Local department store Costington's launches a new August holiday called Love Day intended to boost summer sales. The Simpsons celebrate it, but the vast amount of packaging and unwanted gifts it produces causes the garbage to build up. When Homer Simpson overloads the trash and is forced to take it out, he fails to make it to the curb in time. As the garbage men drive away without collecting his trash, Homer angrily shouts insults at them, causing a fight that leads to the family's garbage service being cut off. Garbage gradually piles up on their front lawn and despite Marge's pleas, Homer refuses to apologize to the garbage men.
Homer awakens one morning to find the pile of trash gone and believes he has beaten City Hall, only to learn that Marge wrote a letter of apology to the Springfield Sanitation Commissioner Ray Patterson, forging Homer's signature. Outraged by this, Homer goes to see Patterson, demanding the letter be returned. Patterson does so and tries to be civil with Homer, but Homer insists he will fight the department and decides to run for Commissioner.
Homer's campaign starts badly with him being beaten up after interrupting U2's PopMart Tour concert but picks up when bartender Moe suggests that Homer use his off-hand comment of "Can't someone else do it?" as a slogan. Homer spreads his message to the town and promises expensive services such as round-the-clock garbage service and sanitation workers doing all possible household cleaning, as well as providing garbage men stylish new uniforms. After a town hall debate during which Homer belittles Patterson to the amusement of the assembled townspeople, Homer wins the election by a landslide victory. Whilst clearing out his office, Patterson warns Homer that he will "crash and burn". After being sworn in, he shows his plans by singing a parody of "The Candy Man" entitled "The Garbage Man."
However, fulfilling these promises proves costly and Mayor Quimby reprimands Homer for spending the department's annual budget in only a month. Homer gets cities all over the United States to pay him to store their excess garbage in an abandoned mine shaft on the outskirts of Springfield. Despite the budget crisis having ended and the workers receiving their salaries as promised, the garbage builds up underground and eventually erupts, pouring trash all over the town. At a town hall meeting, Homer is removed from office and ordered to be horsewhipped, and replaced with Ray Patterson, who declines reinstatement and relishes in the disastrous consequences of the town's decision to elect Homer over him. With no other options left, Quimby moves the entire town five miles down the road. However, Lisa worries that such a drastic move will make no difference if the same lackadaisical attitude towards waste management continues.
During the credits, U2 is flying to their next stop on the tour when bassist Adam Clayton shows off his Springfield souvenir spoon to Bono and The Edge. Bono asks Clayton how many spoons he has in his collection. Clayton says he has nine and if he didn't have his spoons he would go insane. Bono asks if he can see it; Clayton hands Bono the spoon, who throws it behind them. The spoon hits Mr. Burns on the head, who proceeds to call the band "Wankers".
The story takes place during the Earl of Montrose's 1644-5 military campaign in Scotland on behalf of King Charles I against the Covenanters who had sided with the English Parliament in the English Civil War.
The main plot concerns a love triangle between Allan M'Aulay, his friend the Earl of Menteith, and Annot Lyle. Annot is a young woman who has been brought up by the M'Aulays since being captured as a girl during a blood feud against the MacEagh clan (also known as the Children of the Mist). M'Aulay and Menteith are both members of Montrose's army. Annot eventually marries Menteith after it is discovered that she has aristocratic blood, and was kidnapped by the MacEaghs as a baby. This leads to the jealous M'Aulay stabbing Menteith and then fleeing Montrose's army. Menteith survives whilst M'Aulay disappears and is rumoured to have been killed by the MacEaghs.
A large section of the novel is taken up with a subplot involving an expedition into enemy territory by Dugald Dalgetty, an experienced mercenary fighting for Montrose. Dalgetty does not fight out of political or religious conviction, but purely for the love of carnage. However, he is very professional, and remains loyal to an employer to the end of his contract. He gained his experience fighting for various armies during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), then still raging in Germany. Dalgetty is regarded as one of Scott's finest comic characters, however Scott admitted that he dominated too much of the story. He wrote in an 1830 introduction to the novel, "Still Dalgetty, as the production of his own fancy, has been so far a favourite with its parent, that he has fallen into the error of assigning to the Captain too prominent a part in the story."
The main timeline of the story stretches from 1912 to 1975. The viewpoint of all four books is that of Shigekuni Honda, a law student in ''Spring Snow'' who eventually becomes a wealthy retired judge in ''The Decay of the Angel''. Each of the novels depicts what Honda comes to believe are successive reincarnations of his schoolfriend Kiyoaki Matsugae, and Honda's attempts to save them from the early deaths to which they seem to be condemned by karma. This results in both personal and professional embarrassment for Honda, and eventually destroys him.
The friend's successive reincarnations are:
Other characters who appear in more than one book include Satoko Ayakura (Kiyoaki's lover), Tadeshina (Satoko's maid), Imperial Prince Toin, Shigeyuki Iinuma (Kiyoaki's servant and Isao's father), Keiko Hisamatsu, and Rié (Honda's wife).
After his cousin Joe (Stephen Baldwin) dies, Layne Vassimer (A. J. Buckley) and his girlfriend Macy (Callie De Fabry), along with their friends Stephen (David O'Donnell), Maurice (Ransford Doherty), Iris (Kim Onasch) and Katrina (Michelle Borth), decide to clean up Joe's house with the intention of selling it. When they see it for the first time, they discover the house completely covered in plates of iron armor.
The group also finds crop circles in the nearby cornfield. When Iris suddenly disappears, they realize something is really wrong. During a blackout, the house is attacked by aliens. The group figures out the aliens are allergic to iron, which is why Joe had covered the house in it to keep them out. They attempt to fight the aliens off, but the house is eventually blown up with Layne, Macy, and Katrina the only survivors.
In the end, they drive off, listening to the radio. They hear a news report stating that the blackout they experienced affects five western states and parts of Canada. They also hear that people everywhere are being attacked by "strange creatures."
After Kenny's semi-permanent death near the end of Season 5, Butters became the replacement Kenny, until this episode, where he is fired for simply being too lame. Stan, Kyle and Cartman hold a competition to find a new fourth friend while Butters, feeling rejected and angry at the world, creates an alternate personality, Professor Chaos, and sets off to spread discord among the world. He does minor things like swapping two soup meals at a Bennigan's restaurant, and stealing erasers from Ms. Choksondik during class.
The boys gather twenty local kids to compete for their friendship, and set up the contest to be like a reality TV show where they show scenes of interactions and show private individual comments. One of the early losers, a boy named Dougie, winds up joining Butters and his "minions" (Butters' pet hamsters) as Professor Chaos's sidekick, General Disarray. Together they try to flood the world using a garden hose and then spraying aerosol cans into the air to destroy the atmosphere.
While Professor Chaos and General Disarray try to destroy the planet, Kyle, Stan, and Cartman pick six finalists to be their friend: Token, Timmy, Jimmy, Tweek, Towelie, and Pip. They first eliminate Pip during a baseball game when he asked for tea and crumpets. They then decide that Token is a smartass (Kyle points out that Cartman is also a smartass, but Cartman retorts with "Do we really need another one?"), Timmy can be too self-centered, Towelie gets too high to be relied on for anything, and Jimmy is a suck-up (while they are deciding, Jimmy gives them a large gift basket with candy and games inside, and a large badge that reads "Best Friends 4 Ever").
The decision cuts off into a cliffhanger, where a narrator asks three questions: "Will Professor Chaos' latest plot succeed and be the final undoing of Earth? Which boy has been chosen as the replacement for Kenny? And which of these South Park residents: Chef, Mr. Garrison, Jimbo, Officer Barbrady, Ms. Choksondik, and Mayor McDaniels was killed and will never be seen again?" However, the questions are immediately answered: "No, Tweek, Ms. Choksondik."
During an archaeological expedition to find the lost secret of the Scorpion Kingdom in Siam's volcanic Valley of the Tombs, a device of great power called the Golden Scorpion is discovered hidden inside a sealed crypt. While examining it, the device's quartz lenses are aligned and a beam of powerful energy releases from the device that causes an explosion that reseals the crypt. This allows young radio broadcaster and expedition member Billy Batson, who obeyed the warning on the crypt's seal not to enter, to be chosen by the ancient wizard Shazam. The wizard grants Billy the powers of Captain Marvel whenever he repeats the wizard's name. Captain Marvel's powers can be used only to protect those in danger from the curse of the Golden Scorpion. The crypt's entrance is quickly cleared, then Captain Marvel utters "Shazam!" and returns to he's previous state as Billy Batson alter ego.
The Golden Scorpion's power lenses are divided among the scientists of the Malcolm Archaeological Expedition so that its power can only be used by an agreement of the entire group. When the scientists return to the U.S, An all-black-garbed-and-hooded criminal mastermind called the Scorpion, steals their ancient device and sets about stealing the distributed lenses. Several expedition members are killed in the Scorpion's quest, despite Captain Marvel's continual efforts to thwart his plan. Deducing that the Scorpion always seems to know what happens during the scientists' meetings, Billy later confides to his friends, Betty Wallace and Whitey Murphy, his suspicion that the Scorpion may be one of the Malcolm archaeological team.
Discovering that one of the Golden Scorpion's power lenses was purposely left behind, cleverly hidden in the very crypt where it was first discovered, Billy Batson and the surviving scientists agree it must be retrieved. They return by cargo ship to Siam where, near landfall, they barely survive a typhoon before finally being rescued by Captain Marvel. They eventually retrieve the hidden lens, but it is stolen by the Scorpion. By accident, from a distance, the Scorpion observes Captain Marvel transforming back into Billy Batson. Capturing Billy and gagging him, the Scorpion interrogates him about his secret. Billy's tape gag is removed when he agrees to talk. "Shazam"! is his only response, and he transforms in a flash of light and smoke into Captain Marvel. The Scorpion's identity is then revealed to be one of the last surviving scientists, who is killed by a Siamese native who turns the idol's ray on him, vaporizing him.
Captain Marvel tosses the Golden Scorpion and its power lenses into a volcano's molten lava to prevent them from ever being used for evil. Upon its destruction, Captain Marvel is instantly transformed back into Billy Batson forever, the danger from the device's curse having now been eliminated.
The story takes place in 1903. During a train trip, psychiatrist Dr. Huntington Bailey (George Brent) meets a friendly older lady (Olive Blakeney), when she turns to him for reassurance during a torrential downpour. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida, both of whom she effectively raised. Once in New York, Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died while visiting her brother for tea. Shortly afterwards, he meets the strange couple and becomes suspicious of Nick's treatment of his wife. Nick (Paul Lukas) keeps Allida (Hedy Lamarr), whom he is trying to pass off as crazy, a virtual prisoner in their town house (a New York brownstone in the film), cutting off all contact with the outside world. The kindly Bailey takes it upon himself to attempt to free his new love, Allida, from the control of the insanely jealous Nick.
A frenzied gun battle and fist fight in their home, featuring the destruction of several large aquariums, replete with shattered glass, gushing water and floundering fish, may be the most memorable (and most often imitated) scene in the film. The house burns to the ground because of Nick's actions (killing him), but Allida, her son and Hunt end up living happily in the country.
17-year-old Mamlakat lives with her father Safar and her disabled brother Nasreddin, in a village in Tajikistan. She is working in a small restaurant and dreams of becoming an actress. When a wandering theatre company enters the city, she misses the theatrical performance and wanders for a while. She chances upon an aircraft pilot, Yassir, who pretends to be an actor and friend of a famous American actor. He promises to help her become an actress, but instead seduces her while she is in a dream-like fantasy. He leaves the village immediately afterwards.
When she later discovers that she is pregnant, she has no idea how this happened and who the father is. Determined to preserve hers and their honour, her eccentric family sets out on a comic journey in order to find the father of Mamlakat's unborn child and to force him to marry her. During this journey - in an old car loaded with rabbits - they travel through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The family meets various bandits and the charming impostor Alik, who poses as the seducer in the dark, and falls in love with Mamlakat.
A test type Zoanoid escapes from the Cronos Corporation with three Guyver Units. Cronos soldiers pursue the test type into some woods to recover the units from him, but when they corner the test type, he detonates a bomb he had with him. The Guyver Units are scattered in the blast. One of the lost Guyver Units, known as "Unit I", lands near two young high school students, Shō Fukamachi and Tetsurō Segawa. The second one is retrieved by Cronos and merges with Oswald A. Lisker to become the second Guyver later on. The final unit falls into the hands of Agito Makishima, who merges with it at an unspecified time. Shō accidentally activates the unit which then painfully merges with him.
Over time, Shō learns more about the Guyver and its abilities. The Guyver is virtually invulnerable, with its only weak point being the Control Metal. With this part intact, it can rebuild the host from their data it stores within, but if this part is critically damaged, the host will be eaten alive by the unit and perish. This is disconcerting and Shō starts to question whether he will ever be free from the Guyver. The situation gets worse with the fact that Cronos is continuously sending more and more powerful Zoanoids to retrieve the Guyver. This makes it increasingly difficult for Shō to protect his vulnerable friends.
As the story progresses it also takes a startling turn, in which Cronos succeeds in taking over the world and reshaping it according to its ideals. The Guyvers are then labeled to the public as a "vanguard of alien invaders".
An unidentified British intelligence agent storms into his employer's London office to hand in his resignation. He returns home in his Lotus Seven and hastily packs a bag to go travelling, unaware that a hearse has followed him home. The hearse driver releases knockout gas into the man's home via the keyhole. The man collapses in his study. Later, the man wakes up in what appears to be his study, but finds it is a mockup located in "The Village". He asks the colourfully clad residents of the Village what country he is in, but they cannot provide a satisfactory answer. He discovers the Village is surrounded by mountains save for its beachline, which opens onto the ocean with no sign of land nearby. Frustrated, he returns to the mockup study and finds it is attached to a modern flat. There, he receives a phone call and is told that Number Two wants to meet him at the Green Dome.
At the Green Dome, where several technicians monitor all aspects of the Village, Number Two tells the man they only wish to know why he resigned and to whom he is loyal, as the intelligence he has gathered over his career is too valuable to simply let him "walk away". Number Two suggests they would rather have his cooperation, but are prepared to use other means as needed. Number Two takes the man on a tour of the Village to show him the security systems they have in place to keep the inhabitants in line, including Rover, a mysterious floating balloon guardian that attacks those who flee. Later that night, the man attempts escape by sea but Rover catches him and renders him unconscious.
The man wakes in the Village's hospital, and finds a former colleague, Cobb, in the next bed. The man learns Cobb is also incarcerated in the Village, but before he can learn more, the hospital staff take him away for examination. On his return, he is told Cobb committed suicide by jumping out of the window. The man is released, and goes to accost Number Two, but finds that a different man is in the Green Dome. The new Number Two explains they may change that position from time to time for unexplained reasons. He then explains that no one in the Village uses their names, but are instead assigned a number, and the man is now Number Six. Number Six refuses to use this title as he adjusts to life in the Village.
Number Six attends Cobb's funeral and observes a woman watching from afar, and proceeds to follow her around the Village before he talks to her directly. The woman, Number Nine, claims to have been working with Cobb on an escape plan, and suggests that Number Six can still use the same plan. She gives him an electropass that can keep Rover at bay, giving him time to escape via a helicopter. Number Six has doubts about her motives as he had seen her talking to Number Two, but accepts the pass. That night, Number Six uses the pass and acquires a helicopter, but as he flies off, one of the technicians remotely takes over the helicopter and returns it to the Village. Number Six is escorted back to his home in the Village. Number Two is watching these events with Cobb, who had faked his death to mislead Number Six. With his assignment complete, Cobb prepares to move on to his next duty, but warns Number Two that Number Six will be "a tough nut to crack".
After the end of World War II a former P.O.W., Canadian RCAF flyer Laurence Gerard, returns to France to discover who ordered the killing of his bride of only 20 days, a member of the French Resistance. His father-in-law Étienne Rougon identifies Vichy collaborator Marcel Jarnac. He supposedly died in 1943, but Rougon has strong doubts. Jarnac was careful about maintaining his anonymity and the police have no description of him. But his own associate compiled a dossier on him; Gerard finds a burned fragment of it, and an envelope addressed to Madame Jarnac. From this he manages to track the widow to Buenos Aires.
When he arrives Gerard is met by Melchior Incza, a stranger who appears to know all too much about him. The suspicious Canadian initially rejects Incza's offer of help, but cannot turn down his invitation to a party hosted by Mme Jarnac's associate, wealthy businessman Tomas Camargo for the opportunity to mingle with their social set. There he meets Camargo's uncle, lawyer Manuel Santana, and the widow herself.
When Gerard later questions Mme Jarnac in her hotel room, she refuses to co-operate, so he starts openly following her. Santana asks him to desist, but will not say why. Later, Gerard finds a valet, Diego, tidying up his hotel room at an odd hour.
Eventually, Mme Jarnac agrees to provide him with the information he desires. A note is delivered to Gerard informing him that Jarnac is leaving the country that night under the name of Ernest Dubois, and giving his address; but it is a forgery. Gerard is only stopped from shooting the wrong man in cold blood by the timely intervention of Santana and Diego. Dubois is actually their associate; it turns out that they are after not only Jarnac but his secret Nazi organisation as well. Mme Jarnac is an innocent woman paid to act as the wife of a man she has never seen.
To stir things up, Gerard tricks Incza into believing he has the full dossier on Jarnac. Incza breaks into the hotel safe, but it is not there. Gerard is sent to Camargo's room, where Camargo's wife keeps him busy by trying to seduce him into her life of luxury and easy vice. Gerard kisses her, but rejects her advance; he still loves his wife, although "Her teeth were crooked and she was too thin". He tells the señora he is "bored" and cannot wait any longer for Camargo.
Meanwhile, Incza has been searching Gerard's room and realises there is no dossier. When the "valet" Diego interrupts, Incza kills him. Gerard returns and is detained as a murder suspect, but a waiter confirms his alibi. Still, Gerard is given 48 hours to leave the country.
When Incza tells him that Jarnac will be seeing Camargo at his "old office", Gerard decides to stake out a bar Mme Jarnac recalls was once their meeting place. It is a trap. Gerard is captured, and Jarnac finally makes his appearance. While they wait for Incza to arrive with the dossier, Jarnac makes a political speech on how America's failure to see that their injustice across the world and the resulting poverty of nations (as happened in Germany after World War I) means that there will always be people like him.
Incza attempts to betray Jarnac to Camargo, before realising Jarnac is there. Hoping to regain Jarnac's trust, he reveals that there is no dossier. Jarnac kills him. Gerard is to die as well, with Camargo as a witness that the two men shot each other. Camargo objects, but Jarnac threatens him with a paper in his possession. Gerard seizes the distraction to overpower Jarnac. He punches Jarnac over and over until Santana and Dubois arrive. To their disappointment, Jarnac is dead, but Gerard shows them the paper detailing Jarnac's connection to Camargo. As Santana now tells the police, this should be sufficient to expose the entire organisation.
The year 1000 L.C is approaching. One thousand years prior, a terrible destruction took place, and the world was saved by St. Lif. Roughly twenty years earlier, a destructive war took place between Normans of the east and west, but there has recently been peace. Strange things have begun happening, however; the dark wanderers Dimago have awoken, and the Ellr have left their land of Alfheim to investigate the Mother Tree's silence.
Bass, a skilled and proud street performer, plays a routine tune on his wind and percussion instruments in a deserted Italian village square in the afternoon, waiting for a pedestrian to tip him in his rusty iron cup. Soon, he spots Tippy, a humble peasant girl clutching a big gold coin, intending to drop it in the large plaza fountain to make a wish. Bass, seizing the opportunity, immediately plays an impromptu piece, capturing the girl's attention.
Just when Tippy is about to drop the coin into Bass's cup, a newcomer steps onto the scene. Treble, a suave and flamboyant street performer, plays a more attractive tune on his string instruments, effectively stealing Tippy's attention, much to Bass's anger. Not to be outdone, Bass ups his ante, and Treble dares to take it even further. As the two unleash their arsenal of musical weapons, vying for Tippy's attention (or rather, tip), she cowers in their wild musical cacophony, and in the process, accidentally drops her coin, which falls down a drain and is lost in the village sewers.
Heartbroken, Tippy sniffles, but then angrily demands from Treble and Bass a replacement coin for the one they made her lose. When they come up empty-handed, Tippy takes one of Treble's violins and Bass's iron cup in an attempt to get her money back by playing solo. She tunes the violin and plays it like a true virtuoso, prompting a passing pedestrian to drop a large bag of gold coins onto her cup.
Elated, Tippy hugs the bag and approaches the fountain, but not before she pulls two coins out of her bag and tempts Treble and Bass. But as they eagerly reach out to grab the coins, she tosses them into the top of the fountain, out of reach, much to their dismay.
In a post-credits scene, it is nighttime, with Treble standing on Bass, trying to reach the coins. As they start to fall backward, the film ends.
Prison convict Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) has "taken the fall" for an unspecified crime. His share for committing the crime was to be $50,000. Joe breaks out of jail with the help of his girl Pat (Claire Trevor). The escape has been facilitated by their former accomplice Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr), a sadistic mobster, who expects Joe to be killed during his escape and so avoid having to pay Joe his $50,000. When against all expectations the break-out succeeds, Rick decides that he must have Joe killed.
Pat and Joe's getaway car is damaged and Joe decides that they will hide out at his legal caseworker Ann's (Marsha Hunt) apartment. Ann had been visiting Joe in prison because she was trying to reform him and also because she was developing feelings for him. When the police close in on Ann's apartment she tries to convince Joe to give himself up. Instead Joe forces Ann to escape with him and Pat. Pat sees the attraction between Joe and Ann and doesn't know what to do about it. Joe finds himself between two women who love him. The three of them continue to evade the police until one of Rick's men finds them. Rick's man (John Ireland) and Joe get into a fight and Ann saves Joe by shooting Rick's man in the back. After acting in Joe's defense this way, Ann realizes how much she is in love with him. Out of loyalty to Pat, Joe sets Ann free and prepares to flee the country with Pat. In Joe and Pat's hotel room, Pat takes a phone call warning them that Rick has seized Ann and will harm her unless Joe and Pat come out of hiding. Pat does not want Joe to go back to Ann, so lies about the call, saying it was from the hotel desk clerk asking about their checkout time.
After boarding a ship, Joe attempts to convince Pat that they can start a new life in South America together. He even proposes marriage to her. A guilt-stricken Pat now confesses to Joe that Ann has been abducted by Rick. Joe races to save Ann from her captor. Under the cover of a thick fog, Joe manages to get past Rick's henchmen and sneaks into Rick's room. A gunfight erupts with Rick and Joe shooting each other and inadvertently starting a fire. Joe and Rick, both wounded, fight hand-to-hand with Joe finally pushing Rick through an upper story window to his death. Mortally wounded and lying in the street, Joe dies in Ann's arms as Pat looks on. Seeing the resigned contentment in Joe's face, Pat comments in voice-over that: "This is right for Joe. This is what he wanted."
The story starts with Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg in a cargo airplane with his airborne unit and the embedded American correspondent William Dreiser, on their way to their drop point, where they will jump and parasail into Nazi-controlled Georgia. The Nazis have been much more successful than in our history, since the Soviets had to divert resources to defend their southern border against the Domination of the Draka. As a result, the Nazis managed to overrun European Russia. The Soviet Union has been pushed back and only controls territories east of the Ural Mountains. However, the Germans are seriously overstretched, and vulnerable to a strong attack. During the travel to their drop zone, Eric thinks back on his past and his relationship with his father, and his most recent visit home to see his family. This was the first visit in several years, his exile was due to his arranging the escape of his serf daughter to America. Eric's bravery in the earlier Draka conquest of Italy led to his former "mistake" being forgiven.
Eric's "Century" (a term derived from the Roman Empire's army) ends up being seriously under-supplied because the gliders with the artillery went into a canyon. The engineers are frantically building a rubble ramp, but the heavy weapons won't be available for the battle. The story details how Eric's single infantry company takes and holds a small village strategically located on the crucial Ossetian Military Highway over the Caucasus Mountains. The balance of the First Airborne Legion is the plug which is holding four German divisions from escaping the trap they are in on the south side of the mountains. Eric's unit is tasked with holding the highway and village against repeated attacks by Felix Hoth's Waffen-SS armored regiment, which is fighting to clear the highway so the German divisions can escape. Eric's company manages to hold out long enough for the Draka to crush the four divisions, cross the mountains, and relieve his unit. Holding this highway and village is the critical act of the invasion of Russia. This lets the Draka's essentially undamaged and superior armored and mechanized units to penetrate into the plains of Southern Russia, where they can bring to battle and destroy the overstretched and exhausted German forces. It also leads to Eric being awarded the Domination's highest medal of valor, the aurora, "for saving 10,000 Citizen lives," and which makes him immune to Security Directorate reprisals for his "treasonous utterances" or for his earlier "indiscretion." The action of Century A is the pivotal event at the beginning of the invasion of Russia that allows the Domination to eventually win the Eurasian War.
Handicapped farmer Pete Morgan and his sister Ellen live on an isolated farm with their adopted daughter, Meg. They keep to themselves and are viewed as mysterious by the nearby town. Now a teenager, Meg convinces Pete to hire one of her 12th-grade high school classmates, Nath Storm, to come help with chores on the farm. On the first evening, when it is time for him to go home, Nath says he is going to take a shortcut through the old woods. The woods are part of Pete's property and he forbids anyone from entering them. Pete becomes agitated, insisting the woods are dangerous and contain a haunted house which is painted red, and that Nath must stay out.
After traveling through the woods in the dark, Nath returns spooked, after hearing moans and yells. However, a few days later, he is embarrassed at his cowardice and goes through the woods again after dark. Nath is struck from behind and knocked down into a stream. He returns to the farm believing that Pete hit him, but Meg and Ellen say Pete has been in the room with them since Nath left. Soon, both Nath and Meg become obsessed with searching for the mysterious "red house" and agree to go into the woods every Sunday, which is the one day Nath has some free time, to look for it. They have no luck.
In the meantime, Meg begins to fall in love with Nath, but his jealous and shrewd girlfriend Tibby has other plans for him. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Pete has secretly given local handyman and petty thug Teller rights to hunt on the land, as long as he keeps everyone else off of the property.
One Sunday, Nath cannot get out of a date with Tibby, so Meg goes off on her own to look for the red house. She finds it, located in a small gully a few miles from Pete's farm along an unused dirt road. Teller fires at her to scare her away. Running away, Meg falls and breaks her leg. That evening, when Meg does not return, Nath ventures into the woods to find her and brings her back to the farm. Pete is furious that both young people defied his warning to stay out of the woods and he outright fires Nath, banishing him from the farm and from seeing Meg again.
Some time later, Nath has been working for his mother at a local general store in town. With Nath's encouragement, his mother marries a long-time admirer and goes off for several weeks on her honeymoon, leaving Nath to mind the store. Nath soon takes additional work for the summer at another farm close to town. As Meg recovers from her broken leg, Pete begins to crack up. He starts calling her Jeannie, and becomes controlling and domineering. Ellen and Pete have a conversation about how it was that several years ago they rented the red house to a young couple. Pete was having an affair with the wife, Jeannie.
Nath catches Tibby flirting with Teller and sucker punches him. Nath confronts her and finally learns how vain and selfish she is. Teller then punches Nath, while Tibby watches with satisfaction.
One evening, Ellen decides to burn the red house down, to end Pete's obsession. As she walks through the woods, Teller, mistaking her for Nath, shoots and severely wounds her. Meg, having heard the gunshot, finds Ellen then rushes back to tell Pete, who refuses to act to help his sister. Meg phones Nath for help and he says he will bring a stretcher after he calls the sheriff and the doctor. Pete fails to dissuade Meg from returning to the woods. By the time Nath arrives, Ellen is dead. In the meantime, Teller goes to Tibby's home and persuades her to leave town with him. They are pulled over and arrested by the state police.
Meg and Nath bring Ellen's body back. Meg demands the truth about the red house and who Jeannie is. Pete finally confesses that Ellen had been keeping the secret for him, about having had an affair with a married woman named Jeannie and what had happened to her and the husband. After the man discovered the affair, the couple decided to move away. Pete went to the red house to plead with Jeannie to choose between her husband and him. As they heard her husband returning, Jeannie began screaming. To stop her, Pete covered her mouth, but suffocated her. While Pete claims that he was just trying to keep her quiet and that her death was accidental, he admits that he subsequently killed the husband in cold blood. Pete buried the bodies in the basement of the ice house that sits next to the red house, and he lives in fear that they will be discovered. However, since Jeannie's husband told everyone they were leaving town, no one ever suspected they were murdered. The couple had a baby, Meg, and rather than abandon the infant, Pete and Ellen adopted her.
Pete takes Meg to the red house. By this point, he has completely gone crazy and thinks Meg is actually Jeannie, who is leaving him again. He begins to re-live the experience, puts his hand over her mouth and starts suffocating her. Nath and the sheriff show up in the nick of time. Pete takes off in his truck, but drives into the ice house, where the truck sinks in the large pond formed by the melted ice, and Pete drowns.
The final scene shows Nath and Meg a few days later, talking about starting a new life together as they watch the smoke from the red house, which Nath has burned down in keeping with Ellen's wishes. Nath tells Meg "Looking forward is much better than looking back."
The story begins with a voice-over by the "Voice of Chicago" introducing the world and the main characters of the film. There is Sally "Angel Face" Connors (Mala Powers), an exotic dancer in a nightclub; Gregg Warren (Wally Cassell), a former actor working as a performance artist in the nightclub window, a "Mechanical Man"; Johnny Kelly (Gig Young) a cop having an affair with Angel Face and struggling with his conscience whether to leave his wife; Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold), a successful and smooth crooked attorney; Hayes Stewart (William Talman), a magician who has turned to making a career as a pickpocket and then as a thief.
Officer Johnny Kelly is disillusioned with his job which he took to please his father, and writes a letter of resignation which he intends to hand in at the end of his shift. He calls Penrod Biddel to accept an employment offer that the lawyer had made, and agrees to meet him later that evening. Johnny's wife Kathy Kelly (Paula Raymond) discovers Johnny's plan to quit his job and calls his father Sgt. John Kelly Sr. (Otto Hulett) to ask him to intervene; Kelly Sr. is concerned for his son's happiness and has a talk with Johnny. On this night Johnny's regular partner calls in sick and his replacement is Sgt. Joe (Chill Wills) who doesn't give his surname and whose voice can be recognized as the introductory "Voice of Chicago". As they begin the nightly shift Sgt. Joe has plenty of homespun advice for Johnny, whose negative energy casts a pall on their working environment.
