Vivian says she did it to keep it all from her father, so he would not despise his own daughters, and promises to have Carmen institutionalised. With the case now over, Marlowe goes to a local bar and orders several double Scotches. While drinking, he begins to think about Mona "Silver-Wig" Mars, but never sees her again. 

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Former US Marine Corps AV-8B pilot Harry Tasker leads a double life: to his wife Helen and his daughter Dana, he is a mild-mannered computer salesman often away on business trips; but secretly, a secret agent for a United States intelligence agency called Omega Sector. Harry, operating alongside fellow agents Albert "Gib" Gibson and Faisil, infiltrates the party of suspected arms dealer and terrorist financier Jamal Khaled in Lake Chapeau, Switzerland. Stealing Jamal's records, Harry and his team learn that American antiques dealer Juno Skinner received a suspicious payment from Jamal. Harry visits her office undercover posing as a corporate art consultant. Workmen at Juno's business are really members of a terrorist group known as "Crimson Jihad", led by Salim Abu Aziz. Suspicious, Aziz and two of his men follow Harry and attempt to kill him. Harry slays the henchmen but loses Aziz in a pursuit. As a result, Harry misses his birthday party that his wife and daughter have prepared for him and that he had promised to attend. Harry heads to Helen's office the next day to surprise her for lunch, but overhears her talking on the phone to a man named Simon. Fearing that Helen is having an affair, Harry uses Omega Sector resources to tap Helen's phone, learning that Simon is a used car salesman who pretends to be a covert agent to seduce women. Harry and other Omega agents, disguised as police SWAT Team, take Helen and intimidate Simon into staying away from her. Using a voice changer, Harry interrogates Helen and learns that, due to his constant absence, she is desperately seeking adventure. Harry thus arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to plant a covert listening device in the hotel suite of a mysterious figure (who is actually Harry himself). Aziz's men suddenly burst in, abduct the couple, and take them to an island in the Florida Keys, where Harry admits of being a spy to Helen. Aziz reveals he has smuggled stolen MIRV nuclear warheads into the country via antique statues shipped by Juno and threatens to detonate them in major U.S. cities unless the U.S. military leaves the Persian Gulf. He also plants one of the warheads on the island, intending to have it detonate after they leave to demonstrate that he means business. Aziz orders the couple to be tortured, and Harry (under a truth serum) reveals details of his double life to Helen. They escape to watch as the three remaining warheads are loaded onto two trucks and a helicopter. Harry leaves Helen to attack Aziz's men, but Helen is captured by Juno and taken in her limo which is following the two trucks on the Overseas Highway. Harry is rescued by Omega agents and pursues the convoy, sending two Marine Harrier Jump Jets to stop it by destroying part of the Seven Mile Bridge. Helen and Juno fight for a gun in the limo and the driver is shot and killed. Hanging from a helicopter, Harry rescues Helen through the limo's sunroof while Juno is stranded in the limo, which subsequently falls off the damaged bridge and into the sea. Upon returning safely to the mainland, the warhead left on the island detonates for the public to see. After reconciled with Helen, Harry learns that Aziz and his men have taken control of a skyscraper under construction in downtown Miami and have kidnapped Dana, threatening to detonate their one remaining bomb. Harry commandeers one of the Harriers to rescue his daughter. Faisal poses as part of a news team requested by Aziz, providing enough distraction for Dana to steal the bomb control key and flee the room. Aziz chases Dana onto a tower crane as Harry arrives. Faisal guns down a few terrorists on one floor of the building, and Harry uses the Harrier's machine guns to kill the others on the floor below. Harry is able to coax Dana from the tower crane to the nose of the Harrier. Aziz jumps to the fuselage of the Harrier and attacks Harry. After a tense struggle, Harry eventually has Aziz ensnared on the end of one of the plane's missiles, which Harry fires at the terrorists' helicopter, killing Aziz and the remnants of his terrorist gang. A year later, the Tasker family are happy following their ordeals, and Helen has become another Omega Sector agent. Harry and Helen embark on a new mission together at a formal party, where they encounter Simon seducing one of the female guests. Helen and Harry intimidate Simon into fleeing to avoid him jeopardizing their covers, and the film ends with the couple dancing a passionate tango. The movie ends with Gib saying that he's fed up with being in the van and he tells Harry that he and Helen are going to be in the van next time. 

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Industrialist John Hammond has created a theme park of cloned dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, on Isla Nublar, a Costa Rican island. After a dinosaur handler is killed by a Velociraptor, the park's investors, represented by lawyer Donald Gennaro, demand that experts visit the park and certify its safety. Gennaro invites mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, while Hammond invites paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. Upon arrival, the group is shocked to see a live Brachiosaurus. At the park's visitor center, the group learns that the cloning was accomplished by extracting dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber. DNA from frogs was used to fill in gaps in the genome of the dinosaurs. To prevent breeding, all the dinosaurs were made female. Malcolm scoffs at the idea, saying that it will inevitably break down. The group witnesses the hatching of a baby Velociraptor and visits the raptor enclosure. During lunch, the group debates the ethics of cloning and the creation of the park, and Malcolm warns about the implications of genetic engineering. The group is joined by Hammond's grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy, for a tour of the park, while Hammond oversees the tour from the control room. The tour does not go as planned, with most of the dinosaurs failing to appear and the group encountering a sick Triceratops. It is cut short as a tropical storm approaches Isla Nublar. Most of the park employees leave for the mainland on a boat while the visitors return to their electric tour vehicles, except Sattler, who stays behind with the park's veterinarian to study the Triceratops. Jurassic Park's lead computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, has been bribed by Dodgson, a man working for Hammond's corporate rival, to steal fertilized dinosaur embryos. Nedry deactivates the park's security system to gain access to the embryo storage room and stores the embryos inside a container disguised as a shaving cream can. Nedry's sabotage also cuts power to the tour vehicles, stranding them. Most of the park's electric fences are deactivated as well, allowing the park's Tyrannosaurus rex to escape and attack the group. Grant, Lex and Tim escape, while the Tyrannosaurus injures Malcolm and devours Gennaro. On his way to deliver the embryos to the island's docks, Nedry becomes lost in the rain, crashes his Jeep Wrangler, and is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Sattler helps the game warden, Robert Muldoon, search for survivors, but they only find Malcolm, just before the Tyrannosaurus returns. Grant, Tim, and Lex take shelter in a treetop. They later discover the broken shells of dinosaur eggs. Grant concludes that the dinosaurs have been breeding, which occurred because of their frog DNA—some West African frogs can change their sex in a single-sex environment, allowing the dinosaurs to do so as well. Unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the security system, Hammond and chief engineer Ray Arnold reboot the park's system. The group shuts down the park's grid and retreats to an emergency bunker, while Arnold heads to a maintenance shed to complete the rebooting process. When Arnold fails to return, Sattler and Muldoon head to the shed. They discover the shutdown has deactivated the remaining fences and released the Velociraptors. Muldoon distracts the raptors, while Sattler goes to turn the power back on, before being attacked by a raptor and discovering Arnold's severed arm. Meanwhile, Muldoon is caught off-guard and killed by the other two raptors. Grant, Tim and Lex reach the visitor center. Grant heads out to look for Sattler, leaving Tim and Lex inside. Tim and Lex are pursued by the raptors in a kitchen, but they escape and join Grant and Sattler. Lex restores power from the control room, allowing them to call Hammond, who calls for help. They are cornered by the raptors, but they escape when the Tyrannosaurus appears and kills the raptors. Hammond arrives in a jeep with Malcolm, and the group boards a helicopter to leave the island. 

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In 1902 Washington State, a gambler named John McCabe arrives mysteriously and mumbling to himself in the town of Presbyterian Church, named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused chapel. McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter. McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased for $200 from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw. British cockney Constance Miller arrives in town and tells him she could run a brothel for him more profitably. The two become financially successful business partners, open a higher class establishment including a bathhouse for hygiene, and a romantic relationship develops between the two, though she charges him for sex. As the town becomes richer, Sears and Hollander, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company in Bearpaw, arrive to buy out McCabe's business, as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell. McCabe does not want to sell at their initial price of $5,500, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they do not take the money. Three bounty hunters - Butler, Breed and Kid - are dispatched by the mining company to kill McCabe, as well as make an example of him, but he refuses to abandon the town. Clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town, McCabe initially tries to appease them. Butler confronts him about his earlier story that he is successful gunfighter "Pudgy McCabe", who shot someone in a card game. After hearing McCabe's story, with the addition that the gun was a Derringer, Butler proclaims that McCabe has never killed anyone in his life. McCabe later tries to find Sears and Hollander to try to settle on a price, but upon learning that they have left the area, he visits lawyer Clement Samuels to try to obtain legal protection from Harrison Shaughnessy. Although the lawyer agrees to help McCabe bust the mining company's monopoly on the area, McCabe returns to town convinced that he must face the bounty hunters on his own. When a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, McCabe arms himself and hides in the chapel during the early morning hours, but is evicted by the armed pastor, who is then shot by Butler in a case of mistaken identity. A broken lantern starts a fire in the church and the townspeople rush to help extinguish it. McCabe continues his evasion and, by shooting them in the back from hidden positions, kills two of the would-be assassins, one of whom wounds McCabe as he falls. As the townsfolk mobilize to fight the chapel fire, McCabe plays cat-and-mouse with the last gunman, Butler. McCabe is shot in the back and mortally wounded but feigns death and kills Butler with a Derringer when he approaches to confirm McCabe's identity. While the townspeople celebrate extinguishing the fire, McCabe dies alone in the snow as Mrs. Miller lies sedated in an opium den. 

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Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a famously skillful player of board games and other similar contests, lives on Chiark Orbital, and is bored with his successful life. The Culture's Special Circumstances inquires about his willingness to participate in a long journey, though won't explain further unless Gurgeh agrees to participate. While he is considering this offer, one of his drone friends, Mawhrin-Skel, which had been ejected from Special Circumstances due to its unstable personality, convinces him to cheat in one of his matches in an attempt to win in an unprecedented perfect fashion. The attempt fails, but Mawhrin-Skel uses its recording of the event to blackmail Gurgeh into accepting the offer, but only on the condition that Mawhrin-Skel be admitted back into Special Circumstances as well. Gurgeh spends the next two years travelling to the Empire of Azad in the Small Magellanic Cloud, where a complex game (also named Azad) is used to determine social rank and political status. The game itself is sufficiently subtle and complex that a player's tactics reflect their own political and philosophical outlook. By the time he arrives, he has grasped the game but is unsure how he will measure up against opponents who have been studying it for their entire lives. Gurgeh lands on the Empire's home planet of Eä, accompanied by another drone, Flere-Imsaho. As a Culture citizen, he naturally plays with a style markedly different from his opponents, many of whom stack the odds against him one way or another, such as forming backroom agreements to cooperate against him (which is allowed by the game's rules). As he advances through the tournament he is matched against increasingly powerful Azad politicians, and ultimately the Emperor himself in the final round. The final contests take place on Echronedal, the Fire Planet, which undergoes a natural conflagration fueled by native plants that produce huge amounts of oxygen. The final game is timed to end when the flames engulf the castle where the event takes place, symbolically renewing the Empire by fire. However, faced with defeat, the Emperor orders his men to kill all the spectators and attempts to kill Gurgeh. Instead, the Emperor is killed by a shot from his own weapon that was deflected by Flere-Imsaho (who later refuses to tell Gurgeh if it was coincidental). Flere-Imsaho reveals that Gurgeh's participation was part of a Culture plot to overthrow the corrupt and savage Empire from within, and that he, the player, was in fact a pawn in a much larger game. He is further told that in the aftermath of the final game, the Empire of Azad collapsed without further intervention from the Culture. Although Gurgeh never discovers the whole truth, in the final sentences of the novel the narrator is revealed to be Flere-Imsaho, who had been disguised as Mawhrin-Skel to manipulate Gurgeh into taking part in the game. 