As the night progresses Johnny visits Angel Face to re-affirm their plans to go away. He also meets with the lawyer Penrod Biddel who asks Johnny to pick up Hayes Stewart and leave him across the state line for the Indiana Police to arrest and incarcerate. Johnny says no to this but changes his mind when Biddel tells him that Johnny's brother 'Stubby' (Ron Hagerthy) is associating with the criminal and will surely get into trouble unless Johnny steps in and does what Biddel wants. The lawyer pays Johnny $5,000 for the job, but it goes wrong and Stewart gets away, knowing Biddel is out to get him.
Johnny and Sgt. Joe answer a call for a woman having a baby and Johnny performs the delivery; they also answer a call for an illegal gambling game on the street, arresting the ring leader and giving the money back to the men who have been hoodwinked. After each call Sgt. Joe lays out another bit of wisdom that seemingly works to influence Johnny to re-evaluate his life.
Hayes Stewart has obtained incriminating evidence on Penrod Biddel and is having an affair with Biddel’s wife Lydia (Marie Windsor). Stewart shoots the lawyer and he and Lydia escape, running to the nightclub where Angel Face dances. Having discovered Biddel's agreement with Johnny to take him out of the state, Stewart calls the police asking to meet with Officer Kelly. Johnny's father takes the call and, mistaking the father for the son, Stewart shoots Kelly Sr., who dies in his son's arms.
Stewart takes Lydia and Stubby and escapes but can't get far because of the police closing in. He shoots Lydia dead in front of the nightclub window where the Mechanical Man is performing. He stays close by, unsure if the Mechanical Man is a real man or an automaton; if he is real he intends to kill him. Gregg Warren, the Mechanical Man, is in love with Angel Face, and thinks he can bait the killer for Johnny. This sense of honor, and his father's murder, makes clear to Johnny what he really holds valuable in his life. As Gregg Warren performs in the window, Angel Face declares her love for him causing the Mechanical Man to shed a tear. Hayes Stewart sees that he is indeed a real man and shoots, revealing his hideout. Stewart beats up Stubby. Johnny Kelly goes after Stewart and, after a chase along an elevated railroad track and a fight, Stewart is electrocuted on the live rail and falls to his death. Johnny considers what has happened this eventful night, re-evaluates his priorities in life, and is reconciled with his wife. The mysterious Sgt. Joe has disappeared.
Two thousand years before the game begins, those who sat on the Council of Seven in the land of Rivellon sacrificed themselves in the fight against a group of treacherous magicians, who had passed over to the dark side of magic. To remember the Council of Seven, the "Divine Order" was founded to pass on the knowledge of the wise men to the next generations.
At the beginning of the game, the player wakes up in a house in Aleroth, a town of healers. It is revealed that Mardaneus, leader of the town, has gone crazy, and the player is asked to help by traveling into the catacombs beneath the town to stop the undead mage Thelyron, who is driving Mardaneus mad. Once Thelyron is put to rest, Mardaneus appears to bring the player back to the surface.
With the crisis in Aleroth resolved, the player leaves to explore, and is ambushed by a dragon rider, but is saved by the appearance of the wizard Zandalor, who explains that the player is one of three Marked Ones, and asks the player to meet him at an inn. Shortly thereafter, the other two Marked Ones are discovered dead, leaving only the player. The player is invited to come to Castle Stormfist, home of Duke Janus, a young noble who claims to be the Divine, a messiah prophesied to protect Rivellon against the summoning of the demon Chaos. The player is forced to do menial tasks for Janus, and no matter what they do, they end up in a dungeon, and have to fight their way out.
Once free, Zandalor takes the player to where the Council of Seven met, and explains that in order to find the real Divine, the heirs to the Council of Seven have to be brought together. In doing so, the player learns more about the way events have been manipulated by the Black Ring, the evil organization dedicated to bringing the demon Chaos back to Rivellon; the orcs have been goaded into attacking humans, and the elves and dwarves are poised at the brink of war, until the player reveals the manipulation going on.
As the new council members assemble to complete the ritual that will turn the player into the Divine, Duke Janus appears, revealing himself to be the Demon of Lies, in league with the Black Ring and seeking to summon Chaos. The council is attacked and a number of the members slain, along with the player. The player returns to life, however, with new abilities as the Divine, and is able to reach the fortress where the Black Ring is summoning Chaos. The Divine defeats Janus, but finds a baby who was picked to be the vessel of Chaos, lying on the summoning altar, and carries the baby out in their arms.
In the woods outside of Cherry Falls, Virginia, a teenage couple, Rod Harper (Jesse Bradford) and Stacy Twelfmann (Bre Blair) are getting romantic in a car when a black-haired woman appears and murders them both. Meanwhile, in town, teenager Jody Marken (Brittany Murphy), the daughter of the local sheriff, is with her boyfriend, Kenny (Gabriel Mann), who thinks it is time to "see other people." Jody goes back home to find her father, Brent (Michael Biehn), upset that she is out past her curfew. Brent and his deputies begin to investigate the murders the next day. They see that the killer carved the word "virgin" into both victims. At school, Brent sees English teacher Mr. Leonard Marliston (Jay Mohr), who urges him to divulge more details of the murder to students and the town so as to eliminate the possibility of secrets.
Annette Duwald, also a virgin, is home alone when she is killed in the same manner as the other two teenagers. Concerned for the town's safety, Brent holds a meeting at the high school to tell parents the nature of the crimes. No students are invited, but Jody and her friend Timmy, who stayed after school, witness the meeting. Timmy asks to borrow Jody's cell phone, and goes into the stairwell to make a call. Jody goes downstairs to find him, and discovers his dead body in a locker room. She is confronted by the killer, who attacks her, but she manages to escape. At the police station, Jody describes the killer to an officer, who draws a composite. Brent confides with an old friend, Tom Sisler, the current high school principal, that the suspect looks like "Lora Lee Sherman." The two are both visibly nervous, and Jody listens in on their conversation.
Back at school, Jody and Kenny reconcile. Later Jody learns from her mother about the tale of Lora Lee. Twenty-seven years ago, Lora Lee was a high school loner. She claimed that four popular boys at school, including Brent and the high school principal, raped her one night. Her cries fell on deaf ears and she left the city for the rural outskirts, where she was rarely seen or heard from again. After Jody discovers the truth, disappointed with the hypocrisy of her parents, she visits Kenny at his house. They talk and Jody, being upset with her parents, tries to have sex with Kenny. He refuses, causing her to get upset and leave.
After catching news of the killer's targeting of virgins, the high school students in town congregate at an abandoned hunting lodge to indulge in a mass orgy. Brent goes to the school to meet Sisler only to find the principal dead in his office with the words "virgin not" carved into his forehead. Before Brent can react he is knocked out by the killer. Jody, who has refused to attend the orgy with Kenny, is out riding her bike when she cycles by Mr. Marliston's house and witnesses him dragging a heavy trunk inside. She helps him get it into the house, and he casually mentions that her father is inside it. She opens it and finds her father, beaten and bloody, before she is knocked unconscious. At the orgy, Kenny is about to have sex with a girl when he has second thoughts and leaves to find Jody. Driving around, he is puzzled to see her bicycle outside of Marliston's house.
In his basement, Marliston puts on a wig and makeup to "become" Lora Lee Sherman. Marliston reveals that he is Lora Lee Sherman's illegitimate son, and asks Brent to retell the story of what happened that night 25 years ago. Brent reveals that the four boys, including himself, did indeed rape Lora Lee. Marliston says his mother became an abusive "psycho" after the rape and that one of the rapists is his father; there is an implication that Brent is in fact Marliston's biological father. By targeting virgins, Marliston would rob all the wealthy parents of their "precious virginal children".
Kenny enters the house and frees Jody as Brent fights with Marliston, who manages to brutally kill him. Jody and Kenny flee to the orgy with Marliston in furious pursuit, killing a deputy en route. He bursts inside wielding an axe and mass panic erupts. After wildly stabbing panicking students and then trying to escape, Marliston fights both Jody and Kenny, with Kenny being severely wounded during the melee. Eventually, Marliston is pushed off a balcony by Jody and impaled on fence posts. At first he seems to be dead, before reviving briefly only to be promptly shot dead by Deputy Sheriff Mina, who unloads two pistols into him. The next day, Jody hides the reasons for the killings from the police and she and her mother head away from the station. As they leave town, Jody sees someone resembling Lora Lee Sherman disappear behind a moving school bus. The film ends with a shot of the waterfalls outside town, turning red.
The story behind ''Nightmare Creatures'' draws upon gothic horror elements of the 19th century and begins in 1666, when a devil-worshiping cult called the Brotherhood of Hecate were conducting sinister experiments in London so as to take over the city, and then the world. The Brotherhood tried to develop an elixir that would endow them with superhuman powers. However, rather than creating their intended superhumans, their experiments instead created grotesque monsters called nightmare creatures. When they decided to use these creatures as an army of conquest, one of their members, Samuel Pepys, set their headquarters on fire, resulting in the First Great Fire of London.
The game takes place in 1834 when London falls victim to several evil occurrences. Monster sightings are reported along with news of people mutating into ungodly creatures, and that the dead are waking from their graves and walking among the living. All of London is in a panic and vulnerable to the schemes of Adam Crowley, a mad scientist and occultist enlisting the help of the Brotherhood.
A book is dropped off at the home of Ignatius Blackward, a priest and occult expert. He finds it is the lost diary of Samuel Pepys, which contains the Brotherhood's research. Knowing he needs help, Ignatius sends the diary to a renowned American immunologist named Dr. Jean Franciscus of New Orleans, who shows up with his daughter, Nadia Franciscus. With the doctor murdered and the book stolen, Ignatius and Nadia are at his funeral, where they are approached by a man who gives them a note reading: "Know about Adam Crowley, Brotherhood of Hecate --- HVHJ". Ignatius and Nadia head out to an address listed on the note, hoping to seek out Crowley and neutralize the monsters.
The film opens in 44 BC, just after the assassination of Julius Caesar, and tells the story of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra (Fleming) and her relationship with the Roman general Mark Antony (Burr) from that time until their mutual suicide in 30 BC. Lucilius, having previously accompanied Julius Caesar to Egypt and having been a close witness to Caesar's romance with Cleopatra, believes that Cleopatra is a woman highly skilled in besotting men to promote her own agenda, in this case to bind Mark Anthony to her desire to become queen of Rome and to make her son by Caesar the eventual ruler of the Roman Empire. In the meantime, as Lucilius becomes aware, Cleopatra is beguiling Anthony with continuous showings of feasting and luxury while the vast population of Egypt is suffering in hunger and poverty. When Lucilius reveals his concerns to Cleopatra, she makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce him, in order to win him to her side. Cleopatra persuades Anthony that all this disaffection is the work of her younger half-sister, Arsinoe, and Lucilius is sent on an expedition against her in which she is (unhistorically) killed. Lucilius returns from this trip wounded by Cleopatra's own soldiers and even more distrustful of her, and is confined to his apartments as an honored prisoner, while Anthony continues to have his judgment clouded with constant feasting and drinking (and, although this is not mentioned, some sort of physical contact with Cleopatra's person). But Anthony dimly realizes that he has failed in his duties to Rome, most specifically in his role as a member of the ruling triumvirate, and that Cleopatra is scheming to use him to conquer Rome to make himself king and herself queen and Caesar's son the next absolute ruler of Rome, but he knows that Romans will never accept such a development; so he enables Lucilius to escape, with instructions to return to Rome and warn Octavius of what is happening in Egypt. (Unlike the Elizabeth Taylor version, this Cleopatra is not madly in love with Anthony, but is merely using him as a stepping stone). Soon enough Octavius brings Roman armies to Egypt to subdue this incipient mutiny. In this movie it would appear that a conscience-stricken Anthony stays in Cleopatra's palace, refusing to lead an Egyptian army against his beloved Rome. As Octavius closes in, Anthony stabs himself, Lucilius breaches the palace gates in time to bring a dying Anthony to Cleopatra's chamber, and Cleopatra, in despair of the complete frustration of her ambitions, uses a snake to kill herself. This brings the movie to its end before we see Cleopatra die.
Several of the ''Enterprise'' crew members are having difficulty sleeping or have lost track of time and find themselves having strange emotional responses to normal objects. The affected crew realize they have had common experiences and with Counselor Deanna Troi's help, use the holodeck to reconstruct and refine their fragmented memories and impressions of the events. Their collaboration results in a device like an operating table in a dark room filled with mysterious noises. They come to the conclusion that they have been to a similar place.
Dr. Beverly Crusher examines them, finding evidence of sedation as well as subtle changes to their bodies, such as a microscopic misalignment of the bones in Commander William T. Riker's arm, indicating it has been severed and then reattached. They realize they are being abducted from the ship to be experimented on. When they wonder if this is happening to other crew members as well, they ask the ship's computer to list missing members and find that two other crew members are missing. One soon reappears in his cabin but dies shortly after he is found, his blood having been transformed into a liquid polymer.
Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Lt. Commander Data also discover particle emissions in one of the cargo bays, creating an expanding subspace rift which threatens to breach the hull. They devise a method to counter the emissions and close the rift but they need a way to trace the emissions to the source. Commander Riker volunteers, as he has been taken several nights in a row. Dr. Crusher injects him with a stimulant intended to counteract the sedative his captors are using and he carries a tracking device which can be detected from the ''Enterprise'' when he is taken. Riker is taken that night and finds himself in a strange environment on an operating table, near the other missing crew member, surrounded by busy aliens.
The rift continues to expand and Captain Jean-Luc Picard orders Geordi to begin the attempt to close it. Riker pretends to be unconscious until the aliens are distracted by the rift which had begun to fluctuate. He frees himself, picks up the other crew member and jumps through the rift which had become large enough for them to pass through. They appear in the cargo bay moments before the rift is forced shut. The aliens manage to send a brief energy pulse through at the last second, which disappears through the ''Enterprise'' hull and into space. Picard wonders if the pulse is a probe sent by the aliens attempting to communicate with the ''Enterprise'' but Riker noting their methods which resulted in the death of one of the crew, suspects their motives are less benign.
On January 13, 2006, the evil Queenlord Cassandra is spying on Griffin Spade's family and orders her troops to kidnap Griffin's son Brandon and kill everyone else. Griffin and his army manage to push back the invaders, but Cassandra soon turns the tables by mind-controlling Griffin's own army. Griffin and Madison manage to escape San Francisco and begin chasing Cassandra across the United States, eventually cornering her in Washington. Cassandra, however, escapes with Brandon to the United Kingdom; Griffin and Madison follow. They build a new army in Europe and chase her through England, France and Germany.
While in Paris, they discover Cassandra released the virus in 2001 to kill every woman on Earth who did not have the power of the Edge. In Berlin, Griffin finally rescues Brandon. They make it back to San Francisco and push back another invasion by the Storm Ravens, and finally corner and defeat Cassandra on Alcatraz Island. The story ends with a cliffhanger, as an unidentified magician finds Cassandra's body and speaks of a "chosen one" as he resurrects her.
Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are engaged to be married when she receives an anonymous letter claiming that someone is "sucking up" to their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman, from whom Elinor and Roddy expect to inherit a sizeable fortune. Elinor is niece to Mrs Welman, while Roddy is nephew to her late husband. Elinor suspects Mary Gerrard as the topic of the anonymous letter, the lodgekeeper's daughter, whom their aunt likes and supports. Neither guesses who wrote the letter, which is burned. They visit their aunt at Hunterbury. Roddy sees Mary Gerrard for the first time in a decade. Mrs Welman is partially paralyzed after a stroke and dislikes living that way. She tells both her physician Peter Lord and her niece how much she dislikes living without full health, wishing the doctor might end her pain, which he refuses to do. Roddy falls in love with Mary; this provokes Elinor to end their engagement. After a second stroke, Mrs Welman asks Elinor to make provision for Mary. Elinor assumes there is a will her aunt wants modified. Mrs Welman dies before Elinor can call the solicitor. There is no will. She dies intestate, so her considerable estate goes to Elinor outright as her only known surviving blood relative.
Elinor settles two thousand pounds on Mary, which Mary accepts. Elinor sells the house she inherited. Mary dies of morphine poisoning at an impromptu lunch at Hunterbury, as Elinor, at the house, and Mary with Nurse Hopkins, at the lodge, are clearing out private possessions. Everyone at the house had access to the morphine Nurse Hopkins claimed to have lost at Hunterbury while Mrs Welman was ill. Elinor is arrested. Later, after the body is exhumed, it is learned that her aunt died of morphine poisoning. Peter Lord, in love with Elinor, brings Poirot into the case. Poirot speaks to everyone in the village. He uncovers a second suspect when Roddy tells him of the anonymous letter - the writer of that letter. Poirot then focuses on a few elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches made by Elinor, which all three ate, or in the tea prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by Mary and Hopkins, but not by Elinor? What is the secret of Mary's birth? Is there any significance in the scratch of a rose thorn on Hopkins's wrist? The denouement is revealed mainly in the court, as the defence lawyer brings witnesses who reveal what Poirot uncovers.
A torn pharmaceutical label that the prosecution says is from morphine hydrochloride, the poison, is rather a scrap from a label for apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic, made clear because the m was lower case. The letters Apo had been torn off. Nurse Hopkins had injected herself with the emetic, to vomit the poison that she would ingest in the tea, explaining the mark on her wrist – not from a rose tree that is a thornless variety, Zephirine Drouhin. She went to wash dishes that fateful day for privacy as she vomited, looking pale when Elinor joined her in the kitchen. The motive was money. Mary Gerrard was the illegitimate daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft. Had this been discovered sooner, she would have inherited Mrs Welman's estate. Nurse Hopkins knows Mary's true parents because of a letter from her sister Eliza some years earlier. When Hopkins encouraged Mary Gerrard to write a will, Mary named as beneficiary the woman whom she supposes to be her aunt, Mary Riley, the sister of Eliza Gerrard, in New Zealand. Mary Riley's married name is Mary Draper. Mary Draper of New Zealand it turns out ''is'' Nurse Hopkins in England, as two people from New Zealand who knew Mary Draper both confirm in court. Hopkins leaves the courtroom before the judge can recall her.
Elinor is acquitted, and Peter Lord takes her away from where reporters can find her. Poirot talks with Lord to explain his deductions and actions to him as he gathered information on the true murderer, and how the "quickness of air travel" allowed witnesses from New Zealand to be brought to the trial. Poirot tells Lord he understands his clumsy efforts to get some action in Poirot's investigation. Lord's embarrassment is alleviated by Poirot's assurance that Lord will be Elinor's husband, not Roddy.
On May 18, 1978 (seven months after the "Halloween sacrifice" depicted in ''House of 1000 Corpses''), Texas Sheriff John Quincey Wydell and a large posse of state troopers issue a search and destroy mission on the Firefly family, who are responsible for over 75 homicides and disappearances over the past several years. The family arm themselves and fire on the officers. Rufus is killed and Mother Firefly is taken into custody while Otis and Baby escape. They steal a car, kill the driver, and go to Kahiki Palms, a run-down motel.
At the motel, Otis and Baby take a musical group called Banjo and Sullivan hostage in their room, and Otis shoots the roadie when he returns. Meanwhile, Baby's father, Captain Spaulding, decides to rendezvous with Baby and Otis. His truck runs out of gas on the way, and he frightens a boy and assaults the boy's mother before stealing her car. Back at the motel, Otis rapes Roy's wife Gloria and demands Adam and Roy come with him on an errand.
Otis drives his two prisoners to a place where he buried weapons. While walking to the location, the two prisoners attack Otis, but Otis bludgeons Roy and cuts Adam's face off. Back at the motel, Adam's wife Wendy tries to escape through the bathroom window. When Gloria attempts to rebel, Baby kills her. Wendy runs out of the motel but is caught by Captain Spaulding, who knocks her unconscious. Otis returns, and all three leave the motel together in the band's van.
The motel maid comes to clean the room, and she discovers the murder scene. The maid enters the bathroom where she sees "The Devil's Rejects" written on the wall in blood; she is startled by Wendy, who is accidentally killed when she runs out to the highway to seek help while she is in shock. Wydell calls a pair of amoral bounty hunters—the "Unholy Two"—Rondo and Billy Ray, to help him find the Fireflys. While investigating, they discover an associate of Spaulding's named Charlie Altamont. Wydell begins to lose his sanity when Mother Firefly reveals that she murdered his brother. After having a dream in which his brother commands him to avenge his death, Wydell stabs Mother Firefly to death. The surviving Fireflys gather at a brothel owned by Charlie, where he offers them shelter from the police.
After he leaves the brothel, Wydell threatens Charlie to give up the Fireflys. With the help of the "Unholy Two," the sheriff takes the family back to the Firefly house where he tortures them, using similar methods they used on their own victims. He nails Otis' hands to his chair and staples crime-scene photographs to Otis's and Baby's stomachs, then he beats and shocks Captain Spaulding and Otis with a cattle prod and taunts Baby about the death of her mother.
Wydell sets the house on fire and leaves Otis and Spaulding to burn, but he lets Baby loose outside so he can hunt her for sport. Charlie returns to save the Firefly family, but he is killed by Wydell. Baby gets shot in the calf of her left leg, brutally horse-whipped, and then strangled by Wydell. Tiny suddenly arrives and intervenes, breaking Wydell's neck and saving the Firefly family. Otis, Baby, and Spaulding escape in Charlie's 1972 Cadillac Eldorado and leave behind Tiny, who walks back into the burning house. The trio drives, badly injured. As Otis drives down the road with Baby and Spaulding asleep in the back seat, he notices a police barricade ahead of them. Realizing that they will not make it out alive, he wakes Baby and Spaulding and hands them each a gun. As Free Bird plays and declares they "can't change", they speed toward the barricade, guns blazing as the police return fire.
In the first issue Kim and her family move to Salem. On her first day she meets Chad Barrow, her neighbor, who tells her she'll be fine in school, provided she isn't a nerd or a 'wick'. Her first day at school is rough, she is attacked by an air elemental, but is saved by two wicks, Mink and Liza Beth. Later at home, she is attacked by a wall.
After the wall attacks her Kim discovers that she can talk to ghosts when she 'spirit walks' and accidentally summons a horde of ghosts. One of the ghosts tells her that she has to wield the Salem covens into a single unit, a 'seven'. Another ghost warns her 'not to go to the pillar'.
At a science class, the bunsen burners explode and the lab catches fire. Kim saves herself by making a mora poultice which smothers the fire.
Chad asks her to go to a party. When he asks her about her parents, she mentions that she is adopted. The Salem witches reason that if Kim is adopted, she may be one of them. On the night of the party, they secretly guard her against all forms of magical attack.
At the party, the lights go out and someone attacks Kim with a knife. Realising they have not protected Kim against physical attack, the Salem witches rush to the party just in time to see Kim running from a wolf-monster. Renata, a shapeshifter, changes into another wolf creature, and the two fight. But when the thing sees the rest of the witches arriving, it turns into a flock of birds and flies away.
The Salem witches drag Kim away from the party before the police arrive, and explain the secret history of the witch families of Salem. The witch families are descended from refugees from 'somewhere else'. They came to Salem fleeing the Thief, an occult being and they brought an artifact called the Pillar of Smoke with them. Certain families can work certain kinds of magic. When they offer to take her to the Pillar, Kim declines on the grounds that the ghost told her not to. She goes home, to discover that something trashed her sculpture tools. The final page reveals Chad as the one from the party who tried to kill Kim.
Kim finally agrees to go to the Pillar of Smoke and the witches take her to the woods near Salem. There, they lay a magical booby trap, and continue on their way. They meet Apocaledon, the guardian of the pillar. Along the way, Kim realises that witches have been dying in unusual circumstances, where their powers backfired and killed them. Behind them, Chad undoes the booby trap with little or no effort. The group gets to the Pillar, and discovers that Kim is a witch (as she can see the smoke it gives off), but have no idea what her powers are. Suddenly, the wrecked body of Apocaledon falls into the clearing followed by Chad who reveals that he is a new version of the Thief, a witch who can copy the powers of other Salem witches. He explains that mutations within the humans of Salem built up over years of interbreeding with the witches eventually culminated in a new Thief. He then easily defeats the group and destroys the Pillar.
When the group wakes up, they find themselves in a washed-out world, where their magics won't work fully. They realise that this must be the 'somewhere else' the Salem witches came from.
Kim and Foley, a seer, make contact with a ghost, who tells them to apologise to the Pillar. Kim does so and touches the Pillar. Magical energy shoots out of the remains of the Pillar and Kim and Foley find themselves in a white space where a line of corpses are guarded by flying skeletons.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group encounters the original Thief but escape by pooling their powers and teleporting back to Salem. There Chad has been busy. He has stolen the powers of every witch in town and is now using their powers to bring his girlfriend (the first witch he killed and the ghost who was helping Kim) back to life.
In the land of the dead Kim and Foley are confronted by the flying skeletons. They tell Kim that she is the Gatekeeper, chosen by the Pillar to guard the way between the lands of the living and dead and mend breaches made by magic. The skeletons attempt to keep Foley with them but Kim convinces them to allow him to leave with her.
Back in Salem, Chad has resurrected his girlfriend and has Kim's friends trapped within one of their own spells. They break free just as Kim and Foley arrive. The whole group then has their final confrontation with Chad. Using her necromancy powers, Kim first frees Chad's girlfriend from a state of paralysis and then lets her die again (the girlfriend hates Chad and does not wish to be with him anymore). Because she is bound to him, Chad dies as well. In the afterlife, Chad is punished by the skeletons for raising the dead and the girlfriend is taken to the next life.
The group of witches leave the school. Before she leaves, Kim notices a small lizard (the leftover of one of the first witch casualties, a wick boy who died the night Kim was summoned to Salem). She tells it to hold on, as things are starting to work out.
The mouse and his child are two parts of a single small wind-up toy, which must be wound by a key in the father's back. After being unpacked, they discover themselves in a toy shop where they befriend a toy elephant and toy seal. The child mouse proposes staying at the shop to form a family, which the other toys ridicule.
They accidentally fall out of a window and land in the trash. Once transported to the dump, they become enslaved by Manny the rat, who runs a casino and uses broken wind-up toys as his slave labor force. With the aid of a psychic frog, the mice escape and meet other animal characters on a quest of becoming free and independent self-winding toys.
They rediscover the elephant and seal, who are somewhat broken down. Together they manage to form a family and destroy the rat empire.
The first issue (Epistle) opens with the Redeemer and his maniacs purging a group of Ratskins for a crime Malakev (the narrator) cannot even say (they tried to run away). As Klovis tells one Ratskin that he should be thanking him for rewarding him with a martyr's crown, the Ratskin tells Klovis that he is sick in the head and calls to the Hive Spirits asking for vengeance for the deaths of his people. At this the Caller, the self-proclaimed Shaman of Shamans, bursts from the ground riding a giant Millasaur. He attacks the Redemptionists, proclaiming his intention to lead a revolution of Ratskins to vengeance against the Hivers. Klovis drives him off with a blast of fire from his crown, but the Caller later attacks the Redeemer at his own camp. After fighting him off, and discovering that the Bloodmare Stone (An eye from one of the- if not the- last of the Giant Necromunda Spiders) is the source of his great power, Klovis and his band set out deeper into the Underhive to purge the Caller. The remainder of this issue deals with the Redeemer slaying a mutant gang boss in a duel so that he and his men can head further down.
In the second issue, the Caller gathers his armies and the Redeemer is captured by a psyker called Ferron Voor, the Emissary of Karloth Valois; Master of Plague Zombies, who drains the life from several of his men to reanimate a monstrous mutant rat, with which he tries to kill Klovis (only to die in the process).
In the third issue, Klovis and the Caller's armies finally battle with each other, the Slaught-drugged Redemptionists wreaking great havoc whilst Klovis manages, in a superhuman effort, to destroy the Rat God (from the last issue), the Bloodmare Spider Queen and the Caller, despite being badly wounded in the process. The power leaking from the crumbling Bloodmare Stone turns his zealots against him, leading to Klovis scourging his own men. In the end, only one survives: Malakev, who is shown on the second last page of the issue to have been converted into a Scribe-Servitor, a mindless cyborg slave who will spend the rest of his existence writing down Klovis' deeds.
''The Legend of Dragoon'' takes place on a world referred to in-game as "Endiness". Its aesthetic resembles the Middle Ages with fantasy elements such as swords, magic and dragons. The world contains a variety of species including Humans, Dragons and Winglies. Humans live as farmers while Dragons look like winged creatures and possess Dragon Spirits. Winglies are an aggressive species who are able to fly and enslaved humans 10,000 years before the start of the game. Humans became Dragoons by obtaining the help of Dragons to defeat the Winglies and, at the time of the game's events, live in relative peace.
There are nine playable protagonists in the game. The main protagonist is Dart, a warrior who is searching for the Black Monster. Shana is Dart's childhood friend and love interest. Rose is a warrior who teaches Dart how to fight as a Dragoon. Albert is the king of Basil, a duchy within the game and Lavitz is his loyal knight who fights with a spear. Meru is a dancer from a flower town and Kongol is the last of his species alive in the game's world. Haschel is an elderly man searching for his daughter and Miranda is a magician.
Dart is travelling to his hometown when he is attacked by a dragon. He is saved by Rose, who informs Dart that the Sandora army has attacked the town. As he arrives he discovers that the town has been destroyed and his childhood friend Shana has been taken to a prison.
After rescuing Shana, King Albert sends the party to defend the fort-city of Hoax. During a surprise attack, Dart gains the ability to transform into a Dragoon. With the fort safe, the party travels to Lohan where they meet Lloyd and discover that he kidnapped King Albert and took the Moon Gem from him, an ancient artifact held by the Royal Family. The king is rescued, but Lloyd escapes with the Moon Gem. The party discovers that Lloyd is gathering similar artifacts held by royalty across the continent and while the party tries to reverse his work, Lloyd obtains all three of the artifacts. Dart and the party defeat Lloyd, who agrees to take them to Emperor Diaz.