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The Excession of the title is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edge of Culture space, appearing to be older than the Universe itself and that resists the attempts of the Culture and technologically equivalent societies (notably the Zetetic Elench) to probe it. The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), an informal group of Minds loosely connected with Special Circumstances, try to manage the Culture's response to the Excession. The Affront, a rapidly expanding race which practises systematic sadism towards subject species and its own females and junior males, also try to exploit the Excession by infiltrating a store of mothballed Culture warships and using them to claim control of the mysterious object. The Sleeper Service, an Eccentric GSV is instructed to head to the location of the Excession by the ITG. As a condition the Sleeper Service demands that Genar- Hofoen, a human member of Contact, attend it to seek a resolution with his ex- lover who lives in solitude on the GSV. They had had an intense love-affair and, after a series of sex changes, had each become impregnated by the other until Genar-Hofoen was unfaithful and Dajeil attacked Genar-Hofoen, killing the unborn child. Dajeil then suspended her pregnancy and withdrew from society for 40 years and the Sleeper Service hopes to effect a reconciliation between them. As the stolen Affront fleet approaches the Excession, the Sleeper Service deploys a fleet of 80,000 remote controlled warships, in a misguided attempt to neutralize the threat. It transpires that the Affront have been manipulated into their grab for power by members of the ITG who thought it was morally imperative to curb the Affront's cruelty by any means, and intend to use the Affront's theft of Culture warships as an excuse for war. The Excession releases a wave of destructive energy towards the Sleeper Service. In desperation, the Sleeper Service transmits a complete copy of its personality, its "Mindstate", into the Excession, which has the effect of halting the attack. The Excession then vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared and the brief war with the Affront is halted. During these events, and after speaking with Genar-Hofoen, Dajeil decides to complete her pregnancy and remain on the Sleeper Service, which sets course for a satellite galaxy. Genar-Hofoen returns to the Affront, having been rewarded by being physically transformed into a member of the Affront species (whose company he finds more stimulating than that of the Culture's people). The book's epilogue reveals that the Excession is a sentient entity that was acting as a bridge for a procession of beings that travel between universes. It also assesses whether the species and societies it encounters are suitable to be enlightened about some unknown further existence beyond the universe; as a result of events in the story the Excession concludes that the civilisations it has encountered in this universe are not yet ready. It also takes the name given to it by the Culture – The Excession – as its own - in an oblique reference to the aforementioned Affront species, who had been named by another species in an attempt to label them as a lost cause of hyper-sadistic freaks. 

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Major Quilan has lost the will to live after the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture's interference. Quilan is offered the chance to avenge the Chelgrians who died by taking part in a suicide mission to strike back at the Culture. His "Soulkeeper" (a device normally used to store its owner's personality upon their death) is equipped with both the mind of a long-dead Chelgrian admiral and a device that can transport wormholes through which weapons can be delivered. Quilan is then sent to the Culture's Masaq' Orbital, ostensibly to persuade the renowned composer Mahrai Ziller to return to his native Chel but in reality on a mission to destroy the Orbital's Hub Mind. To protect him from detection at Masaq', Quilan's memory is selectively blanked until he reaches his target. Ziller lives in self-imposed exile on Masaq', having renounced his privileged position in Chel's caste system. He has been commissioned to compose music to mark a climactic event in the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan's visit, and suspicious of his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him. Quilan succeeds in placing the wormholes in the Orbital's Hub, but the Mind was already aware of the plot and, although not able to track the location of the other end of the wormholes, suggests that the Involved "aliens" assisting Quilan's mission may have been a group of Culture minds seeking to keep the Culture from being too complacent. Having struggled with painful memories of the Idiran-Culture war, when it was the General Systems Vehicle Lasting Damage, the Mind reveals to Quilan that it intends to cease existing and offers to take Quilan with it. They both die. At the end of the novel, a nightmarishly efficient E-Dust Assassin is unleashed by the Culture in retribution against the Chelgrian priest who was responsible, as well as his immediate co-conspirators. 

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The narrative takes the form of a biography of a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe, who was born outside of the Culture but was recruited into it by Special Circumstances agent Diziet Sma to work as an operative intervening in less advanced civilizations. The novel recounts several of these interventions and Zakalwe's attempts to come to terms with his own past. 

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While hitchhiking through the galaxy, Arthur Dent is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw the planet destroyed by the Vogons. He has been gone for several years, but only a few months have passed on Earth. He hitches a lift with a man named Russell and his sister Fenchurch (nicknamed "Fenny"). Russell explains that Fenny became delusional after worldwide mass hysteria, in which everyone hallucinated "big yellow spaceships" (the Vogon destructor ships that "demolished" the Earth). Arthur becomes curious about Fenchurch, but he is dropped off before he can ask more questions. Inside his heretofore undamaged home, Arthur finds a gift-wrapped bowl inscribed with the words "So long and thanks", which he uses for his Babel Fish. Arthur considers that Fenchurch is somehow connected to him and to the Earth's destruction. He still has the ability to fly whenever he lets his thoughts wander. Arthur puts his life in order, and then tries to find out more about Fenchurch. He accidentally finds her hitchhiking and picks her up. He obtains her phone number, but shortly thereafter loses it. He haphazardly discovers her home when he searches for the cave he had lived in on prehistoric Earth; her flat is built on the same spot. They find more circumstances connecting them. Fenchurch reveals that, moments before her "hallucinations", she had an epiphany about how to make everything right, but then blacked out. She has not been able to recall the substance of the epiphany. Eventually discovering that Fenchurch's feet do not touch the ground, Arthur teaches her how to fly. They have sex in the skies over London. In a conversation with Fenchurch, she learns from Arthur about hitchhiking across the galaxy and Arthur learns that all the dolphins disappeared shortly after the world hallucinations. He and Fenchurch travel to California to see John Watson, an enigmatic scientist who claims to know why the dolphins disappeared. He has abandoned his original name in favour of "Wonko the Sane", because he believes that the rest of the world's population has gone mad. Watson shows them another bowl with the words "So long and thanks for all the fish" inscribed on it, and encourages them to listen to it. The bowl explains audibly that the dolphins, aware of the planet's coming destruction, left Earth for an alternate dimension. Before leaving, they created a new Earth and transported everything from the original to the new one. After the meeting, Fenchurch tells Arthur that while he lost something and found it, she had found something and lost it. She desires that they travel to space together, and reach the site where God's Final Message to His Creation is written. Ford Prefect discovers that the Hitchhiker's Guide entry for Earth consists of the volumes of text he originally wrote, instead of the previous truncated entry, "Mostly harmless". Curious, Ford hitchhikes across the galaxy to reach Earth. Eventually he uses the ship of a giant robot to land in the centre of London, causing a panic. In the chaos, Ford reunites with Arthur and Fenchurch, and they commandeer the robot's ship. Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, where they discover Marvin. Due to previous events, Marvin is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely functional. With Arthur and Fenchurch's help, Marvin reads the Message ("We apologise for the inconvenience"), utters the final words "I think... I feel good about it", and dies happily. 

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Eric Thorgrimursson, nicknamed "Brighteyes" for his most notable trait, strives to win the hand of his beloved, Gudruda the Fair. Her father Asmund, a priest of the old Norse gods, opposes the match, believing Eric to be a man without prospects. Deadlier by far are the intrigues of Swanhild, Gudruda's half-sister and a sorceress, who desires Eric for herself. She persuades the chieftain Ospakar Blacktooth to woo Gudrida, making the two men enemies. Battles, intrigues, and treachery follow. 

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Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. Victor had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout his childhood, his mother would kidnap him from his various foster parents, though every time they would eventually be caught, and he would again be remanded over to the child welfare agency. In the present-day setting of the book, Victor has left medical school to support his feeble mother, who is now in a nursing home. Unable to find work, he resorts to being a con artist. Victor goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke midway through his meal, luring a "good Samaritan" into saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay, causing them to send him money out of sympathy. Victor works at a re- enactment museum set in colonial times, where most of the employees are drug addicts or, in Denny's case, a fellow recovering sex addict. He spends most of his time on the job guarding Denny (who is constantly being caught with "contraband" items that do not correspond with the time period of the museum) in the stocks. The two met at a sex addiction support group and later applied together to the same job. Denny is later fired from the museum, and begins collecting stones from around the city to build his "dream home". While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him. This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. As a result, Victor finds himself getting sexual gratification from women on a solely superficial level. Later on, he starts talking to his mother again for the first time in years. 

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Mrs Wilberforce is a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone with her raucous parrots in a gradually subsiding lopsided house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel in Kings Cross, London. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station where she reports fanciful suspicions regarding neighbourhood activities. Having led wild-goose chases in the past, she is humoured by the officers there who give her reports no credence whatsoever. She is approached by an archly sinister character, 'Professor' Marcus, who wants to rent rooms in her house. She is not aware that he has assembled a gang of hardened criminals for a sophisticated security van robbery at London King's Cross railway station: the gentlemanly and easily fooled con-man Major Claude Courtney; the comedic Cockney spiv Harry Robinson; the slow-witted and punch drunk ex-boxer 'One-Round' Lawson; and the murderous, cruel and vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey. As a cover, the "Professor" convinces the naive Mrs. Wilberforce that the group is an amateur string quintet using the rooms for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play recordings of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 11 No. 5 and Haydn's - Serenade for Strings Op. 3 No. 5 (the "Serenade," actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter) during their planning sessions. After the heist, "Mrs. W" is deceived into retrieving the disguised money from the railway station herself. This she successfully manages to do but not without serious complications owing to her tendency to righteous meddling. As the gang departs her house with the loot, 'One-Round' accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door. As he pulls the case free, banknotes spill forth while Mrs. Wilberforce looks on. Finally, smelling a rat, she informs Marcus that she is going to the police. Stalling, the gangsters half convince Mrs. W that she will surely be considered an accomplice for holding the cash. In any case, they assert, it is a victimless crime as insurance will cover all the losses and the police will probably not even accept the money back. She wavers but when she rallies the criminals finally decide they must kill her. No one wants to do it so they draw lots using matchsticks. The Major loses but tries to make a run for it with the cash. As the oblivious Mrs. W dozes, the criminals cross, double- cross and manage to kill one another in rapid succession. The Major falls off the roof of the house after being chased by Louis; Harry is killed by One- Round who, after having had a change of heart about the killing of Mrs. W, wrongly thinks that Harry has killed her; One-Round tries to shoot Louis and Marcus when he overhears a plan to double-cross him but leaves the gun's safety catch on and is himself killed by Louis; Marcus kills Louis by dislodging his ladder under the tunnel behind the house, causing Louis to fall into a passing railway wagon. Before falling into the carriage Louis fires a last shot at Marcus which nearly hits him. Finally, with no one else left, Marcus himself is struck on the head by a changing railway signal, and his body drops into another wagon. All the other bodies have been dumped into railway wagons passing behind the house and are now far away. Mrs. Wilberforce is now left alone with the plunder. She goes to the police to return it but they do not believe her story. They humour her, telling her to keep the money. She is puzzled but finally relents and returns home. Along the way, she leaves a banknote of large denomination with a startled starving artist. 

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A Friend of the Earth is the story of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, a U.S. citizen born in 1950, half Irish Catholic and half Jewish ("I'm a mess and I know it. Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, enviro-eco-capitalistico guilt: I can't even expel gas in peace."), whose personal tragedy fits in with, and adds to, the gloomy atmosphere created in the novel. Egged on by Andrea, the woman he loves, he becomes a committed "Earth Forever!" activist (an allusion to the radical environmental group Earth First!) in the 1980s, is imprisoned for ecotage, but eventually cannot change anything. On top of that, he suffers the loss of his first wife when their daughter is only three and of his daughter when she is only 25. When the novel opens, Tierwater is a 75-year-old disillusioned ex-con living on the estate of a famous pop star in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, in California and looking after the latter's private menagerie. Maclovio Pulchris, the singer, has had the idea of preserving some of the last surviving animals of several species in order to initiate a captive breeding programme at some later point in time, choosing to preserve the animals no one else would. Tierwater has been working for Pulchris ("Mac") for ten years when, in 2025, Andrea, his ex-wife and stepmother to his daughter Sierra, contacts him after more than 20 years. She and a friend of hers, April Wind, move in with Tierwater, officially for April Wind to write a biography, or rather hagiography, of Sierra Tierwater, his daughter, who died in 2001 as a martyr to the environmentalist cause falling off a tree in old growth woodland in which she has been living for about three years.) In the course of the next few months the situation deteriorates even more. The rain and the wind destroy the animals' cages, and subsequently they have to be kept in Pulchris's basement. One morning one of the lions gets loose and attacks and kills the singer, as well as a number of employees. As a consequence, the other lions are shot—and thus lions as a species become extinct. (There is just one surviving lion in the San Diego Zoo left.) Jobless and penniless, Tierwater, who has fallen in love all over again with Andrea, is evicted from the estate by Pulchris's heirs. Along with Andrea, Tyrone leaves the compound, heading for a mountain cabin owned by Earth Forever! somewhere in the forest which decades ago served as a hideout. They arrive there with only one of Pulchris's animals in tow: Petunia, the Patagonian fox, which they now keep as their domestic animal, passing it off as their dog. In the final scene of the book, a teenaged girl comes hiking along the trail where the forest surrounding the dilapidated cabin would have been. Tierwater and Andrea, who again call themselves husband and wife now, have a glimmer of hope that life will soon be like life 30 years before, as the novel ends on an optimistic note. 