Diaz reveals that during the Wingly reign 10,000 years ago a creature called the Virage Embryo, also known as the God of Destruction, came to the world to end all other life. Before it could be born, the Winglies used their magic to separate its body from its soul and cast the body into the sky, where it became the Moon That Never Sets. They sealed the moon with magical Signets placed in each of the Wingly cities to prevent the soul and body from reuniting. The soul of the God of Destruction was originally placed inside the Crystal Sphere, which was worn by the Wingly ruler Melbu Frahma to increase his power. The Crystal Sphere was shattered when Dragoons attacked the Wingly capital of Kadessa.
The soul of the God of Destruction has wandered the Earth and every one hundred and eight years possesses the body of a human child in an attempt to return to its body. The body can be summoned if the Signets are destroyed, which is done using the immense magical power contained within the artifacts that Lloyd gathered. In the present day, the human that is the soul of the God of Destruction is Shana. Emperor Diaz reveals himself to be Zieg Feld, Dart's father and leader of the Dragoons 10,000 years ago. Melbu Frahma cast a spell that both petrified Zieg and kept his own spirit alive within Zieg's body.
Zieg – possessed by Melbu Frahma – takes Shana and destroys the remaining Signet Spheres that seal the Moon That Never Sets, causing it to fall from the sky. He carries Shana to the body of the God of Destruction so that the body will sense the presence of its soul and prepare to restore itself. Instead, Melbu Frahma unites with the body himself, taking the form and power of the God of Destruction. Zieg is released from Melbu Frahma's possession and the party is able to defeat Melbu. Zieg and Rose sacrifice themselves to destroy Melbu Frahma and the surviving party members return to various points on the continent and live separate lives.
This film is a coming of age picture for the four main characters, and how their lives change over one Christmas holiday. The film is set in late 1960s Australia. Four orphan boys from a Roman Catholic orphanage in the outback of Australia Maps, Misty, Spark and Spit were all born in the month of December, and for their birthday, they are sent on a holiday to the beach to stay with Mr. and Mrs. McAnsh. While there, they meet Fearless, a man who claims to be the risk motorbike rider in the nearby carnival, and his wife, Teresa. Misty, Spark and Spit instantly become closer to Teresa, but Maps, eldest of the four, is still reluctant to talk to her. He instead finds more fun in spending time with an older teenage girl named Lucy, who had come to the beach to stay with her uncle. He often goes up to a place with strange rocks, and meets her there.
A few days later, the orphans peek through a window in Fearless' house to see Teresa undressing, but Misty, being the most religious of the four, throws a rock at the wall to make them go away. Misty runs back to Mr. McAnsh's house and looks through the small opening of a door to see someone in the shower, only to find that it is the sickly Mrs. McAnsh. They soon discover that she has breast cancer.
One night, Misty overhears Fearless talking to his friends about the possibility of adopting one of the orphans. Excited about the opportunity to finally have parents, he keeps it to himself until he decides to reveal it to a priest who has driven to the beach for the orphans' confessions. The other boys realise that he is taking too long, and once he is finished, they force it out of him with the threat of Spit spitting on him while he is pinned to the ground. Misty, Spark and Spit are eager to compete for the love of the seemingly perfect Fearless and Teresa, but Maps is less than excited, even saying to Lucy, "What's the big deal about parents, anyway?" Maps experiences his first kiss with Lucy, and soon loses his virginity to her in one of the caves of the Remarkable Rocks.
There, she tells him to promise that he will always remember her as his first. The next day, he goes up to the Remarkable Rocks, only to find Lucy is not there. Her uncle tells him that she has left the beach to return to her father, and will not likely be back until next summer. Heartbroken, he goes to the carnival to find Fearless and talk to him, but discovers that he is not a motorbike rider there, and instead cleans up after the animals. Furious that he'd lied all along, he finds a painting made by Misty of him as the son of Fearless and Teresa, and destroys it. Misty attacks him and hits him with the fragments of the frame he had put the painting in, and the bond between the four orphans is broken.
Fearless finds Maps in the cave of the Remarkable Rocks, and explains to him what had really happened. It is revealed to that Fearless was formerly a bike rider, and did all of the stunts with Teresa riding on the back of the bike. Then, there was an accident that kept Teresa in the hospital for nearly a year, making her unable to have children. That was the reason they had wanted to adopt one of the orphans.
Maps returns to the beach and finds out from Spark and Spit that Misty has gone into the water, and is drowning. Maps goes after him despite the fact that he cannot swim. Both he and Misty nearly drown. Underwater, they open their eyes to see a vision of the Virgin Mary, possibly meaning that they are dying. Before they can reach out to it, the two boys are grabbed by Fearless and brought back to the shore. Maps and Misty reconcile with each other and the four are friends again.
The next day, the boys are called to Fearless' and Teresa's house for an announcement. There, they reveal the couple is going to adopt Misty. He takes leave of his friends and he watches on the front porch with Fearless and Teresa as the other three orphans walk away and begin playing on some rocks down the beach. Misty realises that they are his true family, and asks Fearless and Teresa if he can stay with them instead. They accept, and he returns home with the orphans.
Many decades later, Misty, as an old man, drives to the same beach along with the ashes of Maps, who had recently died while working as a priest in Africa helping refugees, and Lucy's ring that she gave to Maps on that holiday long ago. He meets up with Spark and Spit, and they toss the ashes and ring loose into the wind from the hill above the beach, remembering Maps and their time there, with a cheer to "The December Boys."
After a motorcycle accident, Renaud dies. His girlfriend Armelle (Camille Berthomier) can't forget him. Her sisters suggest she could go to a medium for help. Through this medium, Armelle encounters Hyppolite, who looks exactly like Renaud.
''Megazone 23'' s story is set in the far future of the human race, after, in the early 24th century, various environmental issues rendered Earth uninhabitable, forcing humanity to leave in several massive colony ships, the titular Megazones. The story itself follows the population of Megazone Two Three, based on 1985's Tokyo, Japan, where the population has forgotten their status as space travellers.
The first two parts occur roughly 500 years after humanity left Earth, as the government attempt to hack into the civic computer, Bahamut, for their city, in order to use the city's benevolent artificial intelligence, known as EVE, to influence the people to help them in a near-endless war against the Dezalg, advanced humans from a rival Megazone.
Thrown into this is Shogo Yahagi, after he is given ownership of a strange experimental bike by an old friend of his. Over the course of the story, he discovers how false his world is, and eventually makes contact with the EVE Program, who enlists him to assist humanity in any way he can. However, unfortunately, before he can do anything meaningful, the city's government become focused on the destruction of the Dezalg, and decide to terminate Shogo and EVE, who has fled into cyberspace. In the end, Eve manages to save Shogo and his friends, sending them in Bahamut's system core to Earth as the battling ships are destroyed by an automated lunar defense system called ADAM, ending the conflict, at the price of an unknown number of people on both ships.
The third part occurs several centuries after this, with a hacker named Eiji Takanaka, who is scouted by a rebel group working against the teachings of a mysterious spiritual leader known as Bishop Won Dai. Sion, a high-ranking member of the rebel group, who work under the aegis of Orange Amusements, begins scouting Eiji, while also investigating a strange program called Project Heaven that the E=X Bureau, Won Dai's elite staff, are preparing. Sion manages to confront Eiji as Orange attempt to stop whatever Project Heaven is, and, badly wounded, instructs Eiji to go to the lowest point in the city, finding the real, centuries-old, Eve Tokimatsuri, who was left in suspended animation, meant to be awoken by Shogo Yahagi. She takes him to Bahamut, meeting the AI version of Eve from the previous two parts, while Sion manages to stop Orange from making the same mistake as several centuries before, using it to broadcast the E=X's master plan. In the end, Eiji and Eve confront Won Dai, and he is slain, revealing he is actually Shogo Yahagi as he dies. Eve heads to the ADAM moonbase to shut down and destroy it, while also taking out the city's computer, finally beginning the final part of the plan enacted around a millennia before, while Eiji heads off to meet with his girlfriend Ryo to begin his life anew.
In 1823, during the Georgian era, teenagers David and Sarah travel with a caravan from Baghdad to Damascus. At an oasis, a slaver known as 'the Jackal' raids the party and attempts to add the beautiful young Sarah to his harem. David and Sarah and her servant, Geoffrey, narrowly escape, but all the others are slain in a massacre, including David's American missionary parents. When Geoffrey seeks help at an encampment controlled by the Jackal, he is killed.
David and Sarah rest at a nearby enclave as they head west toward civilization. Their flight leads them to a beautiful oasis — a Paradise—where they discover love and sex. However, the Jackal does not give up hope of capturing Sarah, so David must lure him to his death. At the conclusion, Sarah reveals to David that she is pregnant and the two young lovers finally reach civilization, the city of Damascus.
In 1943, following training in North Africa, PFC. Boyd Travers learns that the 82nd Airborne Division is to help with the invasion of Italy, beginning with Operation Husky. After nearly being killed by friendly fire from the US Navy, Travers and his platoon land in the village of Adanti, Sicily, where the group assists in neutralising several anti-aircraft nests while combating Italian soldiers, before venturing deeper into the village to find a missing sniper team and aiding his squadron in repelling a German counterattack. Travelling to the Italian mainland, the 82nd take part in Operation Avalanche, eliminating a munitions stockpile, fuel depot, motorpool, and radio equipment at the Paestum archaeological dig near Naples, with Travers assisting in an assault on a ruined temple housing anti-air guns, destroying them before Allied P-40 fighter bombers arrive and destroy the German artillery located around the dig site.
One year later, on 6 June 1944, the 82nd take part in Operation Neptune, lending assistance to the American forces preparing to land on Utah Beach as part of Operation Overlord. Working with his squadron, Travers manages to eliminate all potential threats to the invasion force, including a Tiger tank and a series of bunkers, before heading to the shoreline and eliminating German pillboxes that endanger the incoming landing forces. A few months later, Travers and his squadron take part in Operation Market Garden, assisting in the capture of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, while preventing the Germans from destroying the town's bridge with explosives planted on it. Despite a fierce counterattack, including the use of Panzerschreck rocket launchers and Tiger tanks, the 82nd manage to secure the bridge for American Sherman tanks to cross, while Travers receives a promotion to Corporal for his actions.
After Market Garden ends in failure for the Allies, Travers transfers to the 17th Airborne Division. In March 1945, his division takes part in Operation Varsity, landing within an industrial complex in Essen, Germany, to destroy its stockpile of munitions and tanks, while shutting down its weapon production facilities. Despite a counter-attack by heavily armored Allgemeine SS troopers wielding MG42s that inflict heavy losses on the Allied troops, Travers manages to overcome the new threat and successfully destroys an armoured ammunition train that arrives at the complex. A few days later, with Operation Varsity proceeding as planned, Travers finds his squadron going deeper into enemy-held territory within Essen, with the task of destroying a massive flak tower that Allied bombers had failed to level. Despite heavy opposition, Travers helps to neutralize key fortifications within the tower, before assisting an engineering unit and detonating charges placed beneath the tower, destroying the structure as the war in Europe begins to enter its final stages.
In a closing report, Travers' CO comments on how history will remember the sacrifice and courage of the men in the Airborne divisions for what they did during World War II.
Bullying, uncouth junkyard tycoon Harry Brock goes to Washington, D.C., with his brassy girlfriend, Emma "Billie" Dawn, and his crooked lawyer, Jim Devery, to "influence" a politician or two. As a legal precaution, Devery presses Harry to marry Billie, as a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband.
Harry becomes disgusted with Billie's ignorance and lack of manners, though his are much worse. He hires journalist Paul Verrall, who had come to interview him, to educate her and give her some culture. Blossoming under Paul's encouragement and her own hard work, Billie learns about literature, history, politics and the law, and turns out to be much smarter than anyone knew.
Billie starts thinking for herself and applying her learning to her situation. She also falls in love with Paul, who respects and appreciates her. When she stands up to Harry, he reacts violently, striking her and forcing her to sign the contracts related to his crooked deal.
Meanwhile, Devery has persuaded Harry to sign over many of his assets to Billie to hide them from the government. When Harry experiences Billie's new independence, he tries to intimidate her into signing his assets back to him. Billie and Paul use her leverage to escape from Harry's domination. She promises to give him back his property little by little as long as he leaves them alone. A brief final scene reveals that Billie and Paul have married.
The teenage daughter of a minor nobleman, Kerowyn has been in charge of managing her father's household since her mother's death, but hates the life of a noblewoman. She is more than ready to hand the responsibilities of the household over to her younger brother's new wife; however, the keep is attacked during the wedding feast and the bride, Dierna, is kidnapped. With her father dead and her brother badly wounded, Kerowyn goes to her grandmother, the sorceress Kethryveris, for help. Kethry presents Kerowyn with her magical sword Need, and Kerowyn rides after the bandits herself, successfully rescuing Dierna in an event later immortalized in a song called "Kerowyn's Ride."
Following the rescue, Kerowyn finds that she is both a hero and an embarrassment to her brother. She soon leaves to live with Kethry and her partner Tarma, becoming Tarma's student in the arts of warfare, and learning to control her mind-magic from Tarma's kyree companion Warrl. In the course of her training Kerowyn meets Darenthallis, third son of the king of Rethwellan and another of Tarma's students; after a period of mutual antagonism, the two of them eventually become friends, and then lovers, but when Daren's father dies and his older brother takes the throne, Kerowyn refuses to go with him to Rethwellan. Instead, upon completing her training with Tarma, Kerowyn joins the mercenary company known as the Skybolts.
Kerowyn remains with the Skybolts for several years, growing in skill and in standing within the company. During a campaign against Karse, Kerowyn ends up separated from the rest of the company and flees into Karse. There, she encounters a group of Karsites who have captured and are planning to torture the Herald Eldan; securing Eldan's promise to pay her for it, she rescues him from the Karsites. The two quickly fall in love, but when Kerowyn realizes that the Karsites are tracking Need's presence, she sneaks away in the night, drawing the Karsites away and leaving Eldan to make his way back to Valdemar while she returns to the Skybolts. Upon her return, after a confrontation with the Skybolt's selfish captain, Kerowyn is made Captain of the Skybolts.
Ten years pass. The Skybolts are a formidable company under Kerowyn, and they win a decisive battle for Rethwellan against Karse. Kerowyn again meets Daren, who takes her to the Rethwellan court. While Kerowyn is at the court, Herald Talia and Herald Dirk arrive, seeking aid from Rethwellan. Prince Ancar of Hardorn is making war against Valdemar, using men controlled by magic as soldiers. Valdemar has no experience with magic, and more importantly, they do not have a large enough army. Kerowyn volunteers the Skybolts as an advance force, while Rethwellan promises a second force with Daren to follow.
In Valdemar, Kerowyn is reunited with Eldan, whom she has been unable to forget. But Ancar's forces seem limitless, and Kerowyn was unable to bring her own mages across the Valdemar border. The Skybolts sympathize with Valdemar, however, and the forces prepare for a final stand. As the battle joins, Daren arrives with the Rethwellan army and a number of Ancar's soldiers, now freed from the controlling spell. Ancar's troops are defeated, and both Kerowyn and Daren are Chosen by Companions in the chaos of the battle, making them Heralds. The Skybolts are given a border town in Valdemar to use as a home base, in gratitude for their assistance, and Kerowyn is able to remain in Valdemar, fulfilling her duties as both a Captain and a Herald.
Category:1991 American novels Category:American fantasy novels Category:Valdemar Universe
A narcotics agent convinces a convict he helped send to Alcatraz go undercover with him to help expose a heroin drug smuggling ring. The unlikely pair travels from San Francisco to Vancouver and finally to a dude ranch in Tucson which is run by mob bosses. They end up getting help breaking the case from the gang leader's girlfriend (Winters), who falls for the narcotics agent during the sting.
''Animal Dreams'' opens with a chapter narrated in the third person from the point of view of Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams and memories of the past and events of the present. Doc Homer remembers his daughters, Codi and Hallie, when they were young. Their mother is dead. In the second chapter, narrated by Codi in first person, the plot line begins. Hallie leaves Tucson, Arizona, where she was living with Codi and Carlo, for Nicaragua. She plans to assist the newly established communist regime with their crop cultivation. Shortly thereafter, Codi also leaves Tucson, returning to her small rural hometown, Grace, to care for her ailing father and to teach high school biology. The return to Grace is fraught with difficulty for Codi, as she has always felt herself an outsider in the town and has never had a very close relationship with her father. Her return home raises the specter of several mysteries surrounding Codi and her family's past: her failure to hold a medical license despite her attendance at medical school, the deaths of her mother and of her child, and the relationship of her family to the rest of the community.
In Grace, Codi stays in her friend Emelina Domingos's guest house. As the two women talk, Codi's high school relationship with Loyd Peregrina is revealed. Loyd, a friend of Emelina's husband J.T., still lives and works in town. Re-visiting Grace, Codi is again struck by her feeling of being an outsider. Codi and Hallie's mother died shortly after Hallie's birth. At the age of fifteen, Codi became pregnant with and then miscarried Loyd's child. She never told anyone. Her father, the town doctor, was aware of the situation, but Codi still does not know this.
Codi and Loyd meet again and begin a new relationship. Loyd, a Native American who grew up on the nearby Reservation, is ready to establish a serious and committed relationship, but Codi is not ready to imagine herself as staying in one place or loving only one person. Loyd accepts her ambivalence. They continue to see each other, and he teaches her about Native American Cultures.
An Emergency Room nurse, named Flower Child Coffin, but usually referred to as 'Coffy', seeks revenge against the people responsible for her younger sister Lubelle's cocaine addiction and the widespread violence in her city. Under the guise of a prostitute willing to do anything for a drug fix, she lures a drug pusher and a mob boss to their residences, killing them. After the murders, Coffy returns to her job at a local Los Angeles hospital.
After her shift, Coffy's police friend Carter offers to drive her home. Carter is a straight-shooting officer who is not willing to bend the law for the mob or the thugs who have been bribing officers at his precinct. Coffy doesn't believe his strong moral resolve until two hooded men break into Carter's house while she's visiting him and beat Carter, crippling him. This enrages Coffy, giving her further provocation to continue her work as a vigilante, killing those responsible for harming Carter and her sister.
Coffy's boyfriend, Howard Brunswick, is a city councilman. Coffy admires Brunswick for his contributions to the community. Brunswick announces his plan to run for Congress and his purchase of a night club. Coffy's next targets are a pimp named King George, one of the largest suppliers of prostitutes and illegal drugs in the city, and Mafia boss Arturo Vitroni, a criminal associate of George's.
Coffy questions a former patient, a known drug user, to gain insight into the type of woman King George likes and where he keeps his stash of drugs. Coffy shows no sympathy for the drug-addled woman and abuses her as she looks for answers. With the information she gets from the woman, Coffy tracks down George and poses as a Jamaican woman looking to trick for him.
George, immediately interested in her exotic nature, hires her. One of the prostitutes becomes jealous. Later that day, Coffy and the other prostitutes get into a massive brawl. Coffy wins, which attracts mob boss Vitroni, who demands to have her that night. Coffy plans to murder Vitroni, but before she can shoot him, his men overtake her. She lies and tells Vitroni that King George ordered her to kill him, which makes Vitroni order George to be murdered. Vitroni's men kill George by lynching him by the neck from his car, which they drive through an open field.
Coffy then discovers Brunswick, her clean-cut boyfriend, is corrupt when she's shown to him at a meeting of the mob and several police officials. He denies knowing her other than as a prostitute, and Coffy is sent to her death. Coffy seduces her would-be killers. They try injecting her with drugs to sedate her, but she had replaced the illicit drugs with a sugar solution earlier. Faking a high, she kills her unsuspecting hitman with a pointed metal wire she fashioned herself and hid in her hair, by stabbing him in the jugular vein.
Running to avoid capture, Coffy carjacks a vehicle to escape. Coffy drives to Vitroni's house, murders him, and then goes to Brunswick's to do the same. He pleads for forgiveness and just as she is about to accept, a naked white woman comes out of his bedroom. Coffy shoots Brunswick in the groin with a shotgun, emasculating and killing him.
Later, Coffy walks along the beach having avenged her sister.
The visits Caldos IV to enable Dr. Beverly Crusher to attend the funeral of her grandmother, Felisa Howard. During the burial, Crusher sees a man she does not know who is obviously very interested in the events. Later, Crusher enters her grandmother's house and collects several mementos, which she takes onto the ''Enterprise''. Reading some diaries, she discovers that despite being 100 years old, her grandmother was involved with a 34-year-old man named Ronin.
Back on the planet, a groundskeeper of her grandmother's tells her that there is a ghost in her grandmother's house and that she should leave immediately. He also tells her that she should never light the candle her grandmother always carried, since this candle will wake up the ghost. Beverly hears a voice that tells her he is a ghost and loved her grandmother and now also loves Beverly. Finally he becomes visible, and Beverly sees a man of about 30 years.
Meanwhile, the colony is suffering from a major storm system, which the weather modification satellite is unable to correct. Data and Geordi attempt to fix the problem but are shocked to find Ned, the Howard groundskeeper, trying to stop them, before he is killed in an explosion.
The ghost called Ronin manipulates Beverly's mind so that she falls in love with him. Ronin tells her to light the candle, which is on the ''Enterprise''. Beverly beams up and lights the candle, and Ronin appears. Beverly tells Captain Picard that she wants to leave the ''Enterprise'' and live on the planet. Reluctantly, Picard agrees. Picard goes to Counselor Deanna Troi, with whom Crusher spoke about Ronin before she left.
Troi tells Picard that Ronin is a very strange man, but they have to accept Beverly's decision. Then Picard beams down onto the planet and visits Beverly in her house. He wants to get to know Ronin, and finally Ronin appears. Picard asks questions which Ronin does not want to answer, and Ronin attacks Picard. Despite Ronin's objections, Beverly helps Picard.
At the cemetery, Geordi and Data have found an energy source in Beverly's grandmother's grave. They open the grave, and the grandmother rises and attacks them. Beverly arrives and orders Ronin to get out of her grandmother's body. Ronin does so and tells Beverly to give him the candle. She has by now discovered that he is an anaphasic alien who can only survive because the plasma-based candle is his energy receptacle. Beverly destroys the candle with a phaser and vaporizes Ronin when he attempts to possess her body.
Geordi and Data are treated and recover. As Picard's log states, "Doctor Crusher's recovery will be of a more personal nature." Troi and Crusher discuss the events in Ten Forward, where Crusher says that a part of her is a little sad. She says that her grandmother's journals reveal that "whatever else he might have done, he made her very happy."
The game begins with the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants uniting forces to save Professor X and Polaris. Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine meet up with Magneto, Mystique, and Sabretooth at a military prison outpost in Greenland to free Professor X. Upon freeing him, the teams relocate to the fictional mutant haven of Genosha. They find the island ravaged by Apocalypse's forces, and work through the wreckage and find out what he was searching for. They learn that Quicksilver was kidnapped by Apocalypse, who also kidnaps Beast from the X-Mansion. Beast manages to point the team in the direction of the Savage Land, a secret prehistoric preserve in Antarctica.
The teams work their way through the Savage Land, temporarily hindering Apocalypse's plans. Apocalypse then travels to conquer New York. The teams work at sabotaging his army and resources, but Emma Frost and Angel are kidnapped as well. Angel is unwillingly transformed by Apocalypse and Mister Sinister into Archangel, a Horsemen of Apocalypse. He is assigned as a sentry to Apocalypse's tower. The teams defeat Archangel and infiltrate the tower where they find Beast, now under the control of Mister Sinister; he kidnaps Sabretooth and escapes with Apocalypse and Mister Sinister to Egypt.
They learn that Apocalypse's plan is to use Polaris, Quicksilver, Emma Frost, and Sabretooth—four mutants with what he refers to as Harmonic DNA—as part of a machine to fuel an experiment to grant him massive amounts of power. The teams then follow Apocalypse to Egypt where they defeat Mister Sinister, freeing Beast from Sinister's control. After besting the final guard, the Living Monolith, the teams battle Apocalypse and defeat him by stealing the powers from his machine. In the final cutscene, Magneto and Professor X part once again as adversaries, noting that Apocalypse was defeated but not destroyed. Beast ponders why the machine did not work properly, wondering if sabotage was a factor. As the X-Jet flies away, Sinister is seen on top of the pyramid, laughing, hinting that he sabotaged the machine.
''Lagoon Engine'' revolves around two characters: 12-year-old Yen, and 11-year-old Jin. While Yen's intelligent, calm, and thinks tactically, Jin's hotheaded and rushes into battle.
The Ragun family is dedicated to defeating ghosts, evil spirits, etc. - known as 'Maga' Yen and Jin just happen to the successors of the family, and they have to fight Maga too. In short: Yen and Jin are Gakushi.
Both Yen and Jin have Maga - though not evil maga. Yen's Maga is called Koga, while Jin's maga is named Sora. Koga is good with gathering information, analyzing and remembering things, though he's extremely bad at attacking. Sora has no intellectual power whatsoever, but his attack power is very high.
Daisuke Kataoka writes of the series,
Eddie Miller (Robert Forster) is a traveling salesman, servicing towns in Pennsylvania. He sells diamonds and jewelry to 'Mom & Pop' one of a kind stores. In the business for thirty years, he is weary of the grind after recovering from a heart attack, the recent death of his wife, and the corporate take-over that he senses will eliminate his employment. He is a 'liability', a dinosaur. A last task: train his replacement, Bobby Walker (Donnie Wahlberg). This is a 'road' film, 'buddy' film, and 'coming-of-age' film as the plot unfolds. Eddie eases up on the brash, uncouth Bobby, and they eventually develop a mutual respect; learning from each other. Tina (Jasmine Guy), a Madam with a heart of gold, and Katie (Bess Armstrong) as a reluctant prostitute complete the cast of characters.
Decades after the book's events, the forty-something Toland Polk narrates his youth in the fictional town of Clayfield, in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s. After his parents die in a car accident, he finds he has no direction. He chooses to work for a gas station rather than go to college.
Polk becomes involved with the black community and the Civil Rights Movement. At the same time, he courts a folk singer named Ginger in the hopes of "curing" his homosexuality. Together they have a child they give up for adoption. Polk finds the black community more accepting of his homosexuality than his own white community. The bombing of a black community center, the lynching of a gay friend, and other such events push him to social activism.
In the summer of 1962, brainy, shy fifth-grader Scott Smalls moves to a Los Angeles suburb, where his mother encourages him to make friends in the neighborhood. He tries to join a group of boys who play baseball daily in a local sandlot, but is embarrassed by his inability to catch or throw the ball. An attempt to learn to play catch with his stepfather, Bill, results in a black eye. Nevertheless, he is invited to join the team by their leader and best player, Benny Rodriguez, who teaches him the basic skills needed to play the game.
When catcher Hamilton "Ham" Porter hits a home run into an adjacent backyard, Smalls attempts to retrieve the ball but is stopped by the other boys, who tell him of "the Beast", a large and highly territorial English Mastiff which the boys' imaginations have transformed into a kid-eating "giant gorilla-dog thing". Many baseballs hit into the yard over the years have all been claimed by the Beast, which is kept chained up by its owner, Mr. Mertle.
One particularly hot day, the boys visit the community pool. Michael "Squints" Palledorous has a crush on lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn, and fakes drowning in order to get her to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The sandlot team is banned from the pool, but Squints' reputation is boosted. On Independence Day, the team plays a night game by the light of the fireworks, and Smalls observes that although to the rest of them baseball is just a game, "to Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, baseball was life." Later, they are challenged to play against a local Little League team, whom they handily defeat. To celebrate, they visit a fair, where they try chewing tobacco obtained by Bertram Grover Weeks, then ride the Trabant; the combination causes them to vomit all over themselves and others.
One day, Benny hits the team's only baseball so hard that he knocks the cover off. With Bill away on business in Chicago, Smalls borrows a baseball from his trophy room, which happens to be autographed by legendary player Babe Ruth. Being ignorant of baseball history, Smalls does not immediately realize the ball's value, and hits his first home run, sending it into the Beast's yard. When the other boys learn of the autograph, they educate Smalls about Babe Ruth and make several attempts to get the ball out of the yard, using makeshift retrieval devices, but each is destroyed by the Beast. That night, Benny has a dream in which the spirit of Babe Ruth advises Benny to retrieve the ball himself. "Heroes get remembered," says the Babe, "but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong."
The next day Benny, wearing a pair of new PF Flyers, goes over the fence and "pickles" the Beast to retrieve the ball, but the dog breaks its chain and leaps over the fence in pursuit. It chases Benny through town, leaving a trail of destruction, and eventually they end up back at the sandlot. Benny jumps back into Mr. Mertle's yard, but the Beast crashes through the fence, which falls down on top of it. Smalls and Benny lift the fence to free the dog, who shows gratitude by licking Smalls' face and leading them to its stash of baseballs. They meet Mr. Mertle, who turns out to have been a baseball player and good friend of Babe Ruth (whom he refers to by his given name, George), but who lost his sight after being struck in the head by a fast ball. He kindly trades them the chewed-up ball for one autographed by all of the 1927 New York Yankees (known as Murderers' Row), and asks them to visit every week to talk baseball with him.
Smalls gives this ball to Bill, and their father-son relationship improves, though Bill does ground Smalls for a week for taking his autographed baseball without his permission. The boys continue to play baseball on the sandlot, with the Beast – whose real name is Hercules – as their mascot.
Over the next few years, the sandlot kids go their separate ways. Only three go on to careers related to pro baseball: Kenny DeNunez, the pitcher, plays triple-A baseball for a time, but never gets to the Major Leagues, so he now owns a business and coaches a Little League team his own sons play on; Benny's exploit with the Beast earns him the nickname "the Jet", and he goes on to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers; and since Smalls becomes a sports commentator covering the Dodgers' games, they are able to maintain their friendship into adulthood. The movie then moves to the present day with the now adult Smalls doing the play-by-play for a Dodgers game where Rodriguez has come in as a pinch runner at third base in the ninth inning, and promptly steals home to win the game. The movie ends with the celebrating Rodriguez on the ballfield and Smalls in the press box giving each other the same thumbs-up sign that they had used since childhood.