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The action covers a period of roughly four months—from August to November—around the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of a large family, now living alone with her aging mother. Very popular with all the residents of Vere Street, Lambeth, she likes Tom, a boy her age, but not as much as he likes her, so she rejects him when he proposes. Nevertheless, she is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village on the August Bank Holiday Monday. Some of the other members of the party are Tom; Liza's friend Sally and her boyfriend Harry; and Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of 5 who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and his wife (while their eldest daughter, Polly, is taking care of her siblings). The outing is fun, and they all get drunk on beer. On their way back in the dark, Liza realises that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. Back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her. Liza feels attracted to Jim. They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, he assaults and rapes her (although the graphic details of their sexual encounter are not explicitly described): :'I wish yer wasn't goin' ter leave me, Liza.' :'Garn! I must!' She tried to get her hand away from his, but he held it firm, resting it on the top of the pillar. :'Leave go my 'and,' she said. He made no movement, but looked into her eyes steadily, so that it made her uneasy. She repented having come out with him. 'Leave go my 'and.' And she beat down on his with her closed fist. :'Liza!' he said, at last. :'Well, wot is it?' she answered, still thumping down on his hand with her fist. :'Liza,' he said a whisper, 'will yer?' :'Will I wot?' she said, looking down. :'You know, Liza. Sy, will yer?' :'Na,' she said. :He bent over her and repeated— :'Will yer?' :She did not speak, but kept beating down on his hand. :'Liza,' he said again, his voice growing hoarse and thick—'Liza, will yer?' :She still kept silence, looking away and continually bringing down her fist. He looked at her a moment, and she, ceasing to thump his hand, looked up at him with half-opened mouth. Suddenly he shook himself, and closing :his fist gave her a violent, swinging blow in the belly. Jim punches her in the stomach, but in the end they "slide down into the darkness of the passage". Despite the violent encounter, Liza is overwhelmed by love. ("Thus began a time of love and joy.") When autumn arrives and the nights get chillier, Liza's secret meetings with Jim become less comfortable and more trying; they must meet in the third-class waiting-room of Waterloo station. To Liza's dismay, people do start talking about them despite their precautions. Only Liza's mother, a drunkard and a simple person, doesn't know about their affair. After Liza's friend Sally gets married, her husband doesn't want her to earn her own money, so he stops her from working at the factory; besides, Sally soon becomes pregnant. With Sally married and stuck at home, and even Tom seemingly shunning her, Liza feels increasingly isolated, but her love for Jim keeps her going. They do talk about their love affair: about the possibility of Jim leaving his wife and children ("I dunno if I could get on without the kids"); about Liza not being able to leave her mother, who needs her help; about living somewhere else "as if we was married", about bigamy—but, strangely, not about adultery. Domestic violence features repeatedly in the novel. Soon after their wedding, Harry beats up Sally just because she has been away from home chatting with a female neighbor; he even hits his mother-in-law. When Liza drops by, she stays a bit longer to comfort Sally, which makes her late for her meeting with Jim in front of a nearby pub. When she finally gets there, Jim is aggressive towards her for being late. Without really intending to, he hits her across the face ("It wasn't the blow that 'urt me much; it was the wy you was talkin'") and gives her a black eye. Soon the situation deteriorates completely. Mrs Blakeston, who is pregnant again, opposes Jim's affair with Liza by refusing to talk to him, then goes around telling other people what she would do with Liza if she caught her, and those people inform Liza, who is frightened. One Saturday afternoon in November, Liza is on her way home from work when the angry Mrs. Blakeston confronts her, spits in her face, and physically attacks her. Quickly a crowd gathers, not to abate the fight, but to abet it. ("The audience shouted and cheered and clapped their hands.") Eventually, both Tom and Jim stop the fight, and Tom walks Liza home. Liza is now publicly stigmatised as a "wrong one", a fact she herself admits to Tom ("Oh, but I 'ave treated yer bad. I'm a regular wrong 'un, I am"). Tom wants to marry Liza, but she tells him that "it's too lite now" because she thinks she is pregnant. Tom says he wouldn't mind that, but she insists on refusing. Meanwhile, at the Blakestones', Jim beats up his wife. Other residents hear them and young Polly appeals to some for help, but they choose not to interfere in other people's domestic problems ("She'll git over it; an' p'raps she deserves it, for all you know"). When Mrs Kemp comes home and sees her daughter's injuries, all she does is offer her some alcohol (whiskey or gin). That evening they both get drunk. During the next night Liza has a miscarriage. Mr Hodges, who lives upstairs, fetches a doctor from the nearby hospital, who soon says he can do nothing for her. While her daughter is dying, Mrs Kemp has a long talk with Mrs Hodges, a midwife and sick-nurse. Liza's last visitor is Jim, but Liza is already in a coma. Mrs Kemp and Mrs Hodges are talking about the funeral arrangements when they hear Liza's death rattle and the doctor declares her dead. 

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In 1957, Garner purchased and began renovating Toad Hall in Blackden, Cheshire, where he wrote The Weirdstone. The book's introduction concerns the origin of the weirdstone. Following the defeat of Nastrond steps had been taken to prepare for his eventual return. This involved bringing together a small band of warriors of pure heart, each with a horse, and gathering them inside the old dwarf caves of Fundindelve, deep inside the hill of Alderley which were sealed by powerful white magic which would both defend Fundindelve from evil as the ages passed and prevent the warriors and their horses from ageing. When the time was ripe and the world once more in mortal peril it was prophesied that this small band of warriors would ride out from the hill, trusting in their purity of heart to defeat Nastrond forever. Fundindelve had a guardian, the ancient wizard Cadellin Silverbrow, and the heart of the white magic was sealed inside a jewel, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen. At the beginning of the story, however, the Weirdstone has been lost, stolen centuries before by a farmer whose milk-white mare Cadellin had bought to complete the numbers in Fundindelve. The stone became a family heirloom and eventually found its way to Susan's mother, who passed it on to Susan, oblivious of its history and purpose. When the children meet Cadellin the wizard fails to notice the bracelet even when the children come to visit him in Fundindelve. However, its presence does not go unnoticed by Selina Place and the witches of the morthbrood, who send their minions to steal it. Susan finally realises the identity of the Weirdstone and, fearing its destruction, sets out to warn the wizard. The children return to Fundindelve but are waylaid by a dark presence and the Tear is taken. Once they inform Cadellin they are told to keep away, to not further involve themselves. However, whilst exploring on their bikes they notice a mysterious cloud travelling across the landscape before hovering over the home of Selina Place, St Mary's Clyffe and they go to investigate hoping to recover the stone on their own. They are successful but become lost in a labyrinth of mine-shafts and caverns. As the members of the morthbrood and Selina Place, later revealed as The Morrigan, close in on them they are rescued by a pair of dwarves, Fenodyree and Durathror, who are close companions of Cadellin. After passing through many perils the group returns to the farm where Susan and Colin are staying to spend the night, where at midnight The Morrigan menaces them through the door. They set out with the farm's owner the next day to return the Weirdstone to Cadellin before it can fall into the wrong hands. Their travels take them through gardens, lawns, fens, tangled rhododendron thickets, pine plantations, mountain peaks and snowy fields while striving to avoid the attention of the morthbrood. At the climax of the story a great battle takes place on a hill near Alderley during which the children and their companions make a desperate last stand to protect the Weirdstone. However the enemy forces prove too strong and Durathror is mortally wounded. Grimnir takes the Weirdstone for himself and, in the ensuing chaos, Nastrond sends the great wolf Fenrir (in some editions Managarm) to destroy his enemies. As the remaining companions begin to despair, Cadellin appears and slays Grimnir, whom he reveals to be his own brother and who in the final moment accepts defeat and drops the stone into Cadellin's hand. The Morrigan flees in terror while Cadellin uses the power of the Weirdstone to subdue once again the forces of darkness. 

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Ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents are traveling to their new home. They make a wrong turn and stop in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned village, which Chihiro's father insists on exploring despite his daughter's misgivings. They find a seemingly empty restaurant still stocked with food, which Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an exquisite bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have metamorphosed into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river. Haku finds Chihiro and advises her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji. Kamaji asks Lin, a bathhouse worker, to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but Chihiro persists, and Yubaba hires her. Yubaba takes away the second kanji of her name, , renaming her . Haku later warns her that if she forgets her name like he has forgotten his, she will not be able to leave the spirit world. Sen is treated poorly by the other bathhouse workers; only Kamaji and Lin show sympathy for her. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. A "stink spirit" arrives as Sen's first customer, and she discovers he is the spirit of a polluted river. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Sen a magic emetic dumpling. Meanwhile, No-Face, imitating the gold left behind by the stink spirit, tempts a worker with gold and then swallows him. He demands food and begins tipping expensively. He swallows two more workers when they interfere with his conversation with Sen. Sen sees paper Shikigami attacking a Japanese dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku. When a grievously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. She transforms Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse and mutates Yubaba's harpy into a tiny bird. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku destroys the shikigami, eliminating Zeniba's manifestation. He falls into the boiler room with Sen, Boh, and the harpy, where Sen feeds him part of the dumpling, causing him to vomit both the seal and a black slug, which Sen crushes with her foot. With Haku unconscious, Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. Sen confronts No-Face, who is now massive, and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, regurgitating everything he has eaten. Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy travel by train to meet Zeniba. Yubaba orders that Sen's parents be slaughtered, but Haku reveals that Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Zeniba reveals that Sen's love for Haku broke her curse and that Yubaba used the black slug to take control over Haku. Haku appears at Zeniba's home in his dragon form and flies Sen, Boh, and the harpy to the bathhouse. No-Face decides to remain with Zeniba. In mid-flight, Sen recalls falling years ago into the Kohaku River and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as the spirit of the river. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents from among a group of pigs in order to break their curse. After Sen answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, she is free to go. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro returns through the tunnel with her parents, who do not remember anything after eating at the restaurant stall. When they reach their car, they find it covered in dust and leaves, but drive off toward their new home. 

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The novel begins with a brief foreword, which reads: At Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls near Mount Macedon, Victoria, a picnic is being planned for the students under the supervision of Mrs. Appleyard, the school's headmistress. The picnic entails a day trip to Hanging Rock, on St. Valentine's Day in 1900. One of the students, Sara, who is in trouble with Mrs. Appleyard, is not allowed to go. Sara's close friend Miranda goes without her. When they arrive, the students lounge about and eat a lunch. Afterward, Miranda goes to climb the monolith with classmates Edith, Irma, and Marion despite being forbidden to do so. The girls' mathematics teacher, Greta McCraw, follows behind them separately. Miranda, Marion, and Irma climb still higher in a trance-like state while Edith flees in terror; she returns to the picnic in hysterics, disoriented and with no memory of what occurred. Miss McCraw is also nowhere to be accounted for except for being seen by Edith who passed her ascending the rock in her underwear. The school scours the rock in search of the three girls and their teacher, but they are not found. The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with rape, abduction, and murder being assumed as probable explanations. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile, the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. Mike Fitzhubert, an Englishman who was picnicking at the grounds the same day, embarks on a private search of the rock and discovers Irma, unconscious and on the verge of death. When he fails to return from his search, he is found in an unexplained daze, sitting at the rock with Irma, by his friend and uncle's coachman, Albert Crundall. Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the prestigious college, prompting various staff to leave; the college's handyman and maid quit their jobs, and the French instructor, Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers, announces that she will be getting married and leaving the college as well. A junior governess at the college, Dora Lumley, also leaves with her brother Reg, only for both to be killed in a hotel fire. Amidst the unrest both in and around the college, Sara vanishes, only to be found days later, having apparently committed suicide (her body was found directly beneath the school's tower, with her head "crushed beyond recognition"). Mrs. Appleyard, distraught over the events that have occurred, kills herself by jumping from a peak on Hanging Rock. In a pseudo-historical afterword purportedly extracted from a 1913 Melbourne newspaper article, it is written that both the college and the Woodend Police Station, where records of the investigation were kept, were destroyed by a bush fire in the summer of 1901. In 1903, rabbit hunters came across a lone piece of frilled calico at the rock, believed to have been part of the dress of the governess, Miss Greta McCraw, but neither she nor the girls were ever found. 