Andre Kriegman (Born July 17, 1982, loosely based on Eric Harris) and Calvin Gabriel (Born February 5, 1983, also based on Dylan Klebold) announce their intention to attack their High school, Iroquois High School, calling their plan "Zero Day". They keep a video diary on the camera, carefully hiding their plans from their friends and families. The majority of the film is portrayed through their video filming, and shows them planning, preparing, and mentioning some of their motives.
Other scenes show the two attending Andre's birthday party, egging the house of someone they dislike, and Cal going to the prom while Andre works at a pizza place. In one video entry, Cal notes the origin of the name "Zero Day": Cal and Andre originally planned to attack on the first day on which the temperature dropped to zero degrees after they had finished their preparations. This plan soon proved impractical, and they set May 1, 2001 as the new date. Wanting their attack to have a memorable name, they agreed to keep the original title.
The boys arrive at school on May 1 and prepare their plan and weapons in Andre's car. Andre says that he could never have carried out Zero Day without Cal's help, a sentiment Cal echoes. They run into the school, armed with three pistols, an M1 carbine, and a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, all stolen from Andre's father and cousin. The massacre is shown through the viewpoint of security cameras (similar to the infamous surveillance tapes from the 1999 Columbine High School massacre). The dialogue is heard via the cellphone of a student who was shot and killed. Shooting at anyone they see and threatening and taunting several witnesses, Andre and Cal kill eleven students and one school resource officer and wound eighteen others. The pair eventually see law enforcement entering the school in force after sixteen minutes of shooting. After arguing over whether to engage the police in gunfire, the pair decide to count to three and shoot themselves.
On May 10, a gang of youths film themselves going to a park where memorial crosses for the victims (Including the Perpetrators) are standing, where they find crosses for the two shooters and light them on fire.
The prologue shows two auto-worker union officials addressing the recent death of a peer. Within moments, both are brutally murdered by a group of shadowy, almost supernatural killers that seem to move, disappear and reappear at will during a daring skyscraper assault.
Detroit Police Department Detective Sergeant Jericho Jackson, known locally as "Action Jackson", was a celebrated lieutenant in the police force but demoted (nearly two years before) because of a case he headed involving the criminal son of successful businessman Peter Anthony Dellaplane. The fallout over the case also collapsed Jackson's marriage and put the law-school-educated, star athlete and hometown hero at odds with the public. Even after his demotion, Jackson's continued interest leads to conflicts with his commander, Captain Armbruster, but he begins investigating Dellaplane's professional exploits, eventually uncovering a string of murdered trade-union members connected to Dellaplane's company. He discovers Dellaplane is secretly maneuvering into a "behind-the-throne" seat of power, and has been using a group of assassins, "The Invisible Men", to murder uncooperative union officials.
Jackson is assisted by Dellaplane's mistress, Sydney Ash, a local lounge singer and heroin addict, whom the businessman has assisted financially. He is eventually framed in the murder of Dellaplane's wife Patrice (who was actually killed by her husband, after her discovery of his plot, and her seeking help from Jackson). On the run from the police, Jackson is helped by friends from his old neighborhood: Kid Sable, a local hotel owner and retired professional boxer and Dee, a lively local hairdresser (and gossip informant) who gives Jackson a way to discreetly get to Dellaplane
Jackson and Sydney arrange a meeting with Dellaplane's figurehead replacement for the auto union, unaware that The Invisible Men had been tracking them and allowed the meeting so that Dellaplane could confront Jackson face to face. Before he leaves with Sydney in tow, Dellaplane arrogantly reveals the reasoning for his plans and intends to exact it using Jackson as a pawn. He intends to kill Jackson, put one of The Invisible Men in his place, have him kill an important union official, and then have Jackson's charred body discovered after he failed his getaway. "Dellaplane, one of these days you are really going to piss me off," Jackson calls after his nemesis as he leaves with all but three of The Invisible Men. "We're going to have ourselves a little barbecue," claims Shaker, The Invisible Men's leader, as they prepare to burn Jackson alive. But Jackson is suddenly rescued by Sydney's bodyguard "Big" Edd and the pair battle the Invisible Men. Edd overpowers Birch, knocking him into a control panel, electrocuting him, while Jackson turns the welding torch they were about to use on him on Thaw, who is killed when the gasoline can he is holding explodes. Shaker opens fire on the pair with his grenade launcher, sending them running for cover. They lure him outside where Edd disarms him and Jackson takes the grenade launcher.
Jackson's escape leads to a fight at Dellaplane's mansion during the birthday party for the union leader Dellaplane plans to have assassinated. During the melee, the other members of The Invisible Men are killed by Jackson (who personally deals with the one set to make the kill and frame him), Edd, Jackson's old partner Detective Kotterwell, and a rehabilitated young thief named Albert, with help from Kid Sable. However, Dellaplane takes Sydney hostage and hides inside a bedroom in his mansion. After being given a gun by Kotterwell, Jackson commandeers a car being displayed at the party, crashes into the house, kills Dellaplane's butler/bodyguard, Cartier by ramming him into a wall as the latter fires at him, and roars upstairs to crash into the room Dellaplane is holding Sydney in. After a brief standoff, Dellaplane, (a trained martial artist) challenges Jackson to hand-to-hand combat. At first Dellaplane has the upper hand, but after ramming Jackson into a car window, he is abruptly shoved back by Jackson, who turns and shouts "Now you've pissed me off!" Jackson proceeds to thrash Dellaplane. In desperation, Dellaplane goes for his gun, only for Jackson to seize his own and engage in a crossfire exchange, with Jackson killing Dellaplane and receiving a wound in the shoulder in return. Captain Armbruster arrives with reinforcements, informs Jackson that he wants a full report on his desk "in the morning ..." and calls Jackson "Lieutenant." Sydney soon reveals she plans to go "cold turkey" off of heroin, promising Jackson can have her "on Thanksgiving." Jackson replies, "Can I have you any sooner?" Sydney giggles and the two kiss passionately as the screen fades to black.
Diana Guzman is a Brooklyn teenager whose hot temper gets her into trouble at school as she repeatedly starts fights with other students. Her frustration stems from her unhappy home life; she lives in a public housing estate with her brother Tiny and their single father, Sandro. Sandro pays for Tiny's boxing training in hopes of his becoming a professional boxer, although Tiny would prefer to be an artist.
After visiting Tiny's gym and intervening in a spar to defend him, Diana asks the trainers to let her box, too. She is told she can train there, but not compete in actual fights. When she learns that she cannot afford coaching from Tiny's trainer, Hector Soto, she asks her father for an allowance but he tells her to get a job. She resorts to stealing his money instead and returns to the gym, where Hector begins to teach her the basics of boxing.
Diana's first spar is with Adrian Sturges, whom she later meets again when Hector takes her to a professional fight. Adrian invites Diana to dinner after the fight and kisses her after walking her home. One night after a spar which gave Diana a black eye, Sandro sees Diana and Adrian together and confronts her, assuming that she is in an abusive relationship. She storms out of the apartment and spends the night with Adrian. When he asks about her parents, she reveals that her mother died by suicide several years ago. When Diana returns to her apartment, Tiny offers to give up boxing so that she can use the coaching money he gets from their father.
Diana later goes to Hector's birthday party, but leaves when she sees Adrian getting friendly with his ex-girlfriend. When Diana and Adrian spar at their next session in the gym, he is reluctant to hit her, and she leaves before he can talk to her. Diana's first amateur match is scheduled against another girl, but when her opponent pulls out she ends up fighting a man, Ray Cortez. Sandro arrives in the middle of the fight to see the match end in Ray's disqualification for illegal shoving. When Diana arrives home, Sandro berates her for looking like a loser. She retaliates by beating him to the floor and accuses him of abusing her mother to the point of suicide.
After weeks of rigorous training, Diana wins another amateur fight, this time against a girl, Ricki Stiles. Although Diana has accepted Adrian's apology, tensions rise between them again when they learn that they both have advanced to the finals in their division to fight each other. Adrian refuses to fight a girl and Diana struggles to convince him to view her as a legitimate opponent. He turns up for the fight on the day, however, and after an even match, Diana wins with a unanimous decision by the judges. After the fight, Adrian fears that he has lost Diana's respect, but she tells him she respects him even more for fighting her, and they reconcile.
Mark Conrad, a debonair Anglo-Austrian former playboy and junk owner, now an alcoholic down-and-out, is expelled from Hong Kong. He is placed on an ancient ferry boat, the Fa Tsan (known to its crew as the Fat Annie), despite the protests of the pompous owner, Captain Cecil Hart.
He travels to Macau, but is refused entry for the same reason he was expelled from Hong Kong. He engages the captain in a card game and wins the right to 'live' on board. His charming manner endears him to the crew and to an attractive teacher Liz Ferrers, a regular passenger.
The ferry is nearly wrecked in a typhoon, but Conrad wrests command from the cowardly and drunken captain and saves the ship. Drifting out of control near the Chinese coast, they are boarded by pirates, led by Chinese-American Johnny Sing-up. Sing-up reveals that Hart is a former conman who won the ship in a crooked card-game.
Conrad becomes a hero when he saves the ship, and is allowed to stay in Hong Kong. He is tempted to continue his budding relationship with Liz, but decides to resist it until he has 'beaten the dragon'.
Snoopy and the rest of the ''Peanuts'' gang go to the beach for the day. Once there, Snoopy promises to go back to the beach the next day to meet up with Peppermint Patty. After Charlie Brown has gone home to play ''Monopoly'' with the others, he notices Snoopy is late and remarks he is tired of Snoopy being late. Charlie Brown vents his frustrations at Snoopy, who silences him by taking off his collar (because of how much it cost Charlie to buy).
The next day, Snoopy is thrown off the beach due to a new "No Dogs Allowed on this beach" rule (thus setting a running gag in the film), leaving Peppermint Patty to think he stood her up (as she still thinks he's just "a funny looking kid with a big nose"). Then, Snoopy gets thrown out of a library due to his disruptive behavior and another "No Dogs Allowed in library" rule. He then takes out his anger by getting into a fight with Linus over his blanket, and later beats, and kisses Lucy in a boxing match.
Later, Snoopy receives a letter from a girl named Lila, who has been in the hospital for three weeks for unspecified reasons and needs Snoopy to keep her company. Upon receiving the letter, Snoopy immediately sets off with Woodstock to go see her, leaving Charlie Brown completely in the dark as to who Lila is. Linus decides to do some investigating, and discovers that Lila is Snoopy's original owner; Charlie Brown faints upon hearing this. When Lila's family find out that their is a new rule in her apartment building that does not allowed dogs and have to take him back to Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. Snoopy still remembers her and when he found out she was in the hospital and decide to go see her.
En route to see Lila, Snoopy and Woodstock are forced to face the challenges of a world full of signs that declare "No Dogs Allowed". Each instance—on a bus, a train, and elsewhere—is musically accented by the deep tones of Thurl Ravenscroft. The pair are briefly adopted as pets by an animal-obsessed girl (identified as Clara in the theatrical poster, the soundtrack album's back cover and label, and closed captioning), and she ties Snoopy up. Then Clara locks Woodstock in a cage while he's trying to save Snoopy. Clara's mother lets her keep the beagle; Clara is so excited to have Snoopy (whom she calls "Rex") as her "sheepdog". She bathes him (and he tries to escape, but fails) and dresses him up. Clara starts a tea party, but Snoopy escapes Clara's clutches and tries to call for help, but Clara catches him, takes his dress off, and ties him up again. Then Clara tells Snoopy, "Mom says, if I'm gonna keep you, I gotta take you to the vet for a check up. You probably need about a dozen shots." Clara walks Snoopy to the vet and when they get there, he causes a fight and escapes. He returns to Clara's house and frees Woodstock, but Clara returns and a chase ensues until she ends up with a full fishbowl stuck on her head, prompting their escape. Later that evening, Snoopy and Woodstock camp out, play football and make music while preparing dinner.
Snoopy finally reaches the hospital, but again no dogs are allowed inside. To add further insult, the hospital does not allow birds to enter either. Snoopy is foiled in his first attempt to sneak into Lila's room, but his second attempt is successful. He then keeps Lila company for the rest of his stay. Lila tells Snoopy that his visit helped her to get better. She then asks Snoopy to go home with her, but he has doubts about this idea. Snoopy decides to go back home to Charlie Brown. However, when he sees Lila watching him tearfully from her hospital window, Snoopy finds that it's too hard to leave her and he runs back to her, which she takes as a sign that he wants to live with her. But first, he needs to return to "settle his affairs" and say goodbye. Snoopy writes a letter directing that certain items of his will be given away: Linus is given his croquet and chess sets, while Schroeder receives Snoopy's record collection. Despite Charlie Brown's status as Snoopy's owner and master, all he receives from his dog is Snoopy's best wishes for the future.
The kids throw Snoopy a large, tearful going-away party, each one bringing a gift. The kids closest to Snoopy get up to say a few words in his honor. But when it is Charlie Brown's turn to speak, he is overwhelmed to the point of silence. After giving Snoopy his present, he finally wails out in pain with Snoopy doing likewise. The rest of the gang, even Lucy, eventually follows suit when Schroeder plays "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" on his piano.
After Snoopy leaves, Charlie Brown is unable to sleep or eat. When Snoopy arrives at Lila's apartment building the next day, he sees a sign next to the front door that says, "No dogs allowed in the building." Snoopy is overjoyed that this gives him an excuse to return to Charlie Brown. Lila arrives and Snoopy is reluctantly introduced to her pet cat. Snoopy shows Lila the sign, and Lila has no choice but to allow Snoopy to leave. Snoopy leaves Lila behind and joyfully returns to Charlie Brown and the others.
Back home, the children are overjoyed to see Snoopy return, carrying him on high to his dog house. Once there, using his typewriter, Snoopy demands that the kids return the items he had given them before he left, turning their feelings to annoyance. Charlie Brown reads his document and tells the gang, "Mine says, that since he gave ''me'' nothing, I owe ''him'' nothing." Lucy then snaps, "That does it, Charlie Brown! He's ''your'' dog ''and you're welcome to him''!" The gang then leaves Charlie Brown and Snoopy together, then Charlie Brown walks crossly away. The film ends with end credits being typed out by Woodstock as Snoopy dictates.
At Charlie Brown's school, Linus Van Pelt introduces to his class two French students, Babette and Jacques, who will be spending two weeks there in order to get accustomed to the United States. In exchange, Charlie Brown and Linus are chosen to go to France. Charlie Brown heads home and invites Snoopy and Woodstock to go with him. He gets a call from Peppermint Patty, who tells him that she and Marcie were also chosen to go to France as a student exchange. Charlie Brown also gets a letter from France, but cannot read it because it is written in French. He is not very positive about the trip because of the letter he got, but Marcie, who has been studying French, translates the letter, explaining that Charlie Brown has been invited to stay at a fictional French chateau, the ''Château du Mal Voisin'' (''House of the Bad Neighbor''). Charlie Brown cannot understand why someone in France would invite him to their home, let alone know who he is.
The group arrive first in London, where Snoopy leaves the group temporarily to play tennis at Wimbledon, where the beagle gets in a dispute with the referee for a judgment call about the ball being in or out. He loses his temper, causing him to be kicked out from the grounds. When they arrive across the English Channel in France via hovercraft, they pick up a Citroën 2CV, which is driven by Snoopy, althougn he grinds the gears out of it. Upon their arrival, the four go to their respective homes. Patty and Marcie go to stay at a farm in Morville-sur-Andelle, where they meet a boy named Pierre, who immediately attracts their attention. It is obvious that Marcie and Pierre have a spark between them - obvious to everyone except Patty, who manages to convince herself that Pierre likes ''her''. Meanwhile, Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, and Woodstock visit the chateau, which is actually owned by an unfriendly baron while his niece, Violette Honfleur, frequently leaves Charlie Brown and Linus food.
Linus enters the chateau's attic and learns from Violette that Charlie Brown's grandfather, Silas Brown, had served in the U.S. Army and helped them out during World War II. The baron returns home and Violette tries to hide Linus, but she accidentally drops a candle, starting a fire in the chateau's attic. Charlie Brown runs to get Peppermint Patty and Marcie and Pierre calls the fire department while Snoopy and Woodstock get an old fashioned fire hose from a shed. Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Pierre rescue Linus and Violette, and Snoopy uses the hose to keep the fire under control until the fire department arrives to help.
Thankful for the chateau's rescue, the baron has a change of heart and allows the gang inside, and Charlie Brown learns the truth behind the mysterious letter he received from Violette; one of the villagers toured the United States when he got a haircut from Charlie Brown's father, whereupon Violette was able to find Silas' grandson. Charlie Brown later wishes Violette and Pierre goodbye as he, Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus, Patty, and Marcie leave to see more of the French countryside, and eventually return home to the United States.
Set in Philadelphia, the show centers on Little Bill Glover as he explores everyday life through his imagination. Little Bill lives with his parents, his great grandmother Alice (aka Alice the Great), his older sister April, and brother Bobby. At the end of every show, he breaks the fourth wall by summarizing his day to the audience before going to bed, and a relative asks: "Little Bill, who are you talking to?"
The series primarily chronicles the lives and deeds of the rich, powerful, and historically significant, but it also focuses on the lives, fortunes, families, and acquaintances of two common men: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, fictionalized versions of a pair of Roman soldiers mentioned in Caesar's ''Commentarii de Bello Gallico''. The fictional Vorenus and Pullo manage to witness and often influence many of the historical events presented in the series, although some dramatic license is taken.
The first season depicts Julius Caesar's civil war of 49 BC against the traditionalist conservative faction in the Roman Senate (the Optimates), his rise to dictatorship over Rome, and his fall, spanning the time from the end of his Gallic Wars (52 BC or 701 ''ab urbe condita'') until his assassination on 15 March 44 BC (the infamous Ides of March). Against the backdrop of these cataclysmic events, we also see the early years of the young Octavian, who is destined to become Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. The second season chronicles the power struggle between Octavian and Mark Antony following Caesar's assassination, spanning the period from Caesar's death in 44 BC to the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C. after their defeat at the Battle of Actium.
Peter invites his friends on his fishing boat for a party at sea. While Quagmire is fishing, he catches a fish that lands in Loretta's breasts. She invites him to reach in and grab it, which after a moment of hesitation he does. While Quagmire's hand is between her breasts, Cleveland approaches and mentions the snacks Peter has supplied, serenely saying hello to Quagmire before walking away.
When partaking in charades with his friends, Joe falls overboard and nearly drowns, but is saved and revived by CPR. The Griffins take a CPR class and Peter receives a card for it, but when he harasses a man in a harmless car crash under the pretenses of CPR, his card is revoked and he confides in his disappointment with Brian.
Upon hearing Loretta scream at her house, Peter and Brian quickly check and see her having sex on the couch with another man which they do not realize is Quagmire, as they only see the back of his body with a tattoo of a phone number on his buttocks. They initially decide not to tell anyone about Loretta's adultery but do so after literally doing everything in the world, which makes Quagmire nervous and afraid that Cleveland would find out. Peter then tells Cleveland at the Drunken Clam what he and Brian saw in an obnoxious manner, but Cleveland seems indifferent. When he confronts Loretta about it, she states it was because she needed passion and that he "wasn't acting like a real man". Cleveland apologizes for his actions, but Loretta sees him as pathetic for doing so and kicks him out of their house. As Cleveland is staying over at the Griffin house, Peter and Brian visit Quagmire for help on finding the man who slept with Loretta, but realize that it was him after seeing the same tattoo from before. Despite the two telling Cleveland who it was exactly, he remains indifferent by the revelation.
Lois tells Cleveland that Loretta wants him to express his feelings: that women sometimes want men to be strong and stand up for them. Peter then tries to get his friend to feel some passion by taking him to a wrestling match featuring Randy Savage, but it affects Peter much more than Cleveland. He then puts on a Quagmire mask and wrestles with Brian (who is unwillingly wearing a Loretta mask) on the ground. This method finally yields results: Cleveland becomes angry and vows to get Quagmire.
Peter realizes that his plan has worked too well and tries to protect Quagmire by hiding him at Mayor West's mansion. West's lunacy soon proves too much even for Quagmire and he returns home and calls Cleveland to apologize. Cleveland appears and chases Quagmire around his house wielding a baseball bat. Despite finally having Quagmire cowering and at his mercy, Cleveland realizes that he is unable to hurt another living person, no matter how badly they have hurt him and Quagmire apologizes to Cleveland for sleeping with Loretta. After Peter brings Loretta over, she and Cleveland end their marriage via a divorce, with the latter believing that he deserves better.
Sometime afterwards at Quagmire's place, he and Cleveland decide to repair their broken friendship through a friendly sparring match in boxing.
In the cold open, Peter tells his family that they have "been canceled". He then lists all 29 shows that were canceled by Fox between the show's cancellation and revival and says that if all of those shows were to be canceled, they might have a chance at returning.
As Peter and Lois are having sex, she yells out George Clooney's name, so Peter realizes that she is imagining him as Clooney to maintain her libido. Lois and Peter decide to take a second honeymoon to enliven their marriage, and leave their dog Brian to take care of their children Stewie, Chris, and Meg. Brian is unable to control the children, but Stewie offers to help (in exchange for Brian changing his diaper) and together they manage the home. The pair chaperone a dance at Chris's school, during which the school principal catches Chris in the boys' restroom with vodka that belongs to his classmate Jake Tucker. Although Brian and Stewie punish Chris by grounding him, they try to clear his name. Jake's father Tom refuses to believe Brian and Stewie, so they resort to planting cocaine in Jake's locker, and Jake is sentenced to community service.
On the way to their vacation spot, Lois falls asleep. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't pay attention to the road, deciding instead to read a comic book while driving, and crashes the car into a tree. They are forced to spend their entire honeymoon money on car repairs and are about to return home when Peter discovers that actor/director Mel Gibson has a private suite at a luxurious hotel nearby, "which he barely uses". He and Lois then go to the hotel, where Peter poses as Gibson to gain access to his room. When Lois yells out Gibson's name during intercourse, Peter, again, decides to return home. As the two are about to leave, Peter accidentally stumbles upon Gibson's private screening room and discovers a sequel to ''The Passion of the Christ'' entitled ''The Passion of the Christ 2: Crucify This''. To spare the world from "... another two hours of Mel Gibson Jesus mumbo-jumbo," Peter steals the film. However, when they leave the hotel, they are noticed by two priests, Gibson's associates, who were there to collect the film.
Pursued by the priests in a car chase that leads them through a shopping mall, Lois and Peter escape from the priests and drive to a cornfield where Peter buries the film. While he is doing so, the priests fly down in a crop-duster and kidnap Lois. Peter is then given a message telling him that if he does not return the film to Gibson at his estate on top of Mount Rushmore, his wife will be killed. Peter arrives at the house and gives Gibson a film can. As Peter and Lois are about to leave, Gibson discovers that the film has been replaced with dog feces, leading to a chase on the face of the mountain. While being chased, Lois slips but hangs on to George Washington's lips. Peter grabs her and, while being held at gunpoint, he tells Gibson that the film "is in President Rushmore's mouth" and points to the other side of the monument. Gibson follows Peter's direction and falls off the edge (Peter claims that Christians don't believe in gravity) as Peter pulls Lois to safety. Upon climbing back to the top of the mountain, the two have sexual intercourse there, improving their marriage.
In September 1957, at a Chrysler Corporation assembly plant in Detroit, the hood of a newly assembled, red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Fury abruptly slams down and crushes the hand of a line worker inspecting its front end. Another worker climbs in to sit behind the wheel, letting the ash from his cigar fall on the front seat. At the end of the shift, the line supervisor notices the car's radio is playing music; when he opens the door to shut it off, the worker's corpse falls out onto the floor.
Twenty-one years later, in September 1978, awkward and unpopular teenager Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham lives in Rockbridge, California, with only one friend, football player Dennis Guilder. Arnie's life begins to change when he buys the used, dilapidated Fury from George LeBay, whose late brother Roland had originally owned it. George tells Arnie several details about the Fury, including its name: "Christine". Since his hostile and strict parents will not let him keep the vehicle at their house, Arnie starts restoring Christine at a do-it-yourself garage and junkyard owned by Will Darnell.
As Arnie spends more time with Christine, he discards his glasses, dresses more like a 1950s greaser, and develops an arrogant, paranoid personality. Unbeknownst to Arnie, his mother Regina tells Dennis that Roland actually committed suicide in Christine. Confronted by Dennis, George admits that Roland's daughter had choked to death inside the car and that his wife also committed suicide in it. George forced Roland to get rid of Christine after his wife's death, but was returned to him after three weeks.
During a football game, Dennis becomes distracted upon noticing Arnie kissing his new girlfriend, Leigh Cabot, in front of a now-perfect Christine and is tackled, suffering a career-ending injury. One of Christine's windshield wipers stops working while the pair are on a date at a drive-in movie theater. When Arnie gets out to fix it, Leigh begins to choke on a hamburger as an oldies rock and roll song starts to play on the radio. The doors lock themselves, leaving Arnie unable to help her, but she frees herself and is saved when a man in a nearby car administers the Heimlich maneuver. Soon afterward, school bully Buddy Repperton – angry with Arnie over being expelled after a confrontation in shop class – vandalizes Christine along with his gang (Peter "Moochie" Welch, Don Vandenberg, and Richie Trelawney). Devastated and determined to repair Christine, Arnie encourages her to repair herself, which she does.
Christine then seeks out the vandals; crushing Moochie in an alley, triggering a gas station explosion that kills Don and Richie and sets her on fire, and finally running down and killing Buddy himself. After the badly burned Christine returns to Darnell's garage, Darnell opens the driver's door to find it empty. Darnell sits in the driver's seat and is crushed to death against the steering wheel when Christine pushes the seat forward, as another oldies song plays on the radio. The next morning, Christine is back in her slot and fully repaired, with Darnell's body still in the driver's seat. State police detective Rudolph Junkins becomes suspicious of Arnie, having discovered paint from Christine at the scenes of two gang members' deaths. However, he has no direct evidence to implicate Arnie, who has an alibi and denies all involvement.
Junkins either is unaware or doubtful that Christine can drive herself. Following the choking incident and Christine's initial vandalization, Leigh breaks up with Arnie. Dennis and Leigh - who have both become aware of Christine's supernatural and sinister nature - conclude that the only way to save Arnie from the car's influence is to destroy it. They set a trap for Christine at Darnell's garage: Dennis waits at the controls of a bulldozer while Leigh stands ready to close the garage doors and cut off Christine's retreat once it enters. However, having hidden under a pile of debris in the garage the entire time, Christine strikes when Leigh assumes her position at the door controls. Attempting to kill Leigh, Christine crashes through Darnell's office. Arnie, who has been driving the car himself and was possessed, is thrown through the windshield and fatally impaled on a shard of glass. Christine plays another oldies song as Arnie lays dying.
Dennis and Leigh attack Christine with the bulldozer, but she continually repairs herself and retaliates. The battle continues until they repeatedly drive back and forth over Christine, damaging her so much that she is unable to immediately regenerate. The next day, Dennis, Leigh and Junkins watch as Christine's remains are compacted by a car crusher in a junkyard and dropped on the ground as a solid block. Junkins praises the teens for defeating the demonic vehicle, despite them mourning Arnie's death and their inability to save him from Christine's corruption. As the camera zooms in slowly on the car's remains, a portion of the front grill twitches slightly before going still.
The Trans-America Grand Prix is an illegal race held every year between Los Angeles (Santa Monica Pier) and New York City. Recently released from jail, where he was serving a sentence for killing a girl while driving drunk, racing driver Coy "Cannonball" Buckman (David Carradine) hopes to win the race and get his career back on track. Racing team Modern Motors have promised a contract to either him or his arch-rival Cade Redman (Bill McKinney) who is also in the race – the contract will go to whichever of them wins. Coy is still on probation and when his parole officer, Linda Maxwell (Veronica Hamel), with whom he is having an elaborate affair, discovers he will be crossing state lines in violation of his parole, she attempts to stop him, only to have him force her to accompany him on the race.
Redman also has company in the form of country singer Perman Waters (Gerrit Graham) and his manager Sharma Capri (Judy Canova) who have agreed to pay Redman's race expenses in return for his taking them with him to New York in his Dodge Charger.
Other competitors include teenage surfer sweethearts Jim Crandell (Robert Carradine) and Maryann (Belinda Balaski) driving Maryann's father's Chevrolet Corvette, middle-aged Terry McMillan in a Chevrolet Blazer, three sexy waitresses, Sandy (Mary Woronov), Ginny (Glynn Rubin) and Wendy (Diane Lee Hart) in a souped-up van, arrogant German driver Wolfe Messer (James Keach) in a De Tomaso Pantera, preppy African-American Beutell (Stanley Bennett Clay) in a Lincoln Continental he has been hired by a wealthy elderly couple to transport to New York for them (unaware that he is using it to enter the race) and Buckman's best friend Zippo (Archie Hahn) in a Pontiac Trans Am identical to Coy's. Unbeknown to Coy, his brother Bennie (Dick Miller) has bet heavily on the race and plans to use underhand methods to ensure Coy wins.
As the race degenerates into a violent demolition derby, Messer is blown up by Bennie, while McMillan attempts to cheat by having his Blazer flown from LAX to New York's LaGuardia Airport where he waits out the race with his mistress Louisa (Louisa Moritz). Beutell's borrowed Lincoln gets progressively more damaged as the race goes on, while Jim and Maryann face engine trouble with a broken fan belt. The rivalry between Coy and the increasingly unstable Redman gets out of control as the two fight and attempt to force each other off the road, with Coy crashing his Trans Am after Redman breaks the headlights. Switching to a 1969 Ford Mustang he borrows from some local hot-rodders, Coy has a last showdown with Redman, who has kicked Perman and Sharma out of his car after arguing with them. A piece of Perman's guitar, which Redman smashed in a rage after getting sick of Perman's singing and on-the-road radio broadcasts, gets lodged behind the car pedals, causing Redman to lose control and crash over the side of an unfinished bridge. He dies when the car explodes.
Bennie meanwhile, has sent a gunman to kill the driver of the "other" red Trans Am as it is beating Coy. He is unaware that the driver is Zippo or that Linda is now riding with him, as Coy thought it safer for her to do so since Redman was after him. While with Zippo, she has found out that it was Zippo who was driving the car in which the girl was killed, not Coy. Coy took the blame because he knew the weaker Zippo would never survive in jail.
Bennie's gunman shoots Zippo dead and the Trans Am crashes and explodes. Linda jumps clear, but is badly injured. Jim and Maryann see the wreck and pick up the comatose Linda, taking her to hospital. Behind them, the presence of the wrecked Trans Am on the freeway causes a multiple-car pileup.
Terry McMillan and Louisa arrive first at the finish line, but Louisa lets slip that the Blazer was flown there and he is disqualified. The girls in the van and Coy are neck-and-neck as they cross into New York City (with Coy driving over the George Washington Bridge and the girls taking the Lincoln Tunnel until Sandy attempts to take a shortcut when the girls get lost and are stuck in traffic and the van crashes. Coy arrives at the finish line and is about to stamp his timecard, making him the official winner, when he is told about Zippo and Linda's accident and realizes Bennie caused it. He tears up his timecard so it can't be stamped and gives the pieces to Bennie, who is taken away by gangster Lester Marks (played by the film's director Paul Bartel) to whom he owes all the money he bet on Coy, presumably to be killed. Assured of his racing contract, Coy is taken to the hospital to be reunited with Linda by the team manager. Having decided to finish the race in spite of believing they cannot win having lost so much time, Jim and Maryann are the next to arrive at the finish line. They are surprised and overjoyed to be told they are the winners of the $100,000 first place prize.
At the hospital, Coy and Linda enjoy their reunion, while Beutell delivers the Lincoln – now completely wrecked – to its horrified owners in front of a hotel in the city.
At the beginning of ''Bartman Meets Radioactive Man'', Bart Simpson is at home reading a ''Radioactive Man'' comic book only to be shocked as Radioactive Man's sidekick, Fallout Boy, jumps out of it. Fallout Boy tells Bart that he must venture into the comic book universe in order to save Radioactive Man, who is being held captive at the black hole-orbiting prison Limbo Zone. Once inside the comic book world, Bart transforms into his superhero alter ego Bartman and has to defeat three super villains that have stolen Radioactive Man's powers: Swamp Hag, Dr. Crab, and Lava Man. After collecting these powers, Bartman must find Radioactive Man and team up with him to defeat Brain-O the Magnificent, the mastermind behind the evil plot.
Spider is a young man who makes a meager living repairing CB radios and spends his spare time volunteering with REACT International. He lives with his father, an irascible retired truck driver whose CB handle is Papa Thermodyne.
Chrome Angel is a truck driver named Harold who is injured in an accident and then issues an emergency call over CB radio. Spider rescues him and takes him to the hospital. During his recovery, Harold is visited by local prostitute Debbie (alias Hot Coffee), who solicits customers over CB. Chrome Angel has two wives, Connie, who calls herself Portland Angel, and Joyce, who lives in Dallas. The women do not know that he is married to both. The two wives arrive in town to discover that Chrome Angel has been seeing Hot Coffee and that they are married to the same man.
Spider's former fiancée Pam (Electra) is a cheerleading coach and physical-education teacher who conducts erotic conversations over the CB with teenage boys. She is romantically interested in Spider's older brother Dean, who goes by the handle of Blood.
After Spider's activities with REACT are disrupted by a gang of local kids holding a frivolous conversation on Channel 9, which is reserved for emergency communications, he decides to embark on a singlehanded nationwide crusade to shutter illegal CB stations, such as those using unlawful linear amplifiers. Spider's targets include the Red Baron, a neo-Nazi who uses a high-powered CB base station to broadcast white-supremacist monologues, and the Hustler, a teenage boy who reads pornography aloud over the air. Spider and a partner from REACT begin a spree of cutting antenna cables, intimidating offenders by visiting their homes and claiming to be Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officials in the hope of cleaning the CB airwaves.
The myriad complicated friendships and odd romantic relationships finally come to a head. Finally, the whole town comes together in a search-and-rescue effort after Papa Thermodyne suddenly disappears.
Eight unruly dragons are creating havoc in the world. After they kidnap Princess Zelda, it is up to Link to defeat them and rescue the princess. The dragons have imprisoned Zelda behind a seal that requires all 8 pieces of the triforce to unlock. After defeating each dragon, Link gains one piece of the triforce.
Plot details for the game are scant to nonexistent. According to the manual, Link enters a cave where he is immediately attacked by Iron Balls, Ferocious bats, and fire breathing Dragons. After obtaining weapons to defeat the enemies presented in each of the 4 caves per level, Link finds a key and fights the fire-breathing Dragon that serves as the boss of the level. When the Dragon is defeated he leaves Link with a piece of the Triforce. After progressing through all 4 levels, Link collects all 4 pieces of Triforce and wins.
Ganon has transformed the sacred land into the "World of Darkness" and is now plotting to take over the "World of Light" (i.e. Hyrule). To achieve this end, the evil priest Agahnim strives to sacrifice the daughters of the seven sages to break the seal holding Ganon in check.
Link must venture through the Worlds of Light and Darkness to defeat Ganon. Along the way numerous puzzles and monsters await.
An ageing Robin Hood is a trusted captain fighting for King Richard the Lionheart in France, the Crusades long over. Richard orders him to take a castle that is rumoured to hold a gold statue. Discovering that it is defended by a solitary, one-eyed old man who is sheltering women and children, and being told that the statue is worthless stone, Robin and his right-hand man, Little John, refuse to attack. King Richard, angry at their insubordination, orders the pair's execution and the castle attacked, but is wounded with an arrow by the old man. Richard has the helpless residents massacred, with the exception of the old man, because Richard likes his eye. The King offers to let Robin beg for his life. When Robin refuses, Richard draws his sword, but having been wounded, lacks the strength to strike him and falls to the floor. Robin helps the dying king and, moved by his loyalty, Richard frees Robin and Little John.
Robin and Little John return to England and are reunited with old friends Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck in Sherwood Forest. He hears that his exploits have become legendary. When Robin casually inquires about Maid Marian, they tell him she is still alive and where she lives. When he goes to see her, she finds him as impossible as ever, while he discovers that she has become an abbess. He learns that his old nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, has ordered her arrest in response to King John's order to expel senior leaders of the Roman Catholic Church from England.
When the Sheriff comes to arrest Marian, Marian wants no trouble, but Robin rescues her against her will, striking Sir Ranulf, the Sheriff's arrogant guest, in the process. He also later rescues the nuns, who have been locked in the Sheriff's castle. Ignoring the Sheriff's warnings, Sir Ranulf pursues Robin into the forest. His men are ambushed and a number killed by arrows; Sir Ranulf is left unharmed only because Robin orders him spared. When the news of Robin's return spreads, old comrades and new recruits rally once more to him. Sir Ranulf asks King John for 200 soldiers to deal with Robin.
The Sheriff waits in the fields beyond the Forest, knowing Robin will be unable to resist indefinitely the temptation to attack, despite the open terrain, which is unfavourable for Robin's untrained and greatly outnumbered men against the King's trained soldiers. When Robin does, he proposes that he and the Sheriff fight by single combat to settle the issue, despite the protests of Sir Ranulf. Although Robin appears to be stronger at the start of the fight, it becomes clear that the Sheriff is more than a match for him. Eventually, the Sheriff has the wounded Robin at his mercy and demands his surrender. Refusing, Robin manages to kill the Sheriff with the last of his strength. Led by Sir Ranulf, the soldiers attack and scatter Robin's ragtag band, many of whom are captured or killed. Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck are captured but Little John manages to kill Sir Ranulf. John and Marian take Robin to her abbey, where she keeps her medicine.
Robin believes he will recover to win future battles. Little John stands guard outside while Marian tends to Robin's wounds. Marian prepares a draught of medicine and drinks some herself before giving it to Robin. He drinks it and notes that the pain has gone away and his legs have gone numb. Realizing that she has poisoned them both, he cries out for Little John. However, he comes to understand that Marian has acted out of love because he would never be the same man again, before admitting she loves him.
Robin and Marian try to touch each other's hands as Little John crashes through the door and weeps at Robin's bedside. Robin asks Little John for his bow and shoots an arrow from his deathbed through the open window, and tells him to bury them both where it lands. The arrow soars out of the window into the distance. Apples are seen decaying on the windowsill.
Michael Bannon (Michael Sarrazin), a wealthy but bored businessman and candymaker, issues the code word "Gumball" to his fellow automobile enthusiasts, who gather in a garage in New York City to embark on a coast-to-coast race "with no catalytic converter and no 55-mile-per-hour speed limit" in the shortest amount of time. There is only one rule: "There ''are'' no rules".
Their longtime nemesis, Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant Roscoe (Normann Burton), who has been trying for years to arrest Bannon and his group, has flown in specially to attempt to shut down the race. He is unsuccessful, and the race begins early the next morning in spite of his momentary interference. Most of the film is devoted to the adventures of the various driving teams and Roscoe's ineffectual attempts to apprehend them.
A number of running gags ensue – the Jaguar that will not start (and never even makes it off the Starting Line); the silent (and somewhat-psychotic) motorcyclist Lapchik's (Harvey Jason) numerous mishaps; Italian race driver Franco Bertollini's (Raúl Juliá) frequent detours to seduce beautiful women – as well as some stunts and driving sequences, including the first moving car into moving tractor-trailer stunt later to become a trademark of Knight Rider, and a race in the Los Angeles River at the same location where Greased Lightning would defeat the Scorpions' Mercury in Grease. The race ends at the ''Queen Mary'' in Long Beach, California where the finishers celebrate their arrival and the defeated Roscoe sulks off to one side – until a fleet of police cars and tow trucks, summoned by Roscoe, arrive to impound the Gumball vehicles. Roscoe had contrived a plan to see to it that all of them were guaranteed to be illegally parked once the post-race party in the parking lot ran past 11 PM.
Bannon congratulates Roscoe on his final victory (final because Roscoe, who has been after Bannon and Smith since they were in high school, has reached mandatory retirement age). Contemplating how they will all return home without cars, he again utters the word "Gumball" to the assembled group to indicate a race back to New York. Lapchik, the last contestant to finish the race, roars through the Parking Lot with a stuck throttle and is launched out into the water.
The novel begins with Macy, who is trying to recover from the sudden loss of her father, saying goodbye to her boyfriend, Jason, who is going away to Brain Camp. Since her father died during one of their habitual morning runs, Macy gives up running and keeps all of her feelings to herself. Her overwhelming grief keeps her from moving forward in most aspects of her life. Macy is filling in for Jason at the library, and when she attempts to communicate with him about her unhappiness with her coworkers, he is not supportive. At the end of one of their e-mails, she tells him that she loves him, and he replies saying he thinks it would be for the best if they took a break until he returns in August. Upset and hurt, Macy goes for a ride and sees a van for Wish Catering, which catered to one of her mother's realtor parties. She applies for a job, which she gets. Macy enjoys this new job and her new coworkers. While working for Wish, she meets the artistic Wes, who she later discovers lost his mother to cancer and attended reform school for breaking and entering. During this time Macy's older sister begins to renovate their father's beach house despite reluctance from the other family members (mainly from her mother). Her mother refuses to talk to Macy about the sudden death of her husband, Macy's father; therefore she proceeds to put all of her time into her work.
Macy attends a party with some of her coworkers, where a drunk, former friend from the track team reveals to Macy's friends Wes, Kristy, Bert, and Monica that she had to witness her father's death. Ignoring this information, everybody returns to the party. There, she bonds with coworker Kristy, who advises her to enjoy her life because forever keeps changing. Later Wes and Macy end up stranded together after their catering van runs out of gas, where Macy opens up to Wes about all of the issues in her life during a game of "Truth". They continue to play the game later during work, where Macy discovers that he is also in an "on a break" relationship with a girl named Becky.
As Macy and Wes grow closer together, Macy's mother advises against the job and any possible relationship with Wes after Macy misses one of her mother's parties due to the birth of Avery, Delia's daughter. Macy later ends up deciding to confess to Wes that she cares about him, but sees him with Becky (Wes's girlfriend) and ends up heartbroken again. Her mother has Macy helping her with preparations for a party but eventually has to have Wish Catering assist her. It is during this time that Macy succeeds in being able to comfort her mother. Macy realizes that there's more to life than just sticking to the rules and trying to please everyone around her. She realizes that she's the only one in control of her future. Macy gets together with Wes. .
The plot of ''Open Your Mind'' follows the extra–terrestrial origin of life coming from outerspace as six deities (''Intermission'' act), evolving into water (''Sho-ho'') who then emerge into the air (''Hyakkin'') and to the ground (''Ku-nu''). Each of these creatures rules one of the six elements of the ''godai'' philosophy — Earth, Water, Fire, Wind (referred to as ''kaze'' in the Hyakkin chant), Sky and Consciousness (referred to as "Awakening" in the movie's title).
The plot concerns a girl named Rosemary who buys a broom and a cat from an untidy woman in the marketplace. When the cat starts talking to her she learns that she has encountered a witch, selling up to start a new career. Moreover the cat, Carbonel, just happens to be King of the Cats, presumed missing by his subjects ever since the witch Mrs. Cantrip abducted him. Unfortunately he cannot return to his throne until the enslavement spell Mrs. Cantrip cast on him is undone, and so Rosemary, together with her friend John, have to learn a little witchcraft and track down Mrs. Cantrip for her, at best ambivalent help.
The first two books are more closely linked than the third. Carbonel has been said to have few real cat characteristics: he is more like Edith Nesbit's Psammead in ''Five Children and It'' (1902), speaking "with the voice of tart and faintly impatient adulthood".
Cats (albeit non-speaking ones) are also central to Sleigh's stand-alone novel ''No One Must Know'' (1962), about children hiding a cat and her kittens from a landlord who has banned pets.
Another novel of Sleigh's suitable for the age group is ''The Snowball'' (1969).
After his aircraft company's groundbreaking work on jet engine technology in the Second World War, John Ridgefield (Ralph Richardson), its wealthy owner, employs test pilot Tony Garthwaite (Nigel Patrick), a successful wartime fighter pilot, to fly new jet-powered aircraft. Garthwaite is hired by Ridgefield after marrying Ridgefield's daughter, Susan (Ann Todd). Tensions between father and daughter are accentuated by Garthwaite's dangerous job of test flying. In a noteworthy illustration of the new technology, Susan accompanies Garthwaite on a ferrying assignment of a two-seater de Havilland Vampire to Cairo, Egypt, returning later the same day as passengers on a de Havilland Comet.
Ridgefield's plan for his new jet fighter, "Prometheus", has placed the company in jeopardy. The problems faced by the new jet aircraft in encountering the speed of sound, the so-called "sound barrier", are ever present. In an attempt to break the sound barrier, Garthwaite crashes and is killed.
Shocked at both the death of her husband and at her father's apparently single-minded and heartless approach to the dangers his test pilots face, Susan walks out on her father and goes to live with friends Jess (Dinah Sheridan) and Philip Peel (John Justin), another company test pilot. Ridgefield later engages Peel to take on the challenge of piloting "Prometheus" at speeds approaching the speed of sound. In a crucial flight and at the critical moment, Peel performs a counterintuitive action (foreshadowed in the opening scene of the film) which enables him to maintain control of the aircraft and to break the sound barrier. Eventually accepting that her father did care about those whose lives were lost in tests, Susan changes her plan of moving to London and takes her young son with her back to live with Sir John.
Colley is a "Gonzo journalist" with an amphetamine habit, living in Edinburgh. He also smokes cigarettes and cannabis, drinks copious amounts of alcohol, plays computer games, and has adventurous sex with a married woman, Yvonne. He regrets his addictions and misdemeanours and occasionally tries (admittedly half-heartedly) to give them up.
Furthermore, he reflects on his awful experience of witnessing the aftermath of the massacre at the 'Highway of Death' in the Gulf War, and covers the deployment of HMS ''Vanguard'', Britain's first Trident nuclear missile submarine.
He thinks he has a scoop when he receives anonymous phone calls about a series of mysterious deaths. Suddenly he has mysterious deaths of his own to worry about, when an editorial he wrote years before comes back to haunt him. In it, he suggested that certain named capitalist and right-wing public figures would be better hate-figures than the conventional ones of foreign leaders or domestic criminals. It seems someone is killing off the people on his list, one by one. The description of the murders (which are ingeniously sadistic) is done in a fairly detailed manner.
Under suspicion by the police, Colley finds himself involved doubly in the bizarre murders when the killer is revealed. At the end of the book, Colley is diagnosed with lung cancer (a downbeat ending omitted in the film adaptation).
Maggie and Rose Feller are very different sisters, raised by their father, Michael and their step-mother Sydelle, after their mother, Caroline died in a car accident. Rose is the elder; an ostensibly plain and serious lawyer who is protective of Maggie despite her flaws. Maggie is a free spirit who is unable to hold a steady job (partly due to her dyslexia) and turns to alcohol and men for emotional and financial support. After Sydelle throws Maggie out, Rose grudgingly allows Maggie to move in with her in her Rittenhouse Square apartment in Philadelphia. Maggie struggles to find a job and soon causes problems for Rose, including getting her car towed. Their already difficult relationship turns worse when Rose catches Maggie in bed with Jim, a man Rose has been dating. A heartbroken and furious Rose throws Maggie out.
A few days before, while secretly looking through her father's desk for money, Maggie had discovered a bundle of old greeting cards for her and Rose, containing cash, from their "estranged" grandmother Ella. Homeless and without job prospects, Maggie travels to Florida to find Ella. Believing Maggie is on vacation, Ella invites her to stay in her home. Ella admits to her close friend Ethel how Caroline had bipolar, and sent Ella a note several days before her death to look after her girls. As time passes, Ella deduces that Maggie has visited to do nothing but sunbathe and try to get money from her. Maggie asks Ella to finance an acting career, but Ella instead proposes to match her salary dollar for dollar if she accepts a job with the assisted living section of her grandmother's retirement community.
Meanwhile, Rose quits her job and decides to take some time off, becoming a dog-walker. She begins dating Simon Stein, a coworker whom she had previously ignored. They fall in love and get engaged. Maggie is befriended by one of her patients, a blind retired professor of English literature, who has asked Maggie to read works of poetry to him. Because of her dyslexia, she struggles at first, but the professor offers guidance and emotional support and over time she improves.
Maggie also becomes friendly with other residents of the retirement community, and discovers some residents need a personal clothing shopper, an activity for which Maggie shows enormous talent. Ella offers to run the financial aspects of the business, which quickly takes off, and in the process she and Maggie become close and resolve their history.
Meanwhile, Rose's reluctance to talk about Maggie is straining her relationships with Simon and her father. While Michael remains oblivious to his daughters' falling out, Simon tries to get Rose to talk about Maggie. When he sees Rose opening up to Jim about her issues instead, Simon breaks off the engagement. Ella contacts Rose and sends her a plane ticket, asking her to come for a visit. Rose confronts her father about hiding their grandmother from her and Maggie, and he reluctantly explains Ella had not approved of Caroline having children because of her mental illness and tendency to neglect her medication, and had blamed him for her death.
Rose is excited to meet her long-lost grandmother, but her pleasure quickly sours when she arrives and discovers Maggie already lives there. While reminiscing with Ella and Rose, Maggie tells a story of their mother taking them on a spontaneous trip to New York. Rose and Ella recognize the details of the story demonstrate Caroline was unwell, while Maggie is oblivious. Rose reveals after the trip Michael and Caroline had a huge argument, with Michael threatening to put her in a mental institution and Caroline killed herself two days later. Maggie realizes Rose had shielded her from the truth about their mother, and they reconcile.
Simon arrives in Florida, summoned by Maggie, and he and Rose reconcile. At last, Rose opens up to him about Maggie and her desire to protect her, fearing Simon will come to hate Maggie. Later, Rose's wedding takes place at the Jamaican Jerk Hut in Philadelphia where she and Simon had their first date. Ella and Michael reconcile, and Maggie reads a poem to Rose as a wedding gift, which moves Rose to tears.
In the American Old West of the 1880s, Miss Flower Belle Lee (Mae West), a singer from Chicago, is on her way to visit relatives. While she is traveling on a stagecoach with three men and a woman named Mrs. Gideon (Margaret Hamilton), the town gossip and busybody, a masked bandit on horseback holds up the stage for its shipment of gold and orders the passengers to step out.
The masked bandit immediately takes an interest in the saucy blonde. As he makes his getaway with the gold, he takes her with him. Upon reaching the town of Little Bend, the others report the robbery and kidnapping to the sheriff (William B. Davidson). Flower Belle then walks into town, unharmed, and explains, "I was in a tight spot but I managed to wiggle out of it."
Later that evening, at the home of her Aunt Lou (Ruth Donnelly) and Uncle John (Willard Robertson), the masked bandit enters Flower Belle's second floor bedroom and they start kissing. However, his presence and departure is witnessed by Mrs. Gideon. She quickly reports what she has seen and Flower Belle is annoyed to find herself hauled up before the judge (Addison Richards). Offended by her indifferent manner, the judge asks angrily "Young lady, are you trying to show contempt for this court?" She answers: "No, I'm doing my best to hide it!" Flower Belle is then run out of Little Bend.
She boards a train to Greasewood City. It makes an unscheduled stop to pick up con-man Cuthbert J. Twillie (W. C. Fields). When hostile Indians attack, Flower Belle saunters to a window and mows them down with two pistols, while Twillie dodges flying arrows and fights off the Indians with a child's slingshot. Flower Belle has little use for Twillie until she sees a stash of money in his bag. Believing him to be rich, she then plays up to him and they get acquainted. They have an impromptu wedding, officiated over by a passenger, Amos Budge (Donald Meek), a gambler who looks like a minister.
As she has only pretended to marry Twillie for "respectability", Flower Belle gets a separate hotel room in Greasewood City. Meanwhile, Twillie is made sheriff by the saloon owner and town boss Jeff Badger (Joseph Calleia), who has an ulterior motive: he hopes the new sheriff, who is clearly incompetent, will be unable to interfere with Badger's crimes. Flower Belle attracts the attention of Badger, newspaper editor Wayne Carter (Dick Foran), and every other man in town. While keeping her troublesome "husband" out of reach and out of trouble, Flower Belle encounters the masked bandit again. At one point, she kisses Badger, and recognizes that Badger is the masked bandit, musing: "A man's kiss is like his signature."
Twillie attempts to consummate his "marriage" with Flower Belle, but she escapes and leaves a goat in their bed. Twillie, unaware of the substitution, attempts to make love to the goat, and is surprised when he discovers that it is not his wife.
One night, Twillie again attempts to consummate his "marriage" by entering Flower Belle's room disguised as the masked bandit. He is caught, accused of being the masked bandit, and is about to be hanged. With the noose around his neck, he makes his last request to the lynching party. "I'd like to see Paris before I die. Philadelphia will do!"
However, Flower Belle saves Twillie.
The three primary characters are sent into outer space to occupy a space station for six months. They take with them a dog, a collection of white mice and some insects. The dog, Bimbo, had previously appeared in ''The Goodies''. The astronauts' names are Malcolm Mattocks, Gentian Foster and David Ackroyd, whilst the astronauts' contact at Mission Control is Beadle, an American. The humour was primarily based on the claustrophobic conditions of the two-room "sky lab" and the consequent tensions.
Fenton Hardy, the famous private detective and father of the Hardy Boys, asks his sons to help him with his latest case involving a criminal named Felix Snattman and the illegal drug trade smuggling of stolen drugs. Hardy directs Frank and Joe to a house on the cliff, whose location overlooking Barmet Bay offers an excellent vantage point to watch for smugglers.
The Hardys are tricked into the house by cries for help, and are trapped for a short time in the attic; meanwhile, their telescope and motorcycles are damaged, possibly by the smugglers. They observe a man boating on Barmet Bay being chased by another motorboat. After his boat explodes in flames, Biff and Joe swim out while Frank and Chet get a rowboat to rescue the man. Once brought to shore, the man regains consciousness and says his name is Mr. Jones, which the Hardys believe to be a thinly-disguised alias.
The next day, both Mr. Hardy and Mr. Jones disappear. Frank and Joe seek out Mr. Hardy's informant at the maritime docks, Pretzel Pete, to see if he knows anything about the smugglers. Frank and Joe revisit the Shore Road area, and inside the house not far from the house on the cliff, Frank sees Mr. Hardy's hat. With their friends Chet Morton, Biff Hooper and Tony Prito, they use a boat to search for a secret tunnel at the base of the cliff. Frank and Joe try to rescue Mr. Hardy but they are also captured at gunpoint. Chet and Tony go to the United States Coast Guard and find Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, and Phil Cohen there and lead them to the smuggler's secret cave.
It turns out that Mr. Jones was an informant working for the Coast Guard. At the end, the Hardys escape into the house on the cliff and capture Snattman while he is negotiating with police. Snattman apologizes and describes his life as difficult. His father died when he was young, and his uncle (owner of the house) was selfish and mean. After his uncle died, Snattman saw the opportunity to use the house for smuggling. As he knows that he will now be sent to prison, he wants the house to be used as a home for underprivileged boys.
Note that the front cover of the revised edition shows three boys in a boat, but in the text four boys are described as being in the boat (Joe Hardy, Frank Hardy, Chet Morton and Biff Hooper).
Frank and Joe help prevent 14-year-old cyclist Ken Blake from getting killed in an accident. As they help the boy up they see he is delivering an envelope to Victor Peters, a name that means something to the Hardys later on in the book.
The Hardys learn that their friend Chet Morton has been tricked when asked to make change for what turned out to be a counterfeit twenty dollar bill, something that the police later confirm is becoming more common in their town of Bayport.
Later, Joe is awakened by a clattering sound and sees a mysterious figure bicycling away from the Hardys' home. While investigating the disturbance a note is found that reads, "Drop case or else danger for you and your family." The Hardy boys are not sure if this threat refers to the counterfeiting case that Frank and Joe are investigating or another case their detective dad, Fenton Hardy, is trying to solve.
The Hardys go with Chet, who wants to apply for a job at Elekton Controls, a missile-development company, but are told by Mr. Markel, one of Elekton's security guards, that there are no openings. Before leaving, they notice a bike that looks similar to the one ridden by Ken Blake and that is likely to have been used by the person who left the threatening note. Mr. Docker, an Elekton maintenance man, tells them that Ken does odd jobs for the company, but that he is not there at that time, even though Joe is certain he saw Ken looking out an adjacent old watermill's window at them. The Hardys, their girlfriends, Iola Morton and Callie Shaw and Chet go nearby to have a picnic but an arrow is shot at them with an attached note reading, "Danger. Hardys beware."
The Hardy brothers receive a gift of a motorboat they call ''The Sleuth'', and show it to their friend, Tony Prito. Tony says the construction supply yard he is working at for the summer has become the latest to receive counterfeit money used to pay for lumber by a boy matching the description of Ken Blake. The Hardys take ''The Sleuth'' to the mill to investigate and find the mill wheel starting and stopping. Soon, they are attacked and left without gas in their new boat. They recover and get back to investigating by finding Ken who says he thinks someone has used his bike the same night that Joe saw someone bicycling from the Hardy's home. Markel and Docker pull Ken away and then a suspicious vehicle leaves Elekton. Later, the same suspicious vehicle gets away before an explosion at Elekton. Frank and Joe are terrified that their dad is inside the burning building. He was in the building but survived the explosion revealing that he was there to stop the attack after realizing there is a pattern to similar type attacks going on around similar companies in the United States.
Eager to learn more from Ken, the Hardys soon find that Ken has been released from Elekton. The Hardys find him at a boarding house and he explains that the bricks and lumber bought with the counterfeit money were being used for a project at the mill. Frank and Joe return to the old mill and realize that the wheel mill is set up to act as a signaling device for the people living inside; an electric-eye stops the flow of electricity to the wheel. It acts as a warning to those inside that someone is approaching the mill. Going inside the mill at a time when they know no one else is there, they discover a secret room hidden by the lumber bought with counterfeit money. In the secret room, they find the tools used to make the fake money, but before they can get away the villains return to the mill. Frank and Joe escape through a tunnel but are captured by Docker and Markel.
Victor Peters arrives and these three villains reveal that Docker shot the arrow at the girlfriends and Markel used the bike to deliver the note to the Hardys' home. Docker and Markel also explain that, without the knowledge of Victor Peters, they allowed another villain, Paul Blum, into Elekton to attack the place, which is the case that Fenton Hardy was investigating. Blum reveals that he is working for other countries who wish to stop United States missile development. Frank and Joe take advantage of an opportunity and overtake the villains. The book ends with the police arresting all the villains and the expectation of the Hardys' next case when "they were called upon to solve the mystery of ''The Missing Chums''."
At the beginning of the book the boys take their new boat, the ''Sleuth'', out on the bay. While they are cruising on the bay another boat nearly rams them. They are unable to give chase because of a damaged steering mechanism on the boat, and the boys end up going around in circles. It turns out that the boat that nearly rammed them had a purpose for doing so, but the reason why is not revealed until the end of the book.
Soon after, the boys prepare to go to Callie Shaw's costume party. They inadvertently stumble upon another part of the unraveling mystery as they see some unknown men in Mr. French's Costume Shop, who appear to threaten him.
Returning home, the boys frighten their Aunt Gertrude with their costumes. (Aunt Gertrude is a recurring character in the series.) Soon the boys are off to the costume party on their motorcycles. On the way they realize that the bank is being robbed. They follow the criminals until they lose them at the docks, where they hop into a boat and escape into the fog.
After notifying the United States Coast Guard, the boys gain permission from Chief Collig to search for the criminals in the ''Sleuth'', but the boys discover the ''Sleuth'' has been stolen. The boys search for the bank robbers in Tony Prito's boat, the ''Napoli'', but are unable to find them in the thickening fog. The boys return home, explain to their father everything they saw at the bank and during the chase, and then head out to the costume party.
The next day the boys awaken to learn that Chet Morton and Biff Hooper never made it home from the party. The boys not only have to learn who stole the Sleuth, but where their missing friends went, and who robbed the bank. As the story develops the boys learn that expensive radios that may have been stolen are turning up. Lastly, a hermit on a tiny island with a shotgun threatens the boys. Soon they rescue their friends and escape. The book ends saying that Frank and Joe would soon start a new case "in the near future while ''Hunting for Hidden Gold."'