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The novel opens as private detective Mike Hammer is called to the apartment of insurance investigator Jack Williams, a very close friend who was crippled saving Hammer's life during shared World War II military service in the Pacific. Losing his arm rendered Jack unfit for police work, so he put his experience to use by investigating insurance fraud. Williams has been murdered in a particularly cruel way, deliberately shot in the stomach to make the death slow and painful. Mike vows vengeance, declaring that Jack's murderer will die the same way Jack did. Prior to his death, Jack had fallen in love with Myrna Devlin when he stopped her from committing suicide by jumping from a bridge. Williams asked Dr. Charlotte Manning, a young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do psychiatrist, to admit Myrna to her clinic for psychotherapy. After Myrna became clean, she and Williams became engaged. The couple maintained a casual friendship with Manning. Over time, Williams comes to suspect that Hal Kines, one of Manning's college students who has spent some time at her clinic and who has become one of her casual acquaintances, is in fact a criminal. In the course of his investigation, Hammer meets and begins to fall in love with Dr. Manning. In the course of the novel, they become engaged. Taking time out from his investigation on a Saturday morning, Hammer picks up Myrna Devlin and gives her a lift to an estate in the country, owned by the lovely Bellamy twins, for a gigantic all-day party. Charlotte Manning says she has some business to attend to and will be there in time for a tennis game due to take place that evening. After an unsuccessful attempt at playing tennis himself, Hammer gets rid of his sleep deficit by spending all day in his room, fast asleep, with "old junior" — his gun — close to him. He is woken up just in time for dinner, during which Harmon Wilder, the Bellamys' lawyer, and Charles Sherman, Wilder's assistant, are pointed out to him. This is a fine — and the final — distractor in the novel: Wilder and Sherman are suddenly missing from the party after Myrna Devlin has been found shot. In fact they had illicit drugs on them and did not want to be found out. During the tennis game, Mary Bellamy asks Charlotte if she can "borrow" Hammer. She then leads him into the woods, where they have sex. They return to the party just as a maid discovers Myrna's body in an upstairs room, in front of a large mirror. Both Hammer's friend Pat Chambers and other police are called in, and the alibi of each guest is checked. Now having another reason to seek vengeance, Hammer redoubles his efforts to discover the killer. Soon he has uncovered a wide-ranging narcotics rings, one that Jack had been on the verge of exposing. Back home, Hammer retreats into his apartment to think. Finally, he knows the identity of the killer. Confronting the murderer, Hammer keeps his promise and kills the killer of his friend in the same excruciatingly painful way Jack had been killed. When the dying murderer asks Hammer how he could act in such a cruel manner, Hammer gives a succinct response. "It was easy!" he tells the dying criminal. 

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Act I The cast of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is rehearsing for the opening of the show that evening ("Another Op'nin', Another Show"). Egotistical Fred Graham is the director and producer and is starring as Petruchio, and his movie-star ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, is playing Katherine. The two seem to be constantly arguing, and Lilli is particularly angry that Fred is pursuing the sexy young actress Lois Lane, who is playing Bianca. After the rehearsal, Lois's boyfriend Bill appears; he is playing Lucentio, but he missed the rehearsal because he was gambling. He tells her that he signed a $10,000 IOU in Fred's name, and Lois reprimands him ("Why Can't You Behave?"). Before the opening, Fred and Lilli meet backstage, and Lilli shows off her engagement ring from Washington insider Harrison Howell, reminding Fred that it's the anniversary of their divorce. They recall the operetta in which they met, which included "Wunderbar", a Viennese waltz; they end up fondly reminiscing and singing and dancing. Two gangsters show up to collect the $10,000 IOU, and Fred replies that he never signed it. The gangsters obligingly say they will give him time to remember it and will return later. In her dressing room, Lilli receives flowers from Fred, and she declares that she is still "So In Love" with him. Fred tries to keep Lilli from reading the card that came with the flowers, which reveals that he really intended them for Lois. However, Lilli takes the card with her onstage, saying she will read it later. The show begins ("We Open in Venice"). Baptista, Katherine and Bianca's father, will not allow his younger daughter Bianca to marry until his older daughter Katherine is married. However, she is shrewish and ill-tempered, and no man desires to marry her. Three suitors – Lucentio, Hortensio, and Gremio – try to woo Bianca, and she says that she would marry any of them ("Tom, Dick, or Harry"). Petruchio, a friend of Lucentio, expresses a desire to marry into wealth ("I've Come to Wive it Wealthily in Padua"). The suitors hatch a plan for him to marry Kate, as Baptista is rich. Kate, however, has no intentions of getting married ("I Hate Men"). Petruchio attempts to woo her ("Were Thine That Special Face"). Offstage, Lilli has an opportunity to read the card. She walks on stage off-cue and begins hitting Fred, who, along with the other actors, tries to remain in character as Baptista gives Petruchio permission to marry Kate. Lilli continues to strike Fred, and he ends up spanking her. Offstage, Lilli furiously declares she is leaving the show. However, the gangsters have reappeared, and Fred tells them that if Lilli quits, he'll have to close the show and won't be able to pay them the $10,000. The gangsters force her to stay at gunpoint. Back onstage, Bianca and Lucentio dance while the chorus performs "We Sing of Love", covering a scene change. The curtain opens, revealing the exterior of a church; Petruchio and Kate have just been married, and they exit the church; the gangsters, dressed in Shakespearean costume, are onstage to make sure that Lilli stays. Petruchio implores for Kate to kiss him, and she refuses. He lifts her over his shoulder and carries her offstage while she pummels his shoulder with her fists ("Kiss Me Kate"). Act II During the show's intermission, the cast and crew relax in the alley behind the theater. Paul (Fred's assistant), along with a couple other crew members, lament that it's "Too Darn Hot" to meet their lovers that night. The play continues, and Petruchio tries to 'tame' Katherine and mourns for his now-lost bachelor life ("Where Is the Life That Late I Led?"). Off-stage, Lilli's fiancé Harrison Howell is looking for Lilli. He runs into Lois, and she recognizes him as a former lover but promises not to tell Lilli. Bill is shocked to overhear this, but Lois tells him that even if she is involved with other men, she is faithful to him in her own way ("Always True to You in My Fashion"). Lilli tries to explain to Howell that she is being forced to stay at the theatre by the gangsters, but Howell doesn't believe her and wants to discuss wedding plans. Fred insidiously points out how boring Lilli's life with Howell will be compared to the theatre. Bill sings a love song he has written for Lois ("Bianca"). The gangsters discover that their boss has been killed, so the IOU is no longer valid. Lilli leaves—without Howell—as Fred unsuccessfully tries to convince her to stay ("So in Love" (Reprise)). The gangsters get caught on stage and improvise a tribute to Shakespeare in which they explain that knowing Shakespeare is the key to romance ("Brush Up Your Shakespeare"). The company prepares for the conclusion of the play, the wedding of Bianca and Lucentio, even though they are now missing one of the main characters. However, just in time for Katherine's final speech, Lilli arrives onstage ("I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple"). Fred and Lilli wordlessly reconcile on stage, and the play ends ("Kiss Me Kate" (Finale)) with them, as well as Bill and Lois, kissing passionately. 