The original story opens with Chet Morton and Biff Hooper preparing for a week-long boating trip in Biff's new motorboat ''Envoy''. As Frank and Joe are instructing Biff on the handling of the craft in Barmet Bay, another boat occupied by three men menaces them, nearly causing ''Envoy'' to collide with two sailboats. The Hardy Boys note that the three men were closely watching Chet and Biff, which becomes important later in the story.
The next day, an excited Chet and Biff leave for their boating trip on the ''Envoy.'' Both friend Tony Prito in his boat ''Napoli'' and Frank and Joe in their ''Sleuth'' decide to escort their friends to the end of the bay to see them off on their journey. Frank and Joe take Callie Shaw and Iola Morton as passengers. But before any of them reach the ocean, a violent squall strikes the bay and the ''Sleuth'' is forced to turn back to port, nearly capsizing. Soon after, ''Napoli'' also returns and Tony reports that ''Envoy'' did not turn back, and that Biff and Chet decided to press on through the storm. The boat was last seen headed out to the open ocean.
After three days with no word from their friends, Frank and Joe organize a search effort to find trace of them. Before they can begin, however, their plans are interrupted by the arrival of their Aunt Gertrude, who has come for an extended visit, and doesn't approve of "letting children go out in boats." With the approval of Mrs. Hardy, they eventually begin searching up the coast, accompanied again by Tony Prito in his ''Napoli.'' No villages up the coast have seen any sign of Biff's boat, though the boys do find some anonymous wreckage on a reef which leads them to believe that disaster struck the ''Envoy.'' They return home in defeat, and Chet and Biff are presumed dead by the community.
Several days later, however, their hopes are restored when Aunt Gertrude opens a letter addressed to her brother Fenton Hardy. It is from Baldy Turk's gang, who claim to have kidnapped Frank and Joe, and are demanding ransom for their return. Frank and Joe, obviously not kidnapped, deduce that gangsters must be holding Chet and Biff, mistakenly believing that they are the Hardy Brothers. At this time, Tony also remembers that Biff once mentioned going ''down'' the coast, to Blacksnake Island.
After one misadventure where Frank and Joe believe they have spotted Chet on a schooner, the boys approach Blacksnake Island to see the same boat which had menaced them on the bay leaving it. They land on the island and search for signs of Chet and Biff, eventually finding them being held captive in a cave by Baldy Turk's gang.
After briefly freeing their friends, all the boys are recaptured, and hear news that Fenton Hardy has also been taken by the gang. They escape again, but Frank and Joe get separated from their friends once more in the darkness. They reach their boat, and steal the gang's boats as well, leaving the criminals stranded on the island with Chet and Biff.
The Hardys return with the authorities and round up the gang, finally releasing their friends from captivity. They return home to find that their father is also safe, and had arrested Baldy Turk while Frank and Joe had helped capture the rest of his gang.
The Hardy boys, Frank and Joe, were taking a casual drive down Shore Road when they heard a report about a stolen car. Frank and Joe raced towards the scene and actually saw the stolen car. Suddenly, a big red produce truck came right into the middle of the road. The boys had no choice but to slam on their brakes. They ended up crashing into a fence and were dazed but uninjured. The driver came out of the truck and apologized. Frank remarks that "Something seems fishy about that guy.". They both return home that night trying not to let their mother see their cuts and bruises.
The next morning a friend of the Hardys, Jack Dodd, calls and tells the Hardys to come quickly. The police were looking for a suspect who had stolen a car. The police thought they found their man. They found Jack Dodd's fishing rod in the trunk of one of the stolen cars. Jack insisted that he had not put it there and that he was being framed. The cops handcuffed Jack and his father and took them down to headquarters. Later that night Chief Collig came to the Hardy's home telling them that the Dodds had taken off in their station wagon. A relative of the Dodds is trying to find a solution to an old mystery an ancestor had in the Bayport area.
While riding their motorcycles along the Shore Road the Hardy boys, along with their pal Chet Morton, meet a local fisherman who has just had his car stolen. The three boys give chase, but are delayed due to an accident with a horse-drawn hay wagon. Further down the road they find their chum, Jack Dodd, and his father being questioned by the police because a stolen car was found in their yard with Jack's fishing rod in the back seat. The Hardy boys resolve to solve the case and clear their friend's name.
While investigating the case the Hardy boys identify suspects including a band of tramps camping on the beach, a man named Gus Montrose who used to work for Mr. Dodd, and a group of fishermen sneaking around the woods at night.
The Hardy boys, with their father Fenton Hardy, the Bayport Police force, State Troopers and a number of other curious people all attempt to investigate/find the car thefts; however, everyone involved is stumped because the cars seem to disappear without a trace and are not spotted leaving either end of the Shore Road area. Because of this the Hardy boys believe that the cars are still in the area, but well hidden, so they devise a plan to trap the car thieves. After purchasing a nice looking roadster the Hardy boys park the car along the Shore Road and hide in a large locker on the back. During the first night the car does get some troubles to get started and thief leaves it but on the next night it is stolen, with the boys in the locker, and driven to the thieves’ secret hideout where the boys are discovered. After some excitement (involving guns), the Hardy boys manage to escape and alert the police who surround the area and arrest all of the thieves (including Gus Montrose) and recover the stolen vehicles.
Reclusive millionaire philanthropist Jason Kincaid lost his brother to a massive taipan serpent during a hunting trip in Micronesia. The snake also bit him, but rather than dying from the venom he survived and seemingly developed a telepathic link with the creature, caused by the venom mutating the brain cells responsible for extrasensory perception. Haunted by visions of the snake's continued killings, Kincaid pays to have a poacher capture it and deliver it to his mansion outside San Diego. He hires psychiatrist and ESP researcher Tom Brasilian in the hopes that he can help him rid of the unwanted psychic link once and for all. In exchange, Kincaid offers to underwrite all of Brasilian's on-going research.
However, a Satanic cult also has its eyes on the snake. As it is worshiped by the indigenous natives as the guardian of their underworld, they believe that it is, in fact, a demon and hopes to acquire it for worship. The cult hires ex-CIA agent Warren Crowley to steal the snake. Crowley bribes a sailor on the ship transporting it to the United States to help secure it, but the mole is killed when he attempts to look inside the snake's container and is bitten. The venom causes his blood vessels and visceral tissues to rapidly swell and he dies by falling overboard.
As Brasilian insists on keeping the snake at his university laboratory until Kincaid's private lab is constructed, he oversees its transportation there, unknowingly being tailed by Crowley and his minder Deacon Tyrone. Kincaid's niece Suzanne, believing that his psychic link is actually a delusion brought on by the trauma of her father's death, attempts to kill the snake by secretly increasing the temperature of its container to a lethal 150 degrees. That night, Crowley and Tyrone break into the lab. Tyrone, realizing that the snake is overheated, opens the container. The snake promptly breaks loose and kills Tyrone and the lab director before escaping outside. Brasilian and Suzanne are summoned to the site by police, while Kincaid senses that the snake has broken loose.
Brasilian surmises that the snake must go to a temperate environment, and searches a nearby greenhouse with Suzanne. The snake attacks them, and Brasilian barely manages to fend it off with a fire extinguisher. Police arrive, but Kincaid manages to ward them off by convincing them of the danger the creature poses. All three are taken into custody, and police are skeptical of Kincaid's claims and threaten to charge him with manslaughter for illicitly importing such a deadly animal. Meanwhile, the snake attacks a nearby sorority house and kills its inhabitants, an act Kincaid witnesses through his mental link.
Crowley is threatened by the cult for his failure to secure the snake. He bribes the location of Kincaid's residence and travels there by van, believing the snake will eventually travel there at which point he can capture it. Meanwhile, Brasilian determines that Kincaid's psychic link can be used to track down the snake before it strikes again. He hooks him up to a brain-pattern monitoring device, and Kincaid begins having a telepathic episode, seeing the snake arrive at his house and kill Crowley. Kincaid can only shout out a few cryptic words before the connection is lost, and disappears before he can be questioned any further. Suzanne realizes that he was referring to their house, and she and Brasilian race to intercept him.
Kincaid arrives at the house, where the snake has already killed a groundskeeper. Picking up an assault rifle, he searches the grounds but is repeatedly struck by more and more intense visions of the snake's previous kills, losing his gun in the process. Finally, he confronts the creature in the backyard, where the psychic energy causes spontaneous explosions around the two. He attacks it with a knife, but it quickly gains the upper hand and kills him. Brasilian and Suzanne arrive, and Brasilian picks up Kincaid's gun and shoots the snake to death. He and Suzanne leave as the snake's remains burn side by side with Kincaid.
During a rainy night, a fishing boat is attacked by a giant octopus. The giant octopus is then attacked by a giant green-haired humanoid monster. After defeating the giant octopus, the green monster then attacks the boat. A survivor is recovered, who reveals to doctors and police that Frankenstein attacked his boat and ate the crew. The press picks up the story and interviews Dr. Paul Stewart and his assistant, Dr. Akemi Togawa, who once had a baby Frankenstein in their possession for study five years prior. Stewart and Akemi dispel the idea that the attack was caused by their Frankenstein, postulating that their Frankenstein was gentle, would not attack nor eat people, nor would he live in the ocean as he was found in the mountains and likely died after he escaped.
Another boat is attacked and villagers see the green Frankenstein off the coast at the same time that a mountain guide reports seeing Frankenstein in the Japanese Alps. Stewart and Akemi investigate the mountains and find giant footprints in the snow. Their colleague, Dr. Majida, collects tissue samples from the second boat. The green Frankenstein attacks Haneda Airport, eats a woman and returns to the sea after the clouds clear. Stewart and Akemi leave for Tokyo for a meeting with the military to discuss plans to kill the monster. Majida deduces that the green Frankenstein is sensitive to light. The green Frankenstein briefly appears in Tokyo, but is driven away by bright lights. It retreats to the mountains, where the military counterattacks it. Then a second Frankenstein, brown-haired in appearance, appears and comes to the green Frankenstein's aid, helping it escape.
Stewart and Akemi conclude that the brown Frankenstein is their former subject. To distinguish the monsters, the military designate the brown and green Frankensteins as Sanda and Gaira, respectively. After collecting and examining tissue samples from both monsters, Stewart concludes that Gaira is Sanda's clone. He theorizes that a piece of Sanda's tissue made its way out to sea, where it survived off plankton and evolved into Gaira. During a hiking trip, Stewart, Akemi and several hikers run away from Gaira. Akemi falls off a ledge, but Sanda saves her in time, injuring his leg in the process. Stewart and Akemi try to convince the military that only Gaira should be killed while Sanda should be spared, but the army ignores their pleas, unwilling to risk letting either monster live. After discovering that Gaira devoured people, Sanda attacks him. Gaira escapes with Sanda pursuing and heads towards Tokyo, no longer deterred by the city lights as they now alert him to the presence of food.
During the evacuation, Akemi vows to save Sanda, but runs into Gaira instead. Sanda stops Gaira from devouring Akemi and Stewart carries her to safety. Sanda tries to plead with Gaira, but the green monster engages Sanda in battle. Stewart tries to convince the military to give Sanda time to defeat Gaira, but fails. However, the military aids Sanda as his battle with Gaira moves from Tokyo to Tokyo Bay and further out to sea. As the military drops bombs around the battling Frankensteins, an underwater volcano suddenly erupts, swallowing up both monsters. Majida informs Stewart and Akemi that the monsters' deaths could not be confirmed due to the intense heat, but stresses that nothing could have survived the eruption.
The Hardy Boys head to Montana to help their father who had been working on a case and broke his ribs. They go to the village of Lucky Lode and find a mystery connected to a man they saved, who had been shot by careless hunters in the beginning of the book. The man they saved had his gold stolen; when he was in Lucky Lode mining, he suspected one of his partners who was trying to save the gold had disappeared. When in Lucky Lode, they meet Mr. Burke who owns the general store; they later learn he is a spy called "Slip Gun", working for Big Al, the villain. They defeat Big Al who was known as Black Pepper when the man they saved lived in Lucky Lode. While hunting for the hidden gold the Hardy Boys spot a cave, so they head into it to search for clues to where the gold might be, but they run into a pack of wolves before they find any clues and have to find a way to get out of the cave. They also find Bart Dawson is Bob Dodge, the man who flew them to Montana, who is revealed to have had amnesia. They end up recovering the gold and round up all the bad guys in the story.
While their father Fenton Hardy is in Montana working on a case of missing gold the Hardy Boys go skating on Shallow Lake with their friends Chet Morton and Jerry Gilroy where they meet Jadbury Wilson, a poor old man who is also a former gold miner from Montana. Wilson tells them his tale of how Bart Dawson, a trusted member of his party, ran off during a gun fight taking four bags of their gold with him for safekeeping but failed to return once the gunfight ended. Upon returning to the Hardy home, with the injured Jadbury Wilson, the Hardy boys receive a telegram from their father requesting that they join him in Montana immediately.
After a stranger, claiming to be Mr. Hardy’s lawyer, ushers the boys onto the wrong train, resulting in their being kidnapped and later escaping, the Hardy boys decide to continue their journey in disguise, finally arriving at Lucky Bottom, Montana to meet with their father. He tells them that they are looking for gold which Bart Dawson claims was stolen from him by an outlaw named Black Pepper and his gang. The next day, while searching for the gold, the Hardy boys are attacked by the gang of outlaws; however they manage to escape and return to town for the night. The following day they manage to catch one member of the gang who gives them information about Black Pepper. Upon searching, they discover a cabin used by Black Pepper, and there they find a map to the hidden gold, indicating it is buried in The Lone Tree mine.
While exploring the mine the Hardy boys are attacked by a pack of wolves that chase them down another shaft which happens to be the main mine entrance and the first landmark on the map they found in Black Pepper's cabin. Following the map, the Hardy boys recover the gold which leads to them being attacked by Black Pepper himself. They manage to get the upper hand and march back to town with both the outlaw and the gold, to later learn that Bart Dawson had believed Jadbury Wilson was dead and now that he knows differently he is willing to share the recovered gold. Bart Dawson explains that he had not returned with the gold immediately following the first gun fight because he suffered from amnesia caused by a gunshot to his head.
A series of adventures begins for the Hardy Boys and their friends Chet and Biff after they are invited to spend Christmas vacation on Cabin Island at the invitation of its owner, Mr. Jefferson, as a reward for recovering Jefferson's car in ''The Shore Road Mystery''. While they are collecting the keys to the cabin from Mr. Jefferson they meet Mr. Hanleigh who is interested in purchasing the island. As well, Mr. Jefferson asks the Hardy boys to locate his grandson Johnny who has gone missing.
As the boys try to enjoy themselves, someone seems determined to spoil their fun. First, two high school dropouts vandalize their loaded ice boat, the ''Sea Gull'', which delays their departure for Cabin Island by a few hours. Once on the island, a ghost-like hooting leads to an innocent and humorous discovery. All their groceries are stolen, and so Frank and Joe head for the coast to purchase new supplies, but not long after, they find the original stock buried in snow. Chet sees a ghost walking through the woods, as well Mr. Hanleigh and the two high school dropouts are seen sneaking around the island, apparently searching for something.
After a series of collisions and near misses with the ''Sea Gull'', the Hardys learn that Mr. Hanleigh is the nephew of a former servant of Mr. Jefferson and he is looking for something hidden in the fireplace. A foreign dignitary, who was earlier mistaken for a ghost due to his white robes, reveals that he is seeking a medal that was presented to the grandfather of his nation's ruler, and had been misled by Mr. Hanleigh who was pretending to be Jefferson's representative.
The Hardy boys find the missing medals hidden in the chimney and also locate Johnny, returning both to Mr. Jefferson who rewards them with a medal for each of them.
While riding in their homemade iceboat on the frozen surface of Barmet Bay, Frank and Joe Hardy and Chet Morton discuss their plans for the upcoming Christmas holiday break, and decide to ask if they could rent out the namesake cabin on Cabin Island. However, a mysterious stranger chases them off the island, and on their return to shore, they nearly crash into an iceboat piloted by Ted Carson and Ike Nash, two reckless and obnoxious youths. The boys are later invited to the home of Elroy Jefferson, a man whose car they returned in ''The Shore Road Mystery'', so he can reward them. They overhear an argument between Jefferson, the owner of Cabin Island, and a Mr. Hanleigh, who is constantly trying to buy the titular cabin for large sums of money. Mr. Jefferson initially tries to give them a monetary reward for returning his stolen Pierce Arrow (Jefferson was in Europe when the car was returned), but the boys ask if they can use his cabin for the holidays, which Mr. Jefferson grants them permission for. As time goes by on the island, the boys notice that strange things have been going on, most notably the disappearance of their supplies. Frank and Joe head to a village on the mainland to get more supplies, and end up talking to a storekeeper named Amos Grice. Grice tells the boys that Jefferson had once married a woman who would inherit the valuable Bender stamp collection from her father, and that rumor has it that Jefferson really married her for the stamps, which were turned over to Elroy when she did inherit them. Jefferson built the cabin years ago for his late wife and son to use in the summer, but while it was being constructed the stamp collection vanished along with their servant, John Sparewell, and Mrs. Jefferson died shortly thereafter. It is later revealed that after Sparewell was almost caught with the stamps, he went to Cabin Island to try to return the stamps in secret. However, he hid them in a gap in the chimney, intending to retrieve them the next day, but the gap was mortared up, sealing them up. Before Sparewell died, he willed the box of stamps to his nephew, Mr. Hanleigh, with the instructions to return it to Jefferson. Hanleigh had been trying to buy the island and prowl around it to recover the stamps, but never intended to give them back to Jefferson. Neither Hanleigh nor the boys were able to find the stamps, but when a violent storm tears the chimney apart, the box of stamps is miraculously recovered.
While driving home the Hardy boys take a shortcut which results in a strange car crash and an encounter with an unfriendly stranger. The next day they are hired by Mr. Allen, the president of Stanwide Mining Equipment Company, under the guise of being factory messengers when in fact they are working undercover to investigate missing shipments of expensive mining equipment containing platinum.
The Hardy boys decide to quit their messenger jobs when it becomes clear that the gang is onto them. Instead they rent a plane and take aerial photographs of the area where their car crash occurred; however, their camera and exposed film are stolen before they have a chance to develop the pictures. Continuing to investigate the theft of their camera, as well as the theft of the mining equipment, they repeatedly see footprints and hear a voice belonging to Clint Hill, an aircraft pilot who is presumed dead after his plane crashed into the ocean, causing them to wonder if his ghost is somehow involved in the thefts.
After recovering their pictures the Hardy boys rent a helicopter and return to the area of the car crash, finding a large hidden cave and recovering the stolen shipments of equipment. Next the Hardy boys fly to a small Caribbean island, and then to Montana in pursuit of the criminals. Eventually they manage to apprehend all of the criminals involved and return to Bayport gratified at solving yet another mystery. Clint is revealed to be alive after all, having survived the crash and faked his death.
In the original version of this story on the way to the new Bayport Airport the boys are almost run over by Mail Pilot Giles Ducroy. Ducroy blames the boys because he lost his job and later he frames the boys for a mail robbery. Although they don't have an alibi they are bailed out of jail by Mr Applegate (from Tower Treasure) and Mr Jefferson owner of Cabin Island (previous book). The Hardy boys overhear Ducroy and two other hoods planning a major air mail robbery. They find out that Ducroy and company bought an airplane and stow in the back of it to follow the hoods. When Ducroy and company try to steal a major payroll the Hardy boys manage to capture the thieves. The real pilot, whose plane was ruined by the thieves, ends up using the crooks' plane to deliver his cargo. The boys graduate from high school. They get rewarded since the information they had sent to their father clears the boys.
Joe and Frank are asked by their father Fenton Hardy to break into the house of a scientist and retrieve a secret invention and keep it safe from being stolen while he is away. The brothers successfully retrieve the device while at the same time thwarting an attempted burglary. The device turns out to be a small transistor-type radio with remarkably clear reception; their father sends a message to guard it carefully, so they hide it in the trunk of their car. The next day at an antique airplane show, Chet steps on the toe of a blonde-haired man who becomes angry but flees when an onlooker states that the man was trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Later, the brothers see the blonde man, who accidentally dumps his briefcase contents when fleeing them.
From here the plot parallels in many ways the original plot, with minor changes and updates. At a party at Chet's later that night, the boys observe someone snooping around their car. Joe goes to investigates and disappears as the clock strikes midnight. As in the original, Frank and Chet search for Joe, but the trail eventually grows cold until a tip from Aunt Gertrude (of all people) leads to the caves along the bay off Shore Road. In this version, the bad guys are recast as both jewel smugglers and electronic thieves.
The New York sequence follows much as in the original version as well, although in 1967 the Hardys are less shy about calling family for help and thus do not have to hitch-hike back to Bayport after being robbed. Once the boys are back to Bayport, they find the gang's head honcho is working at the local jewelry store, and as in the original version they follow him to the airport. The use of bi-planes in the original is maintained in the new version by the device of having the Hardys contact an acquaintance who has an antique plane to help them chase Taffy Marr. Their parachute escape from the plummeting biplane, one of the dramatic set-pieces of the original version, is thus maintained in the new book.
As in the first book, Marr and the rest of the gang are rounded up late at night on the beach trying to bring in a load of hot diamonds.
This story opens with Chet Morton giving the Hardy boys and their chums a lesson on how to use the new automat which just opened in their hometown of Bayport. While jostling one another the boys bump into a blonde haired man. Later, while wrestling with the boys from Crabb Corners, Joe Hardy falls against the blonde man again causing him to drop his package which is later revealed to contain diamonds he is smuggling.
That evening the Hardy boys attend a party at the Morton's farm. While the clock is striking midnight Joe Hardy disappears without a trace. At first Frank thinks his brother is playing a joke on him but when he does not reappear Frank gets worried. A while later Frank and his chums manage to locate Joe who has been kidnapped and kept hostage in a cave along the Shore Road.
The rest of the story deals with Frank and Joe traveling to New York City to unravel the mystery of the blonde man. In New York they are pick pocketed and have to spend a night sleeping in a park, while listening to the clock strike midnight. While hitchhiking back from New York, the boys meet two Department of Justice men who are investigating a case of diamond smuggling. When they return to Bayport the Hardy brothers locate who they believe to be Taffy Marr, the diamond smuggler. The Hardy boys chase him to the airport and then hire a plane to continue the chase, however the plane they hired has mechanical problems and crashes. After again returning to Bayport they locate Taffy Marr again, and send a message for the Department of Justice men to come and help them make the arrest. Together with help from the Department of Justice men, the Hardy brothers manage to arrest Taffy Marr and the men he's been working with.
The story concludes with an informal party at the Morton's farm again, with the boys recounting their adventures for their friends, while the clock strikes midnight again.
When Raymond Dalrymple starts to receive death threats he seeks help from Fenton Hardy; however Mr. Hardy is out of town so Frank and Joe offer to help. Mr. Dalrymple did not want to give the Hardy boys the case, instead telling them to investigate the old Purdy house out on the Shore Road. While walking on the shore road they are almost hit by a big touring car with the curtains down; they then meet a motorcycle cop who was chasing the car which supposedly carried river thieves.
The next day Mr. Dalrymple returned, having decided to let the Hardy boys take the case. He explains that he recently purchased the Purdy house and had been using a secret safe room there to find solitude; however he had received death threats delivered to the secret room while it was securely locked. The Hardy boys explore the Purdy house that night and see a man who looks like Mr. Dalrymple enter the house before they hear screams coming from the house and meet Hurd Applegate, whom the boys met while solving ''The Tower Treasure'' mystery, running from the house.
Mr. Applegate is too excited to explain what he was doing there, so the Hardy boys have to go back and explore the home another day. Upon further exploration they find an unused wing of the home which has recently had locks added to the doors. The police are called who find the locked rooms filled with stolen goods, stolen by the river thieves. While the police thought this resolved the case, the Hardy boys kept an eye on the Purdy house and found a stranger coming to the house, who then runs away after another scream is heard.
While investigating the house again the Hardy boys are taken hostage by a crazy old man named Amos and another man who looks almost exactly like Mr. Dalrymple. Surprisingly they are rescued by Mr. Applegate and a bomb, which was attached to the ticking grandfather clock, is safely disarmed. Mr. Dalrymple arrives with the police and Amos falls to his death while trying to escape. The Hardy boys examine the device he was using and solve the mystery of how he managed to deliver the death threats to the secret room, as well as locating the stamps which Mr. Dalrymple's doppelgänger had stolen from Mr. Applegate.
A banker named Raymond Dalrymple of Lakeside gets death threats and shows up at the Hardy house, seeking Fenton Hardy's assistance. Frank and Joe offer to help and he reluctantly agrees. Soon after that, during a hike with their friends, the Hardy boys are nearly run over by a car. They then investigate Purdy place. After that, they rest and talk over their recent misadventures.
Another stormy exploration of the mansion reveals a man resembling Dalrymple enter the house. Suddenly, a light goes on in the house, followed by a man's scream. This later proved to be an elderly man named Hurd Applegate, a friend of the Hardy boys. He tells them of the theft of his valuable jade collection. Further sleuthing reveals that the thefts are performed in well-known speedboats such as the Hardy's ''Sleuth''.
Shortly after, Dalrymple disappears and the Hardys, fearing for their lives, go to the Purdy place to look for him. Then the Hardys are held up by a man named Arthur Jensen, looking similar to Dalrymple, living in his house secretly in hiding. Jensen was a thief who stole small, but valuable things from ships and such. Frank and Joe are bound and gagged, along with an inventor named Amos Wandy, with a time bomb set to go off at 3 a.m. With less than two minutes remaining, a window panel breaks and Chet Morton emerges and unbinds Frank, who then defuse the bomb just seconds before it was supposed to go off. Joe and Wandy are unbound next. Then Jensen is later caught on the Purdy mansion grounds and the valuables are retrieved. Another discovery proves that the death threats to Raymond Dalyrmple are lowered down through the chimney in the jaws of one of Amos Wandy's inventions, which rolls to the middle of the hidden room, then drops the note and is raised up by a wire.
At the end, Dalrymple throws a surprise party for the boys and gives Mr. Wandy permission to stay in the hidden room and invent whenever he wants.
Frank and Joe attempt to uncover a plot to smuggle refugees from Baredo in the Huellas (a fictional island nation off the coast of French Guiana) into the United States, and the involvement of local magnate Orrin North. They also get involved with investigating attempts to spy on a top-secret satellite camera being built at a local company called Micro-Eye. Someone has managed to infiltrate security at the plant and has taken photos of blueprints.
Realizing that several clues point to the involvement of people from Baredo, Frank and Joe and their friend Chet Morton fly down to Cayenne, French Guiana, and then go by boat to Baredo in the nearby Huellas to investigate. What they discover is that Orrin North, while supposedly on the side of rebels against the dictator of Baredo, is actually double-crossing the rebels by finding out their identities and capturing them.
Returning to Bayport, the boys overhear a plot to steal the satellite camera the very next day, but they are captured and taken aboard a ship where they are locked into a hold being filled with water. They manage to escape from the hold with the assistance of their father, Fenton Hardy, who has been on the same case and went after this ship at the same time. They free the political prisoners on board, stop the theft at Micro-Eye, and capture the criminals with the assistance of the Coast Guard.
When Frank and Joe try to take their laundry to the laundromat in order to clean up the house before Aunt Gertrude arrives, they learn that its owner has disappeared and has been replaced by a sinister Chinaman named Louie Fong. Later that day, the boys go down to the docks to meet their aunt, who mysteriously does not show up. While waiting, they meet a man who introduces himself as Sidney Pebbles, who gets locked into a telephone booth and, out of pity, is invited to spend the night at the Hardy home. The next morning, Mr. Pebbles has disappeared, along with some papers from Fenton Hardy's coat pockets, leaving only a set of footprints below the window. That night, they arrive home to find Aunt Gertrude on the floor, ill. She had accidentally overslept and had to arrive on the return voyage, making her a day late. Concerned, they hire a nurse, Mrs. Cody, to take care of her while she recovers. In the following days, the Hardy boys investigate a fight amongst Chinamen at the local docks, as well as meeting Orrin North, who had hired their father to clear his company name under accusations that he is involved in smuggling Chinamen into America to avoid a head tax.
Later, the boys and Orrin North head to a Chinese restaurant named "Lantern Land" where Sidney Pebbles is working. To their surprise, a Sidney Pebbles is working there, with the same face but is not the same man. They overhear Pebbles talking to Tom Wat, a Chinese man who was stabbed in the dock fight, but miraculously survived, when someone releases a dog to attack Tom. The Hardy boys intervene and save the pair, also trying to help Tom and Sidney. During the course of their investigation, the Hardy boys hide Tom Wat by dressing him up as a woman and hiding him in their home. They also meet the real Mr. Pebbles and realize that they had been fooled by an imposter who lied to them in order to get into their house. The story concludes with the Hardy boys being held prisoner along with their father, until Tom Wat is able to escape and get help, resulting in the people smugglers being arrested and the Hardy boys solving the mystery of who left the footprints under the window.
The Hardy boys meet Mr. Bart Worth who is the editor of the ''Larchmont Record''. He explains that Mr. Samuel Blackstone has sued him for printing a story accusing his ancestors of being pirates. Mr. Worth also tells the Hardy boys about the long-standing feud between the Blackstone and the Rand families over ownership of a pond in Hidden Harbor.
The Hardy boys accept Mr. Worth’s case and, along with their friend Chet Morton, drive to Georgia. Once they have set up a camp on the beach between the two properties, the boys begin to investigate the Rand and Blackstone estates. They are surprised to find a ‘sea monster’ in the pond and to witness Mr. Rand being hit over the head with a vase by Mr. Blackstone, only moments later to find the vase intact and Mr. Rand missing.
Despite the efforts of their enemies, the Hardy boys manage to find Mr. Rand and recover a treasure chest containing historical records which prove that the accusations Mr. Worth made in his article were all true. The feud is settled when Mr. Rand and Mr. Blackstone decide to work together to harvest the valuable cypress trees from Hidden Harbor.
The story begins with the Hardy boys and their pal Chet Morton returning to Bayport on a small coast liner from Larchmont where they had procured handwriting samples from Miss Pennyweather for a case on which their father, Fenton Hardy, was working. During a storm, they meet Mr. Samuel Blackstone who tells the boys that he is carrying a large sum of money. Shortly thereafter, the ship runs aground and Mr. Blackstone is knocked down and badly hurt. Joe and Chet manage to swim to shore but Frank Hardy goes missing as he stayed behind to assist the injured Mr. Blackstone.
Shortly after Frank is located, the three boys are arrested on charges of robbing Mr. Blackstone. The Hardy boys immediately suspect Mr. Ruel Rand of robbing Mr. Blackstone and set out to track him down. Recording the license plate of a car that they see him get into, they learn he lives in Hidden Harbor. The Hardy boys visit the wreck of the ''Resolute'' where they attempt to retrieve the handwriting samples. However, their boat drifts off and they are detained by the Coast Guard before they are able to reach their stateroom. After returning to land, they are questioned by the district attorney at Mr. Blackstone’s bedside. There they learn about the long-standing feud between the Blackstones and the Rands.
Chet and the Hardy boys travel south to Hidden Harbor to retrieve new handwriting samples from Miss Pennyworth as well as to investigate who stole Mr. Blackstone’s money. While there, they are followed by a detective and their campsite is vandalized. They also stumble across a ‘secret society’ of young black men being led by Luke Jones, a servant to Mr. Blackstone. This group of Negroes kidnaps Mr. Rand’s mentally insane brother who manages to turn the tables on them by stealing their revolvers. Eventually the Hardy boys manage to find and disarm the brother as well as capture Luke Jones and make him confess to stealing Mr. Blackstone’s money and his diamond ring as well as being responsible for inciting more hatred between the two families. The Hardy boys also manage to gather indisputable evidence which solves their father’s case without the need for replacement handwriting samples.
The Hardy boys plan to go for a football game in the Seneca grounds. While they are going, they experience a shortage of petrol, and are asked by a man in a truck from Old Kentucky the directions to the racetracks. Shortly after giving the truck directions, the brothers hear a gunshot which they mark as suspicious. Despite the many setbacks the brothers encounter while going to the game, they reached just in time to see the opening kick-off.
Frank is continuously bothered by a foreigner who introduces himself as Mr. Vilnoff, who doesn't understand the rules of football, and continues to pester the older Hardy lad into explaining the game to him. Frank tries losing the interrogator in the crowd, but he pops up again, right next to him, asking the self-same annoying questions. Frank is so pissed off by it all, he believes that the only plus-point of the day is that Bayport High emerges victorious.
The next day, via Chet, the Hardys come to know that the famous racehorse, Topnotch, is missing. And, in the middle of the night, there was an explosion in the munitions factory near Renside. Frank has a hunch that the truck from Old Kentucky was the truck dropping clean out of sight. That afternoon, the Hardys decide to go to the races; however, they discover that their roadster was in need of repair which would not be fixed till later in the afternoon. They go to the races via bus and stop by the nearest refreshment stand, only to see that the man behind the counter was manipulating a timid old lady buying refreshments.
After giving the lady the dollar the shopkeeper owed to her, they make inquiries under the grandstand about Topnotch, and the red-faced trainer they are questioning is convinced that Topnotch has been stolen. While roaming about, the brothers notice a child who looked friendless and forlorn. The Hardys bring him a kite to cheer him up, and they depart, happy that the kid is enjoying. However, they notice another man looking at the child, who introduces himself as Jockey Ivan, the owner of Topnotch. The boys use their detective skills to come to terms with the fact that the horse is being held for ransom.
That very same day, Joe sees another machine swing in from the road and edge into the parking space, its bumper nudging one of the automobiles at the top of the incline. The brakes of the automobile had not been set, however, because that collision set the wheels of the automobile into the brink of the embankment. Slowly but surely, the auto starts heading down the slope, and to Joe's utter horror, it seems to be heading towards Vilnoff, Frank's only-too-annoying acquaintance from the previous day's game, and Ivan, the two of whom seem to be in a heated argument. Joe saves them by braking the automobile; however, the owner of the auto starts hurling accusations at the younger Hardy, who stands his ground, and with the help of Frank, thwarts him.
During the course of the day, the brothers hear the affair discussed freely, but hear nothing of importance to them. They decide to investigate the route by which they'd reached the Seneca field, and they barely avoiding being hit by a speeding truck driver. The brothers, however, are sure the man in the backseat is Mr. Vilnoff. They investigate what's ahead, but give up as it gets dark. When they get home, their chum Chet Morton pulls up a joke on them by telling them they're wanted by the police. Mr. Hardy, a famous detective, decides to take his sons to Vilnoff's home for an alibi-check, where they learn that he is sailing for Europe in a few days. However, unlike Fenton Hardy, Frank and Joe don't trust Vilnoff, so they scan the outskirts of his home. There, they are caught by the gardener and chauffeur, but are let off by Vilnoff. Frank has a theory that Vilnoff deliberately sat by him because he knew he'd be questioned, and Joe agrees. He then pulls out what seems to be a clay model of a human hand, saying he picked it up before they scrammed.
Aunt Gertrude tells the boys that Ivan had come to check on them. They decide to look him up, and in that excuse, they'd check the crossroads. When they reach the crossroads, Frank suggests they take a shortcut through the field, which involves climbing up a wooden fence. However, they don't escape scot-free, as the barbed wire pokes holes on their clothes, and a mad goat trails them out. They continue investigating the crossroads, and come across a placard which tells them to keep out because of shooting practice, but the Hardys decide to risk it. Here, they encounter a mad dog, who trees them like a coon, but from the tree, Frank sees the missing truck. They go over, and seeing the truck unoccupied, decide to investigate. But the hound keeps barking, thus bringing men over. The brothers are luckily not found, and they decide to investigate a bit more before giving up thanks to the darkness.
While going to Bayport, they stop by a gas-station to eat something, but the hostile proprietor seems to want to get rid of them when a man in a green truck comes by. The brothers eavesdrop into their conversation. Frank jots down the plate-number of the green truck, which belongs to the proprietor's friend "Pete". When the bus to Bayport comes, the Hardys spot Ivan inside, who explains that the kidnappers left a ransom letter to owner of the Prescott stables, Mr. Prescott. The brothers and Ivan then receive a cryptic warning about staying away from the shady business.
Later that day, at home, the brothers receive a threatening phone call that threatens them to stay away from the business. The next morning, Chet Morton's cousin arrives, and the Hardys go via boat with Chet to pick him up. Here, they see a speedboat passing them, and they are sure the man at the helm is Vilnoff. Bill Morton arrives, along with Fenton Hardy, who claims to have seen Vilnoff in the New York airport. Mr. Hardy tells his sons to notify the people from Quickshot Photos to click a picture of every passenger boarding the ship and forward the films to Mr. Hardy, which they do. While going home, they see the self-same proprietor of the gas-station waving to them for help. They give him the help he needs, only to see that the Sleuth has started to backfire. They ask for petrol, but halt when they see a bunch of men making multiple trips to the Bayport woods with briefcases.
While investigating this, they get pegged to be normal teenagers who're gagged and tied up. They escape and go home. The next few days, they made no progress, but one day, Mr. Prescott called on the Hardy home, and the boys tell them about the truck they found. Mr. Prescott wants them to take him there, and they do - only to see the truck gone. The very same day, they decide to investigate the Vilnoff home, only to see that the home was protected with burglar alarms and they were caught. However, they resume their search, only for Joe to get electrocuted. He survives, but got shocked for a bit.
After a little more investigation, they see a glowing torch get reflected towards a cave (the "sinister signpost") which they investigate. Here they learn that Vilnoff has destructive intentions regarding sabotaging the Spurtown races after the ransom is paid. It also turns up that Vilnoff has henchmen, and they are conspirating against the races too. After a long resistance, the bad guys are captured and sent to jail. The story ends with the Hardy brothers reading the will of Aunt Gertrude's distant relative, Jonathan Hood, who died in Kentucky two months ago. He had willed some of his property to Aunt Gertrude, and that he had left to Aunt Gertrude his only asset- a stable of race-horses.
While leaving the baseball field the Hardy boys are approached by a blind peddler with a warning for their father Fenton Hardy. Then the boys take their boat, the ''Sleuth'' out on Barmet Bay for a ride and to watch the testing of a new hydrofoil boat named the ''Sea Spook''. While admiring the new boat they almost have a collision with it, allowing them a reason to board the boat where they find a glass eye, presumably belonging to Mr. Lambert who was test driving the boat when the near collision happened. When the boys try to track down Mr. Lambert he goes missing and Bill Braxton, the owner of the ''Sea Spook'' is attacked at his boathouse and the ''Spook'' is searched. Meanwhile, Fenton Hardy examines the warning from Henry Zatta, the blind peddler (who is really only just blind in one eye but is pretending to be blind because he is undercover), and declares that it must be warning them to keep away from the Goggler Gang. They then realize that Mr. Lambert is actually a hoodlum named Spotty Lemuel.
Their discussion is interrupted by an old man at the door named Zachary Mudge who is staying at Doc Grafton's Health Farm, a luxurious resort overlooking Barmet Bay. Mr. Mudge tells them that he would like to purchase the ''Sea Spook''. The boys decide to go to pick up their girlfriends Callie and Iola from a movie at the Bijou but as they arrive they see a man wearing the disguise of the Goggler Gang running away with the cashbox. They catch the man but he escapes before the police arrive. Later, the boys travel up the river in the ‘’sleuth’’ to speak to Mrs. Lunberry, the owner of a Jeweled Siva which was recently stolen, on behalf of their father who is going to take on the case. Upon returning they are summoned to Doc Grafton’s Health Farm by their chum Chet Morton, who has taken summer employment there. During the course of their travels they keep seeing suspicious vehicles, specifically brand new greenTorpedo sedans. When they get to the health farm Chet tells them that he has learned that someone is going to kidnap them and leaves them in suspense until Callie and Iola arrive and Chet says that they are kidnapping them to go to a beach party. The clue about the green Torpedo leads them to Izmir Motors, owned by Malcolm Izmir. The boys try to get to the door of Mr. Izmir’s house but are attacked by his guard dogs and have to climb a tree to escape. The butler finally comes outside and calls the dog and the Hardys get to talk to Malcolm Izmir, who says he has been receiving threatening notes. Upon returning home they find their house has been burglarized and their father's safe blown open and Aunt Gertude tied and gagged with a note that calls her a blabbermouth.
They learn from Chief Collig that the Bijou holdup man was actually Nick Cordoza, and that he had broken into Mr. Izmir’s house, but Mr. Izmir had refused to press charges. The boys also learn from Mr. Mudge that the Izmir syndicate has gone broke. They also suspect that Doc Grafton’s resort is actually a hideout for crooks who are getting plastic surgery to alter their looks, based on Chet’s report that he saw a mummy in an off-limits building on the Health Farm and their guess that Mr. Izmir is the head of the Goggler Gang because his name can be shortened to Mal I, which may mean ‘evil eye’. Fenton Hardy goes undercover at the resort while Chet and the Hardy boys investigate by sneaking onto the Health Farm. They all end up captured by Spotty Lemuel and Rip Sinder. They are rescued when Chet calls the police, who arrest the villains and several other crooks that were staying at the Health Farm.
The boys (Frank, Joe, and Chet) go see a movie called "A Figure in Hiding" at the local Rialto Theater. After the film is over, the Rialto is robbed, with the thief getting away with $900. Then the boys go to the Bayport Hotel and meet up with their father, Fenton Hardy. They spy on a pair of men (Rip Sinder and Spotty Lemuel) in the room next door, part of a cruel gang called the "Eye Syndicate", run by a bogus doctor named Grafton performing fraudulent eye operations on unsuspecting victims. While Sinder and Lemuel are preparing letters to prospective victims, Sinder's daughter barges in and begs him to come home. Lemuel, trying to get her to leave, reveals to her that she was adopted, something that Sinder had kept secret from her. This works and Virginia runs away in a fit of despair and sorrow. Not long after that, the police mistakenly arrest their friend Chet for the robbery. It was really committed by Nick Cordoza, whom the boys found in his car unconscious. Chet runs away to Boston instead of going back home, following directions from a note supposedly from the Hardy boys to go there and wait for them. Later, their father devises a plan to trap Grafton by telling one of his clients (Henry Zatta) to pay with marked bills. However, the plan falls apart after Grafton recognizes his long lost father, causing him to flee and leave behind the $500 in marked money. Eventually, the boys find Virginia at an auto garage, where they attempt to prevent her from escaping, only to be caught in an auto accident. Grafton and his mute assistant Zeb find them and attempt to bury them alive but the Hardy boys fight them off. The boys are able to make it out of Grafton's cellar and the police show up to arrest the criminals. When the case is solved, Virginia is reunited with her grandmother, one of the victims of Grafton's fraudulent medical operations.
On a stormy night, the Hardy boys receive a visit from Captain Early who tells them the story of Red Rogers, the ‘Jolly Roger’, and Whalebone Island, where the ghost is said to haunt. The next day, the boys receive a map in the mail showing a red 'X' on Whalebone Island. They assume this is a treasure map so they, along with their friend Chet Morton, go to meet their father and explore the island. As they approach, they see the abandoned lighthouse flashing a warning to them in Morse code. On the island, they find their father who tells them about a solid gold bust of an Egyptian Pharaoh which was owned by Mr. Zufar. While it was being shipped to America aboard a freighter named ''Katawa'', the ship sank and Mr. Zufar is making an insurance claim for one million dollars. However, the insurance company has received a tip that the head was not on the ship when it sank and Mr. Zufar is trying to defraud them.
The Hardy boys end up on the salvage ship that is sent to search the ''Katawa'', which happens to be sunk very close to Whalebone Island. While they are on board, they notice another salvage ship in the area as well. Once the diver is lowered to the sunken ship, he finds that someone else has already been there and stolen some of the ship’s equipment. On a later dive, the diver is nearly killed when a squid triggers a booby trap that was intended for him.
The boys leave the salvage ship when they receive notice that their father has gone missing. They return to shore and locate their father and the missing Pharaoh’s head and put a stop to a plan by Mr. Zufar to sell the real head while also collecting the insurance for the head which was supposedly sunk. In the end, while the bad guys nearly capture them, the rival divers come to their rescue, having earlier revealed that they were searching for a U-boat sunk by Captain Early during World War II. As a result of an earlier rescue the boys performed, the divers were going to give them a share of the treasure and had come to do so when they found them in trouble. While the mystery is solved, the boys discover that the money the other divers were after is actually counterfeit.
The Hardy Boys meet up with a professional diver by the name of Roland Perry, who is employed by the Crux Brothers diving company. After the boys rescue Perry from a mishap on the water, they lend him one of their father's suits, and Perry heads off to his next job at nearby Bailey's Landing. But the suit happened to contain important notes for the case that the elder Hardy was working on, so he sends the boys to retrieve them. Along the way, they run afoul of two thugs, Bock and Simon.
After retrieving the notes, the boys stick around to help Perry raise a yacht belonging to a wealthy businessman. In the process, they become entangled in Perry's bitter feud with another diver, Gus Kuntz, the unscrupulous owner of a rival diving company. Kuntz employs the thugs Bock and Simon, and repeatedly tries to sabotage Perry's diving operations, putting Perry's and the boys' lives at risk. Mysterious notes left at the Hardys' hotel serve as the eponymous secret warnings, foretelling misfortune, but the boys are undaunted.
At length the yacht is raised, and Perry moves on to his next job: searching for treasure in the sunken ocean liner ''Katawa'' off of Reed's Point. They enlist the aid of eager photographer and inventor Earl Chipsley and his remarkable underwater X-ray motion picture camera. But the second mate of the ''Katawa'', Clark Hornblow, institutionalized after having gone mad at the time of the wreck, insists the riches are elsewhere, having been stolen by other officers using a lifeboat. What's more, Kuntz and his henchmen will stop at nothing to claim the gold and diamonds for themselves. The Hardys are beset by dangers above and below the surface of the sea as they attempt to secure the ''Katawa'''s fantastic treasure.
While their father Fenton Hardy is working on cases of museum robberies, he asks Frank and Joe to stake out the ''Black Parrot'', a shipping boat docked in Bayport. The Hardy boys get a job loading crates aboard the ship but because the crew is so unfriendly and the boys are kept very busy, they don't have a chance to investigate. They instead decide to follow another lead and travel to New York to search for a rare old book. While scouring a used book store, they locate a book titled ''Empire of the Twisted Claw'' which bears a symbol on the cover which matches a ring the first mate of the ''Black Parrot'' was wearing. While they cannot afford to purchase the book, the store keeper allows them to read it, whereby they learn about the Empire of the Twisted Claw and the pirate ships named ''Black Parrot'' and ''Yellow Parrot'' and the King who controlled the empire.
As the investigation continues, the Boys and their father learn that the thieves are targeting the DeGraw collection and will likely rob six more museums. They stand guard at one of the museums but when the thieves strike, they use a sleeping gas knocking the boys out. Following up on a lead, they find where the ''Black Parrot'' has docked again and watch while the crew loads about a dozen logs on board and the ship immediately leaves port. The Hardy boys then track down the ''Yellow Parrot'' where they take jobs to get aboard and look around. While investigating more of these strange logs in the storeroom, the logs break free and Frank must hang from the roof to avoid being crushed.
When they learn that the Yellow Parrot is going to meet up with the Black Parrot, the boys realize that they must escape. They jump ship and swim to a strange island where they meet an odd man who lives on that island. They escape the island by hitching a ride with a pilot who is a friend of the island man, and then they can return home. Later, they receive a radio call from someone on the Yellow Parrot who is trying to help them. The boys fly to the source of the signal and find the ship hidden near the strange island. At first, they are captured but managed to escape while learning why the crooks desire the DeGraw collection and capture the masterminds behind the robberies.
Famous detective Fenton Hardy informs his sons, Frank and Joe, that a clever, dangerous gang of smugglers is operating in their part of the country and the government must defeat it. He may need their help, in a hurry, and reminds them of the secret code he has given them which he will use to summon them quickly if need be. Frank and Joe do not tell him that Frank's wallet, containing the code, has been lost.
In the meantime he asks the boys to search for an out of print book on criminology.
As Fenton packs to depart on his mission, Frank notices that the house is under surveillance. Fenton takes his departure in disguise so that he won't be followed. Soon after he leaves, an attempt is made to break into the house, but Frank and Joe scare off the intruder.
The next day they go out in search of the criminology book their father asked them to find. They find it in a used book store and also run across a curious volume called ''Fifty Thousand Dead Men'', by a pirate captain. They head home with both books.
At home they receive a call from a stranger, one Pierre, who has an exaggerated French Canadian accent, claiming to represent their father and demanding the delivery of his papers to a seedy bar in the water front district. There follows several attempts by Pierre to trick the boys into turning over their father's papers, including the use of the secret code after Frank's wallet is mysteriously returned. As each attempt is countered, the boys follow Pierre back to a tramp schooner, the ''Black Parrot'', being loaded for departure. After surveying the ship and overhearing a sailor report that he had gotten the papers, they head back home.
At home, they find their Aunt and the housekeeper tied up and their father's papers stolen. Remembering the comments they overheard on the ''Black Parrot'' regarding “the papers”, they hurry to the ship, only to find it has departed. They give chase in their speedboat, but run out of gas and the schooner gets away. Interrogating the clerk at the shipping office gives them little to go on except the vague information that the ''Black Parrot'' often plies the logging camps along the Canadian coast.
Back home again, the boys’ mother returns from a trip and relates to them a strange message from their father that was received by the hotel clerk. Using the code sheet, Frank and Joe determine that the message mentions “fishing boat” and instructs them to go to the Canadian woods. They conclude that their father has been kidnapped and was only able to leave an incomplete message. They resolve to travel to the Canadian woods, explore around the lumbering camps to find their father and maybe the ''Black Parrot''. They leave their friend, Chet, to watch over and protect the household.
On the train Frank reads the pirate book and discovers that the pirate, one Captain Gronger, has a pet parrot that broke his leg and ended up with a twisted claw. The pirate captain adopts a twisted claw as his insignia.
Once in Canada they travel into the woods to a lumber town, Woodsville, on the outskirts of the lumber country. Arriving at night, they check into a rustic boarding house / hotel and are assigned a room to be shared with two other boarders. Upon encountering the Hardys, the two boarders are immediately startled and they bolt and run. The Hardys give chase but the two get away. One of them resembles the intruder they confronted back home.
Subsequent inquiries reveal that the larger of the two is young Jim Hoskin, the arrogant, boastful, ne’er-do-well son of old Jim Hoskin. Setting out for old Jim Hoskin's cabin, they encounter and confront young Jim and his shorter companion, a sailor. After a brief fight, the two get away again.
Waiting until dark to reconnoiter, Joe heads out alone, while Frank gets some more sleep. In the dark a car silently coasts through the village, its engine cut. Joe jumps onto the back and hangs on in order to follow the suspects. While hanging on, he hears Jim and the sailor gripe about Pierre, who acts as if he were the Claw King himself. When the car hits a bump, Joe is injured and is discovered. The two tie him to a log at the top of a log jam in a river, so when the jam is cleared he will be swept away and crushed to death.
Awaking, and realizing that Joe has been gone far too long, Frank sets out to find him. Following his foot prints and then the car's tire tracks, he comes to where Joe was captured. He hears Joe crying for help, and rescues him from the log jam in the nick of time. Stumbling across a nearby lumber camp, they receive food and medical attention. One of the men identifies Jim Hoskin's companion as Slim Wetzel.
Back at the hotel, they call home to their friend Chet, who has been watching over the house in their absence. He tells them another attempt was made to break in, and when he dusted for fingerprints, one of them looked like a claw.
They decide to press deeper into the lumber country and make the rounds of all the lumber camps in order to find their father. On horseback, they head to a neighboring village. From a couple of locals they learn that Young Jim and Slim Wetzel had been in the area trying to obtain sleeping powder to take care of a “maniac” in their company. The “maniac”, lying in the back seat of the car, was moaning and raving something about “frogs climb double trees”.
The Hardy's suspect the “maniac” is their father, feigning craziness and trying to convey a message through the code. Consulting the code, they determine that the police should raid some place in the woods, but the code does not provide a translation for “double trees”. They surmise it to be a reference to a lumber camp name and find a “Twin Spruce Camp” nearby on their map. They head for the camp.
Near the camp they are attacked by a large wolf-dog. After fending off the attack, they observe a man dragging the wolf-dog into a cabin. They suspect that their father is being held prisoner there. They decide to call on the Canadian Mounted Police for assistance and ride to the nearby headquarters. Sergeant Johnson tells them that the camp has been closed for four years and no-one should be there. At a gallop, all three ride back to the camp.
As they sneak up on the cabin, they are again attacked by the wolf-dog, but Sergeant Johnson uses a weighted net to trap and dispatch it. Breaking into the cabin they discover and confront Young Jim and Slim Wetzel. Overcoming them, they tie them up, and the Sergeant leaves with the men, leaving Frank and Joe to guard the cabin until he returns.
Exploring, Joe discovers a hidden room upstairs, and breaking into it, discovers his father in very poor condition, too weak even to talk. They provide their father a stimulant, and Frank relates that while Sergeant Johnson was tying up the prisoners, he noticed that they both had twisted claws branded on the tips of their index fingers.
Fenton relates the story of his capture just after leaving the message the boys received from their mother and how he feigned being delirious and used his ranting to try to convey a message to them. As they talk, they notice that the forest around them is on fire, and that they are trapped.
As the fire closes in on the cabin, all hope of escape seems cut off. Suddenly, a charging horse and rider burst through the wall of flames, and Sergeant Johnson dismounts. He quickly gives them direction on how to direct their horses through the fire and straps Fenton to his mount. After penetrating the firestorm safely, they head back to the village. At the village, Fenton receives medical attention.
They decide to give Chet another call for an update. Chet tells them that while investigating the ''Black Parrot'', he has found out that there are a number of Parrot boats, each named with a different color. Frank concludes that the smuggling gang has read the pirate book they picked up, and have been using it as a guide.
Fenton summons the boys and tells them that Sergeant Johnson overheard the prisoners discussing a boat named the ''Black Parrot'' due to dock at a small port town, Little Cove. Fenton directs them ship out on the boat in order to solve the case. They travel to Little Cove.
In Little Cove they find that the ''Black Parrot'' has not yet arrived. They then spy Pierre, and follow him back to a large house. In the morning they procure seaman's clothing as a disguise, and binoculars. They stake out Pierre's house and, using the binoculars, are able to distinguish a claw mark on his index finger.
The next morning, the ''Black Parrot'' arrives and Frank and Joe head to the water front in their disguises to sign up for the crew. As luck would have it, when the boys approach the first mate he has just fired two rowdy crew members and hires them on the spot. They report to the ship the next morning and are put to work right away. In the course of their labor, Frank observes the twisted claw print on the Captain's finger and Joe overhears the Captain and Pierre say that they are sailing to King Barracuda's Island for a meeting of all the King's subjects from the world over.
Joe notices that the Captain is an enthusiast for solitaire card games and manages to engage him with new games and strategies. Frank cozies up to “Sparks” the radio operator. Joe gets the opportunity to covertly search the Captain's cabin and finds one of his father's missing papers. A note scribbled on it reports that Jim Hoskin had put Fenton out of the way, and was signed by Pierre.
The crew notice that the Hardys have been trying to get friendly with the officers and confront them. One of them sarcastically mentions that Joe has been doing card tricks for the Captain. Impulsively, Joe demands a card deck and starts performing impromptu magic tricks. The crew is astonished and entertained by Joe's feats of prestidigitation and they win the crew over.
The crew asks the boys to do them a favor and to try to find out from the Captain where the ship is headed. They have observed signs of bad luck and doom, and believe that only by getting to land soon will they break the spell. Frank promises to ask the Captain and let them know. When they observe Pierre going to the Captain's cabin, they eavesdrop and hear the Captain tell him they will make Barracuda Island six days off. But before they can report back, the crew mutinies and locks the Captain and other officers in the brig.
Frank and Joe take the opportunity to search Pierre's cabin and find a report that details an amazing record of world-wide smuggling activities. The boys realize that if the mutiny is successful they will not be able to get to Barracuda Island and break the smuggling ring. They resolve to stop the mutiny.
A ferocious storm arises; the mutineers squabble amongst themselves and prove incapable of handling the situation. The ship is near sinking and chaos reins. In the confusion, Frank get the key to the brig and frees the officers. They quickly take charge and the crew, fearing death, follows orders and fights to save the ship. In the end, the ship suffers heavy damage but survives, and the Captain is again in full control. The leaders of the mutiny are rounded up and locked in the brig.
A few days later, the ship makes landfall at Barracuda Island, but the crew are disappointed to learn that they are strictly forbidden from going ashore. After the Captain, Pierre, and a few officers depart, the Hardys slip overboard and swim ashore.
On the island they encounter a resident and are nearly exposed, but they convince him to keep their presence a secret. From him we learn that the island consists of three classes: an indigenous population of brown-skinned, loincloth-clad “natives”; a European population that are descendants of shipwreck survivors who are largely ignorant of the “outside world” and of the smuggling activities; and a ruling class led by the Barracuda King, which conducts various illegal enterprises around the world.
The boys blend into the population and observe various festivities associated with arrival of the fleet for the yearly meeting with the King. They learn that there will be a parade that will welcome and escort the Captains and officers of each ship to the King's castle where they will report on their activities and receive recognition for their successes. The Hardys use the general commotion as the parade advances towards the castle to slip past the gate and gain entrance to the castle. Cautiously exploring, the secrete themselves in an empty chamber with a balcony overlooking the audience hall and the King's throne.
From their hiding place, they witness the induction of the new recruits into the “Order of the Twisted Claw”. Each initiate has the twisted claw insignia ceremonially branded on his forefinger with a poker heated in a cauldron of boiling oil.
The King is then ready to accept the reports from each of the ships crews but first severely questions Pierre and the Captain concerning the absence of Young Jim and Slim, and are even threatened with death for having allowed them to disappear and thus endanger the Order. Pierre lies and tells the King they perished in the forest fire. The King reserves judgment until he hears their report.
When it is their turn, Pierre and the Captain astound the gathering with the scope of their smuggling activities and their profitability. They provide details of how they use hollow logs and false papers to smuggle luxury goods into the United States and turn a profit on them. The King forgives the disappearance of Young Jim and Slim, and awards them the grand prize, a large chest of gold coins.
The Hardys have seen enough and sneak out of the castle and swim back to the ship. Their absence had been noted by the officer in charge, but they make up a tall tale about taking a swim and being attacked by barracudas. The credulous crew backs them up in their story and is entertained by the boys as they elaborate on their adventure.
“Sparks”, the radio operator, prevails upon Frank to help him fix the wireless outfit; Frank winds a new coil and gets it working. The Captain and Pierre return to the ship, and in a chance encounter with him, Pierre eyes them suspiciously. The boys suspect they have been recognized, and as precaution, Frank tells Sparks that the coil needs more work and disconnects it. Shortly after, Pierre confronts them and has them tossed into the brig.
The brothers decide that their only hope is to play on the crew's resentment towards the Captain and incite another mutiny. They find out that the Captain has rationed some of the gold coins to the men and so they are not going to turn against him. Changing tactics, Joe plays on their superstitious nature and tells one of the crew that the Captain is going to kill them, which will curse the ship and it will sink, drowning all aboard. The terrified seaman rushes to tell the rest of the crew. He returns and informs them that the crew is afraid of being punished and won't engage in a second uprising. Just then, one of the officers appears and herds them to the Captain's cabin. As a last desperate chance, the boys raise a commotion yelling out “Don’t kill us!”. The crew, eavesdropping outside, becomes fearful, breaks down the cabin door, and removes the Captain, Pierre and the officers to the brig.
Now free, the brothers see their chance to use the wireless to summon help. Sparks feigns ignorance of the situation and requests that the coil be restored. Frank seems to oblige, and as soon as Sparks thinks the radio is fixed, turns on them and attempts to summon the other Parrot ships to put down the mutiny. But Frank only pretended to comply and the radio does not function. The crew imprison Sparks in the brig.
With the radio fixed, the Hardys attempt to summon help, but a storm arises and the static makes it impossible to know if their messages are getting through. After repeated attempts to relay a message, the radio gives out without receiving any reply.