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Sean and Mary Kate In the 1920s, Sean "Trooper Thorn" Thornton, an Irish-born retired boxer from Pittsburgh, travels to his birthplace of Inisfree to purchase back the old family farm. The spelling of the fictional village "Inisfree" can vary in spelling in some film reviews and articles, often being cited "Innisfree". In the film, however, the public notices announcing the upcoming horse race are boldly printed "INISFREE RACE MEET". Shortly after arriving, he meets and falls in love with the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, the sister of the bullying Squire "Red" Will Danaher . Will also wants to buy the Thornton family's old cottage and land, and he is angered when the property's current owner, the wealthy Widow Tillane, accepts Sean's bid instead of his offer. Will then retaliates by refusing consent for his sister to marry. Some village residents — including Father Peter Lonergan and local matchmaker-cum-bookmaker Michaeleen Óge Flynn — trick him into believing that Widow Tillane wants to marry him, but only if Mary Kate is no longer living in his household. He gleefully allows the marriage, but refuses Mary Kate's Dowry when he finds he was decieved. Michaeleen’s full name includes "Óge", which in Irish translates to "young" in English. Óge is used to distinguish between a father and his son with the same name, much in the manner that the suffixes "Sr." and "Jr." do in English. Sean, unschooled in Irish customs, professes no interest in obtaining the dowry; but to Mary Kate the dowry represents her personal value to the community and her freedom. She insists that the dowry must be received to validate their marriage, causing an estrangement between her and Sean. The morning after their wedding, villagers arrive at the couple's cottage with Mary Kate's furniture, having persuaded Will to release it, but they could not convince him to pay the dowry money. Sean's refusal to fight her brother is attributed to cowardice by Mary Kate. However, Sean reveals to the local Protestant Minister, Rev. Cyril Playfair, who also is a former boxer, that he once accidentally killed an opponent in the ring. Sean had sworn to give up fighting out of fear and guilt over the manslaughter, since the other man had a wife and children and was younger than him. Mary Kate also confesses her part in the quarrel to Father Lonergan, who berates her for her selfishness. She and Sean partially reconcile that night, and share the bedroom for the first time since their marriage. Scene from the film However, the next morning, Mary Kate quietly leaves their cottage to board a train for Dublin, hoping this will cause Sean to take some action, though she does not actually intend to leave. Sean soon learns from Michaeleen where she is, and finds her waiting there for him. Followed by a crowd of villagers, he forces her to walk with him the five miles back to the Danaher farm. There, Sean confronts Will and demands the dowry money. When he refuses to give it to him, Sean throws Mary Kate back at her brother, declaring "no fortune, no marriage" is their custom, not his. The ultimatum shocks both Mary Kate and Will, who finally pays the 350 pounds. Mary Kate immediately burns it in the boiler, showing that it was not the money but her husband's courage and brother's respect she wanted all along. She leaves for home, but a humiliated Will takes a swing at Sean, only to be knocked down by a defensive counter- punch. A long fistfight ensues between the two men, a brawl that attracts more and more spectators as they slug it out for miles across countryside and village. The fighters finally pause for a drink inside Cohan's Bar, where they begrudgingly admit a mutual respect for one another. After arguing over who is to pay for the drinks, Sean ends the fight by hitting Will so hard that he falls back, crashes through the bar's front door, and ends up lying unconscious in the street. Later, the brothers-in-law get drunk, reconcile, and stagger arm-in-arm back to Sean and Mary Kate's home for supper, much to Mary Kate's amusement and delight. The next day, a humbled Will and the Widow Tillane begin their own courtship, and ride out of the village side by side in a jaunting car driven by Michaeleen. Sean, Mary Kate, and the villagers wave to them as they pass, before Sean and Mary Kate playfully chase each other across the fields back to the cottage. 

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Laura Jesson, a respectable middle-class British woman in an affectionate but rather dull marriage, tells her story while sitting at home with her husband, imagining that she is confessing her affair to him. Laura, like many women of her class at the time, goes to a nearby town every Thursday for shopping and to the cinema for a matinée. Returning from one such excursion to Milford, while waiting in the railway station's refreshment room, she is helped by another passenger, who solicitously removes a piece of grit from her eye. The man is Alec Harvey, an idealistic general practitioner who also works one day a week as a consultant at the local hospital. Both are in their late thirties or early forties, married and with children (although Alec's wife Madeleine and their two sons are unseen). Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard The two accidentally meet again outside Boots the Chemist and then on a third meeting share a table at lunch, then, both having free time, go to an afternoon performance at the Palladium Cinema. They are soon troubled to find their innocent and casual relationship developing into something deeper, approaching infidelity. For a while, they meet openly, until they run into friends of Laura and the perceived need to deceive others arises. The second lie comes more easily. They eventually go to a flat belonging to Stephen, a friend of Alec's and a fellow doctor, but are interrupted by Stephen's unexpected and judgmental return. Laura, humiliated and ashamed, runs down the back stairs and into the streets. She walks and walks, and sits on a bench for hours, smoking, until a concerned policeman encourages her to get in out of the cold. She arrives at the station just in time to take the last train home. The recent turn of events makes the couple realize that an affair or a future together are impossible. Understanding the temptation and not wishing to hurt their families, they agree to part. Alec has been offered a job in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his brother lives. Their final meeting occurs in the railway station refreshment room, now seen for a second time with the poignant perspective of their story. As they await a heart-rending final parting, Dolly Messiter, a talkative acquaintance of Laura, invites herself to join them and begins chattering away, oblivious to the couple's inner misery. As they realise that they have been robbed of the chance for a final goodbye, Alec's train arrives. With Dolly still chattering, Alec departs without the passionate farewell for which they both long. After shaking Dolly's hand, he discreetly squeezes Laura on the shoulder and leaves. Laura waits for a moment, anxiously hoping that Alec will walk back into the refreshment room, but he does not. As the train is heard pulling away, Laura is galvanised by emotion and, hearing an approaching express train, suddenly dashes out to the platform. The lights of the train flash across her face as she conquers a suicidal impulse. She then returns home to her family. Laura's kind and patient husband, Fred, shows that he has noticed her distance in the past few weeks, although it is not clear if he has guessed the reason. He thanks her for coming back to him. She cries in his embrace. 

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