One of the crew informs them that they have decided to change course and head for the Mediterranean in order to avoid prosecution for mutiny, and are even considering freeing the Captain, who has promised to double their money and make sure they are not punished. Just then, the lookout on the mast spots a ship steaming towards them. The radio messages got through and it is a U.S. revenue cutter. A shot is fired across the bow and a boarding crew takes over the ship. Fenton Hardy is aboard the cutter and congratulates his sons on a job well done.
A worldwide alert is given, and any officers of the Parrot vessels with the claw insignia are being arrested. A contingent of American warships seize the island and capture the King of Barracuda. Back home, the Hardys travel to Washington for the official investigation, and confront the deposed king. They show him the pirate book and he confesses that the author was his grandfather, and that he always regretted losing it and feared that it would be his undoing.
The Hardy boys are asked by their father, Fenton Hardy, to assist him in solving a case involving a notorious jewel thief, Noel Strang, and his accomplices. Initially, they spot Strang's car and attempt to follow it until the car drops a purple smoke bomb and the Hardys are forced to pull over. While returning home from the car chase, they run into their friend Chet Morton who was in the woods rock collecting when he heard weird screams. When they go to investigate, they find a strangely tiled floor in the woods and nearby an injured man suddenly revives and runs off. Their adventure continues with a stolen amethyst, a bomb damaging their boat the ''Sleuth'', and a savage looking hound which turns out to be an electrified scare device.
When Aunt Gertrude hears where the boys found Chet, she tells them that they were close to Old Man Perth’s house where strange deaths have happened. The owner of the Perth Mansion, Jerome Perth, was a business tycoon who made many enemies due to his swindles. When he died his nephew, Clarence Perth, inherited the house. Shortly after moving in, the servants awoke during a night to him screaming and he was found on the floor of his bedroom with a fractured skull, saying "Th..the Floor!", before dying. The door and the windows of the room were all locked from the inside, so the mystery of how he died was never solved.
The Hardy boys identify a pilot who may be helping the thieves, so they walk into his hangar to examine his plane. Armed with a miniature camera, Joe snaps a picture of a map found in the plane. This leads them to a cabin hidden in the woods in a small bight named Tigers Bight. Unfortunately, the boys don’t have a chance to investigate the cabin as their family friend Jack Wayne crashes his plane ''Skyhappy Sal'' nearby and is injured. After rescuing Jack, the boys return to the Perth mansion where they find the jewel thieves hiding out and tricking a professor, Aden Darrow, into making a ‘freeze ray gun’ for them.
After more investigation, the Hardy boys manage to figure out that Clarence died by accident due to the 'disappearing floor' in his bedroom. Unfortunately, the boys are captured before they can tell anyone, but luckily due to Strang's bragging, they are informed about how the gang has been using the freeze ray guns to stun security guards and steal the jewels. Strang explains how they rigged an elevator to go to the wrong floor where they had set up a fake office in order to receive a special shipment of diamonds without arousing any suspicion until they were safely away in the Haley Heist. Eventually Fenton Hardy reaches the Perth Mansion with the police and rescues his sons, arresting the thieves.
The boys help bring a gang of bank robbers to justice.
After the new hydrofoil they are guarding, the ''Flying Express'', is stolen, the Hardy Boys face frequent danger in solving a mystery involving criminals who operate by signs of the zodiac. Eventually they are kidnapped and taken to the ''Flying Express'', but Chet manages to escape and uses their car's emergency light to alert the Coast Guard at which point the boys foul the hydrofoil's propellers and stop the ship.
The Hardy boys help their father locate a foreign spy camp hidden somewhere in the western United States. In the original edition, the ''Flying Express'' is a daily passenger train used by the spies to send secret messages.
After their fencing instructor Ettore Russo tells them about a family sword, the championship saber Adalante, the Hardy Boys go to California to search for the sword's missing half. Supposedly written on the sword is the owner's will that names the fencing instructor as a major heir of his deceased grandfather's fortune. Others also intent on finding the sword try hard to foil the Hardys from getting there first.
Frank and Joe travel with their detective father, Fenton Hardy, to a town two hours from Bayport to break up a truck hijacking ring and recover two stolen swords for wealthy shipping magnate Arthur Barker.
The boys investigate the mysterious disappearance of rare silkworms at a scientific research facility while working at an experimental farm during their summer vacation. The mystery deepens to include the theft of government building materials — a case being investigated by their famous father, Fenton.
When two suspicious plane accidents occur near Marlin Crag Airport, the two Hardy brothers investigate the case and find themselves in greater danger than they anticipated. Frank and Joe suspect an oil beacon near the airport caught the pilots off track. The boys go to fictional Pittville and visit Martin Weiss's parents. They get a clue about a dance place called The Flickering Torch. This involves investigating the ''Flickering Torch'' where a band seems to be involved in something shady. Their friend Chet Morton develops a new hobby of building airplanes; however, when he buys a used fuselage from an airplane junkyard it gets stolen from his farm. Ultimately the Hardys smash an illegal plot to make industrial diamonds using uranium isotopes from smuggled coal from the United Kingdom.
Frank and Joe Hardy become suspicious when their friend Chet Morton enrolls in a summer school that sounds too good to be true. While investigating a burglary at the Seneca Indian Reservation in New York State, they also investigate the nearby Zoar College. Their sleuthing leads them to believe that there is a connection between the professors of this fictional college and the theft of a tribal mask titled ''Spoon Mouth''. This mask was created when some melted coins happened to look like a sacred Indian image. Now it is missing and the boys' investigation proves to be dangerous; however, they successfully recover the mask and capture the thieves.
A case involving counterfeit money, buried treasure, and the Curse of the Caribees, Frank and Joe solve the mystery of the Melted Coins and help shut down both a local counterfeiting ring and a much larger operation dealing in stolen gold.
Innocently responding to a motorist's request that they shut off a light at his home, the Hardy Boys discover a deep mystery: the man used the name of a man, John Mead, that Chief Collig claims died five years earlier in a car accident, and no known heir. Adding to the mystery, the Mead mansion's doors have neither knobs nor visible keyholes. Only after speaking to a locksmith do they learn that the locks were concealed.
Meanwhile, their father Fenton assigns them to investigate a lead in the kidnapping of a doctor that may lead down the trail to a local boy who fell in with a local thief, a master criminal, who's a relation to the boy. The Hardy boys are to locate a traffic signal that hums like someone singing faintly, and drive ten minutes from it in each direction, then investigate the area for a "secret panel".
Fenton's mystery ends up intertwining with the Mead mansion and the master criminal, who's been carrying out a series of break-ins and thefts without triggering the alarm systems. It turns out that the deceased Mr. Mead was an electronics genius who developed a device that could open any lock and defeat alarm systems, but asked that, upon his death, it be turned over to the FBI. The master criminal had befriended Mr. Mead, found out about the device, and stolen it. The motorist the boys met was, in fact, John Mead's namesake nephew, who was not known to authorities and investigators in Bayport.
The story is set in Paris, on the eve of the French Revolution. The civilians have been suffering under the tyrannical rule of Louis XVI. In order to release the people from their suffering, Simone, a young girl whose parents were killed by the aristocrats, decides to challenge the corrupted aristocrats. Covering her face with a red mask and leaving a red carnation as a mark of her presence, Simone is La Seine no Hoshi.
The publisher’s preface – formatted as an obituary and excluded from all English translations until 2018 – tells that Josefine left the manuscript to her physician before her death from complications after a surgery. Josefine Mutzenbacher wasn’t her real name. The protagonist is said to have been born on 20 February 1852 in Vienna and passed on 17 December 1904 at a sanatorium.''Josefine Mutzenbacher oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erzählt'' (1906), pp. v–vi.
The plot device employed in ''Josephine Mutzenbacher'' is that of first-person narrative, structured in the format of a memoir. The story is told from the point of view of an accomplished aging 50-year-old Viennese courtesan who is looking back upon the sexual escapades she enjoyed during her unbridled youth in Vienna. Contrary to the title, almost the entirety of the book takes place when Josephine is between the ages of 5–13 years old, before she actually becomes a licensed prostitute in the brothels of Vienna. The book begins when she is five years old and ends when she is thirteen years old and starts her career as an unlicensed prostitute with a friend, to support her unemployed father.
Although the German-language text makes use of witty nicknames – for instance, the curate’s genital is called "a hammer of mercy" – for human anatomy and sexual behavior, its content is entirely pornographic. The actual progression of events amounts to little more than a graphic, unapologetic description of the reckless sexuality exhibited by the heroine, all before reaching her 14th year. The style bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marquis de Sade's ''The 120 Days of Sodom'' in its unabashed "laundry list" cataloging of all manner of taboo sexual antics from children’s sexual play, incest and rape to child prostitution, group sex, sado-masochism, lesbianism, and fellatio. In some constellations, Josefine appears as the active seducer, and sex is usually depicted as an uncomplicated, satisfactory experience.
The Hardy brothers embark on a freighter trip under mysterious circumstances and find themselves involved with a smuggling ring. The Hardy Boys discover that the Phantom Freighter is really a smuggling ship used to smuggle counterfeit documents, illegal drugs, cowhides, and electric motors.
Enigmatic stranger Thaddeus McClintock arrives in Bayport and engages Frank and Joe Hardy to arrange for a relaxing trip for him (with the Boys to accompany him) with the mysterious promise of “I’ll pay all expenses and when the trip is over you’ll be paid. Money, if you like. Or something else.” Meanwhile, Aunt Gertrude has arrived and announced that she is going to be living in the Hardy household long term. The shipping company incorrectly delivers one of her cartons, delivering instead a box apparently of raw wool addressed to a Mr. Johnson to the Hardy’s address. After expressing her anger at the shipping company as the carton contains valuable family papers, Aunt Gertrude sends the boys to the address marked on the box to swap the packages. Arriving at the remote farm, the boys find nobody home but the barn ablaze. Frank breaks into the barn to rescue a carton believed to be Aunt Gertrude’s, only to find out it contained discarded newspapers. The owner of the barn arrives and is shocked to find that someone had been staying at his house and having packages delivered while he was out of town. After getting a description of the man who signed for the package from the delivery driver, the boys spot a man matching that description at a clothing store and follow him to the docks where he disappears.
Later, after reviewing several other modes of travel with Mr. McClintock, the boys suggest a cruise on an oceangoing freighter, to which Mr. McClintock is receptive. The boys then try repeatedly to book passage on freighters scheduled through Bayport, but are rebuffed at every turn. The travel agency they attempted to work through, owned by Mr. Klack, seems more interested in keeping them off ships than arranging their passage. Even when the boys are successful at obtaining tickets through an out-of-town travel agency, an unknown individual posing to act on their behalf picks up their tickets, again preventing them from setting sail. At the suggestion of loyal Hardy friend Chet Morton (who is trying his hand at fly-tying), the boys and Mr. McClintock employ local fishing captain Harkness to take them on a fishing expedition. Captain Harkness agrees to take the trip, provided they avoid Barmet Shoals as he recently spotted a phantom freighter there that left him spooked and shaken. After landing a monstrous tuna to the delight of Mr. McClintock and heading back to Bayport, their boat runs out of gas to the disbelief of Captain Harkness. As night falls, the party on the boat is horrified to see a freighter cutting through the sea toward them, only to go silent and dark. Though the boys try hard to locate the ship, it is neither heard or sighted again and has disappeared by first light. Rescue comes from a coastal patrol aircraft and ship the next day.
Meanwhile, numerous other break-ins are discovered in and around Bayport during which nothing was stolen from unoccupied houses, but packages are delivered and signed for by people unknown to the owners. Fenton Hardy reveals that he is working on a case of forged historical documents which have been appearing in the rare document trade. They also make several run-ins to the express office, where the manager, Mr. Nixon, was kind enough to help the Hardys along their mission for their aunt's lost carton.
Aunt Gertrude takes a trip to Bridgewater, evasively answering questions about where and why she is going. The boys follow her to Bridgewater and find her meeting with an elderly woman the boys previously identified as one of the people involved in the package delivery scheme.
The boys recruit their friend Biff Hooper to help them book passage, which turns to their advantage as an out-of-town travel agent arranges their cruise aboard the ''Father Neptune''. Meeting Captain Gramwell of the ''Father Neptune'', the boys learn that one crew member recently left the ship ill and a new hand had been hired. Suspicious, the boys investigate and find the crewman had in fact been kidnapped and the new hand was sent to interrupt the trip. Captain Gramwell reacts quickly and has the new crewman, recognized by the boys as part of the smuggling ring, arrested and questioned to find his missing crewman, who is recovered.
Mr. McClintock, the boys, Biff, and Chet board the ''Father Neptune'' in Southport. At sea, the cargo aboard the ''Father Neptune'' suddenly shifts, leaving the ship listing badly and in danger of sinking. The crew and passengers rush to redistribute the cargo, eventually restoring the ship upright.
The boys tell Captain Gramwell about the smuggling ring and phantom ship. Captain Gramwell has the ship’s radio operator contact all the ships in the area and discovers that the ''Lion Tamer'' spotted just such a ship nearby. Spotting the ship at nightfall, the ''Father Neptune'' pursues the mystery ship, identified as the ''Black Gull'', but is unable to overtake it, much to the frustration of Captain Gramwell as the ''Father Neptune'' is declared to be the fastest ship in those waters and the mystery ship is obviously older and slower. That night, the mystery ship is again sighted, dark and apparently adrift. Along with the ''Father Nepture'''s radio operator Sparks, the boys row over to the ship while the ''Father Neptune'' keeps a spotlight on the mystery ship to hide the rowboat. This scene is depicted on the cover of the book. Upon boarding the mystery ship, the party finds the ship seemingly abandoned, but are suddenly jumped by the ship’s crew and captured.
Held captive with Sparks aboard the ''Black Gull'' by the chief smuggler Crowfoot, the boys pretend to cast in with the smuggler. Crowfeet tells the boys about the ship’s secret repeller belts around the hull which hold off any motorized vessel or aircraft, allowing the ''Black Gull'' (under many different names) to escape from much faster ships and explaining how the boys adrift in the fishing boat were able to get so close with the fishing boat's engine shut down due to fuel exhaustion. After the ''Black Gull'''s radio operator falls ill, Crowfeet presses a seemingly reluctant Sparks into service to send messages. The boys then take turns sending coded messages via innocent-sounding nursery rhymes to their father, including the line “sailing, sailing, over the bounding main, for many a sailing ship can go faster…”. Soon a sleek racing sloop under full sail (immune to the effects of the repeller which only affects motor vessels) approaches and quickly overtakes the slow freighter. Coast Guard officers board and rescue the boys, Sparks, and the captured scientists who had been kidnapped and forced to work for the smuggler. Among them is a chemist who had developed the techniques used to artificially age paper to supply forged documents for sale in the antique / rare document market. The elderly “smuggler” Mitchell turns out to be Mr. McClintock's former business partner and is happily reunited with Mr. McClintock aboard the ''Father Neptune''. With Mitchell rescued, the entire design for the repeller belt is recovered and Mr. McClintock and Mitchell agree to turn the design over to the US Government. The boys, Chet, Biff, and Mr. McClintock then continue their cruise to the Caribbean. The reader is left with a note that the Hardy Boys next mystery will be ''The Secret of Skull Mountain''.
Every night water strangely disappears from the new Tarnack Reservoir near Skull Mountain. Frank and Joe join forces with a team of skilled engineers to solve the baffling mystery.
The book takes place on Skull Mountain, a mountain where many skulls have been seen, near Bayport, U.S.A. This city around Skull Mountain loses water each night because of the new reservoir. There is always something mysterious happening on the mountain, which has an underground channel.
The story begins when Joe wants to go swimming; however, Frank points out that there is not enough water because of a low reservoir. When they discover that the water at the Skull Mountain facility disappears each night, they team up with Chet Morton and engineers Dick Ames and Bob Carpenter to solve the mystery. While exploring Skull Mountain, the boys are attacked several times. They finally find Timothy Kimball Jr. (Sweeper) breaking into Kleng’s plumbling store in order to steal the money Kleng owes him ($5000). Kimball is arrested and questioned about the reservoir. This leads the Hardy Boys to catch the villain, Kleng, and solve a crime which involves the Chicago syndicate, being investigated by their father, Fenton Hardy.
The Hardy brothers interrupt their investigations of jewelry store holdups to answer a plea from their cousin on a New Mexico cattle ranch. They discover how Arrow cigarettes can knock people out using a gas that comes out from a vent in the ground in New Mexico, originally discovered by American Indians.
The Hardy Boys travel with Brigadier General Jack Smith to a historic Civil War battlefield in the Deep South. Rocky Run Battlefield (near the town of Centerville in an unnamed state) is the center of a legend involving a Confederate general who was disgraced due to his alleged involvement with the theft of gold from a bank. Smith seeks to vindicate the long-dead officer.
Their SOS ignored by a strange yacht in a storm, the Hardy Boys find a wallet alongside their speedboat, apparently dropped from a helicopter, containing two thousand dollars, and are launched into a mystery involving diverse clues. This includes finding out who kidnapped Jack Wayne and took his plane, and where the wailing siren is coming from.
An invitation from Cap Bailey, science teacher at Bayport High, to accompany him out West to Wildcat Swamp on an archaeological expedition triggers off a series of dangerous events for Frank and Joe Hardy. On their way West the boys and Cap have a near-fatal accident in a private plane which has been sabotaged. Though warned to leave the area, Frank, Joe, and Cap doggedly remain until they have caught the cunning ex-convicts they are up against in this swift-paced adventure.
The Hardy boys find the missing deed to an Indian's land, prevent a phony salesman from carrying through a reckless scheme, and help their father solve a top-secret sabotage case.
The Hardy Boys go skating up Willow River toward Woodson Academy where they meet their chum Gregory Woodson. Greg tells them about how his grandfather died seven weeks prior but no one has been able to find his will where he presumably leaves the Woodson Academy to Greg. Greg is also curious about a strange letter that he received which was a blank piece of paper with small rectangular cutouts arranged horizontally and the word ‘Hardy’ printed on it.
With the grandfather's will missing, the school's headmaster Henry Kurt is trying to assume ownership of the school against Greg Woodson's wishes. As the story progresses the Hardy Boys and their friends find themselves being attacked by unknown assailants until eventually they are able to locate the missing will and trap the dangerous criminal and solve the Yellow Feather mystery
The Hardy Boys solve a kidnapping and break up a gang smuggling illegal aliens from India who are also holding an Indian prince captive. An official of the Indian government saw to it that a trained peregrine falcon was delivered to the boys to use in their investigation. Throughout their mission the falcon intercepts many messages between the smugglers as the criminals use pigeons to fly messages from place to place.
Finally, the boys rescue the Indian prince and catch the human smugglers along with creating a strong bond between India and the Hardys.
In solving the mystery of two medallions missing from an inherited curio collection, the Hardys wind up in a desolate area of Guatemala at the mercy of a dangerous gang of thugs plotting to steal a national treasure. The area is supposedly cursed, as some locals warn the Hardys not to visit the area. However, other men are looking for the treasure as well.
Kidnapped by ''Intel'' representative Kaufman (John Hollis), John Fleming (Peter Halliday) along with Professor Madeleine Dawnay (Mary Morris) and Andromeda, the artificially constructed female humanoid (Susan Hampshire), are brought to Azaran, a small Middle Eastern country.
Upon arrival, the group find a duplicate of the machine Fleming designed has been built by ''Intel''. After many dangers, Fleming finds both the reason for the original message having been sent and the means to bring the machine under human control.
Things take a deadly turn when Fleming discovers the politically unstable leader's hope to make use of his and Dawnay's skills and Andromeda's otherworldly abilities...
Hired by a mysterious businessman to locate an old Spanish cannon, the Hardy brothers and friends grow more and more suspicious as they encounter stolen cars and a mysterious man on a motorcycle. They eventually uncover the cannon and thousands in gold bullion after perilous underwater adventures.
When dogs and men suddenly disappear, and strange screams fill the night, fantastic stories of vengeful ghosts are almost believable. It is these strange happenings which bring Frank and Joe Hardy to the Pocono Mountains to help their father's friend, a retired police captain, solve the mystery of Black Hollow.
But when the Hardy Boys and Chet Morton arrive at Captain Thomas Maguire's cabin on the edge of the hollow, he has disappeared. In the woods the boys find only a few slim clues: a flashlight bearing the initials T.M., a few scraps of bright plaid cloth, and two empty shotgun shells which had been fired recently.
Frank and Joe are determined to find the captain, despite Chet's misgivings after a night of weird and terrifying screams. Neighbors of the missing man insist that the bloodcurdling cries are those of a legendary witch who stalks Black Hollow seeking vengeance.
Strangely, it is a small puppy that helps the boys disclose a most unusual and surprising set of circumstances, involving a mute boy, an elusive hermit, and a fearless puma trainer.
In 1944, a Nazi SS lieutenant named Kessel forces the parish priest of a small village in occupied Holland, Father Lankester Merrin, to participate in arbitrary executions in retaliation for the murder of a German trooper, in exchange for sparing the village.
In 1947, Merrin, whose faith was shattered by the incident, is an archaeologist in Derati, a remote area in the Turkana region of British Kenya excavating a Byzantine church built around the 5th century—long before Christianity had reached that region of Africa. He meets up with Father Francis, and Major Granville, the British military officer overseeing the dig. Making their way to Derati with Chuma, Merrin's translator and guide, Merrin introduces Francis to Rachel, a doctor and Emekwi, an enthusiastic convert who provides accommodation for the two men. As they tour the dig site, Merrin and Francis notice the church is in perfect condition, as though it had been deliberately buried immediately after its construction was completed.
On the site, Merrin meets a disabled young outcast named Cheche. Although dissuaded by Chuma, Merrin brings the boy to Rachel for medical treatment. Once the door is uncovered, Merrin, Francis, and Chuma go inside the church. A hidden passageway leads them to a crypt containing a demonic idol—an ancient sanctuary where human sacrifice was performed. Merrin deduces that the church was expressly built to seal this underground temple. On their way back, they are confronted by local elders, who demand Merrin stop digging.
Francis contacts Granville to send a detachment to guard the dig against potential robbers, despite Merrin's objections. Two British soldiers attempting to loot some precious stones from the church are then found dead the next day (one without his head; the other crucified to the altar head downward). Despite the Christian symbolism used in the murders and the testimony of local warrior Jomo that the two men were affected by a strange madness, Granville, blaming the Turkana, goes to town in an uncharacteristic fit of rage demanding the purported culprits be given up, shooting a young woman in cold blood when the locals protest. Determined to stop the 'Christian evil' from spreading, Jomo breaks into the mission school and slaughters the students, including one of Emekwi's sons before he is shot on the spot by British soldiers.
Francis has a disturbing realization that Cheche's unusual recovery is not a divinely wrought miracle as he had first thought and considers baptizing him to save his soul; the boy accepts on the condition that it be held at the church. Meanwhile, a shaken and guilt-ridden Granville commits suicide by shooting himself in the mouth. The Turkana elders demand that the church be reburied and Francis—who they hold responsible for the spread of the 'Christian evil' and the arrival of the British troops—and Cheche be handed over to them to be killed but are turned down. Francis, assisted by Rachel, baptizes Cheche at the church, but the demon inside the boy attacks them. Realizing an exorcism is in order, Francis leaves quickly to fetch his copy of the Roman Ritual. An earthquake erupts and seals the entrance to the church.
The next morning, Merrin and the British find Francis tied to a tree naked, shot with arrows. The dying Francis reveals to Merrin that Cheche is possessed and begs him to perform an exorcism. Another earthquake shifts the rocks, unblocking the church entrance just enough to allow Merrin to go inside. At the underground temple, Merrin finds Rachel—who runs away under a trance—and the possessed Cheche. After donning Francis' vestments, Merrin returns to the church to begin the exorcism. The demon offers Merrin a chance to rewrite his past, at which Merrin (in a hallucination) finds himself back in 1944 Holland: when he refuses to cooperate, Kessel instead has Merrin ''and'' all the villagers killed for his defiance.
When Merrin comes back to his senses, the demon mocks the futility of his attempt to change what happened. An aurora appears in the sky as the evil spirit's influence causes the entranced Rachel to attempt to kill herself, Emekwi to violently beat his wife, and the Turkana to charge into battle against the British. The exorcism eventually succeeds and the demon leaves Cheche's body, causing him to regress to his former condition.
With the demon exorcised, life in Derati returns to normal and the British detachment leaves. One of the local elders, however, warns that the demon will pursue Merrin. Merrin bids farewell to Rachel and Cheche before leaving for Rome, having now regained his faith.
The Hardy Boys and Chet Morton travel to Canada's Northwest Territories to recover a stolen Viking artifact (a runestone). They also smash a group of thieves robbing recreational lodges around the Great Slave Lake. They visit Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Edmonton, Alberta; Fort Smith, Northwest Territories; Wood Buffalo National Park; and Hay River.
The handwritten will of a deceased world-traveller is strange and mysterious. Its instructions are to deliver "the valuable object to the rightful owner, a descendant of an Aztec warrior". What is the valuable object and where is it? What is the name of the owner and where is he? Frank and Joe Hardy have only one clue to work with: the name of a complete stranger who can help find the answers, Roberto Hermosa.
Despite the harassments, the threats, and the attacks made upon them by an unknown, sinister gang, Frank and Joe unravel clue after clue in their adventure-packed search for the living descendant of the mighty Aztec nation which once ruled Mexico. The hunt leads to a marketplace in Mexico City, to the Pyramids at Teotihuacan, to the tombs of Oaxaca-where Chet Morton, the Hardy's buddy, is nearly buried alive by foul play.
It takes as much high courage as clever deduction for the young detectives to defeat their ruthless foes and to decipher the fascinating secrets of the strange and mysterious will.
A long-distance telephone call from Chet Morton's uncle summons Frank and Joe Hardy and their staunch pal Chet to a summer art school, located near old Fort Senandaga which is reputed to be inhabited by a ghost. The young detectives' assignment: recover two famous oil paintings stolen from the valuable Prisoner-Painter collection owned by Jefferson Davenport.
Mr. Davenport, millionaire sponsor of Millwood Art School, reveals that one of the famous Fort Senandaga pictures painted by his ancestor, General Jason Davenport, contains a clue to the hiding place of a priceless chain of gold.
Vicious threats and deadly traps beset Frank, Joe, and Chet as they search for clues to the stolen paintings and the gold treasure—a search that is complicated by a stormy feud between a proud Englishman and an equally proud Frenchman over the military history of the fort.
The Hardy Boys track down the saboteurs who kidnapped their father, and have to keep them from blowing up a bridge near Boontown, Kentucky. The bridge is being built by Tony Prito's father's construction company. Mr Hardy is ill most of the story. The villains are mostly ex-crooks who want that area of the bridge for themselves.
Joe and Frank Hardy go to a magic show with their dad. After the show is done, their dad asks Hexton how the vanishing act was performed. Hexton offers to do the trick on Fenton Hardy. When their dad disappears, he does not reappear. Hexton says their dad is simply playing a joke on them; Joe and Frank do not believe this. They suspect he was kidnapped. To be sure, Joe and Frank study some of their dad's records; they find Hexton was the leader of an international gang. The first place they look is in a lighthouse that they suspected he might be in. They go inside and see a guard; the guard tries to escape but cannot. He says their dad was here but is not anymore. Though not sure, the boys suspect that their dad was purposely moved to a more secretive place. The boys check in Hexton's castle but get caught. They find that the hinges of the place they were locked in were bad; Joe and Frank take turns to pry them off. Finally, the boys escape. The boys overhear the gang talking about stealing some jewels. They now have a second job to do.
As the boys were leaving, the criminals try to recapture them. It ends up that the police have come just in time to save the boys. Although the boys are fine, the criminals escape. Hexton steals the jewels and takes a ride on Flight 101. Joe and Frank also take a ride on Flight 101, but see nothing suspicious. When everyone was exiting the plane, the boys think they see Hexton. As they try to capture him, another person helps in the capturing of Hexton. It ends up that the person was Fenton Hardy. All along Joe and Frank's dad was spying on Flight 101.
The Hardy Boys and Chet Morton fly to Iceland to look for Rex Hallbjornsson, a sailor owed a payout from an insurance company. Before they leave Bayport, someone attempts to kidnap Frank. An American astronaut has disappeared in Iceland while studying the volcanoes. Frank finds a glove which may have been dropped by the astronaut next to a sulfur pit. The Hardys take a flight on a private plane to Akureyri. The pilot is a phony and forces a landing on a glacier, where the Hardys are fooled by a phony rescue helicopter that picks up the phony pilot and leaves them behind. They try to use the radio, but the phony pilot has hidden the frequency crystal. They find it and make contact with the radio tower at Reykjavik. Another helicopter comes to pick up the Hardys. They go to Akureyri and visit a phony Rex Hallbjornsson. Returning to Reykjavik, they see Chet wandering in front of the hotel with a strange expression. They realize he has been drugged. Thinking someone might be in their room examining their belongings, they rush upstairs and find the phony pilot and his phony rescuer. Joe tries to grab the pilot, whose wig comes off. It is the phony Rex Hallbjornsson, who gets away with his partner. Chet and Biff Hooper, who has joined the others in Iceland, go to investigate a man named Hallbjornsson who might know Rex, while Frank and Joe go with a coast guard officer to look for Hallbjornsson at sea. After a devastating storm Frank sees a small raft, possibly with a motor, and thinks it might be the criminals. Over the course of a day or two, they put on disguises and act as phony crewmen for Rex Mar (the real Hallbjornsson, who has changed his name). Musselman, the phony Rex Hallbjornsson, is fooled by their disguises until Joe slips up by speaking English rather than Icelandic. The boys defeat the criminals in hand-to-hand combat and have them arrested. With the help of Biff who was kidnapped, the boys figure out how the remaining bad guys are going to transport the kidnapped astronaut. The kidnappers take over a plane and resist efforts to stop them but the astronaut and Chet, who was also kidnapped, break free and subdue them.
The Hardy Boys head to sea to solve the theft of mercury shipments and a government missile and to foil a terrorist plan to create havoc in the United States.
They discover that the gang is hiding in a hotel in Baltimore, where their father, Fenton Hardy, is staying under the name L. Marks. An attempt is made on their father's life when his cover is blown, but the Hardy Boys save him in time. Using devices such as ear bugs, they spy on the gang. With the help of an Admiral at the Pentagon, the boys uncover the gang's nefarious plot. The gang wants to blast a cave containing nerve gas with a Super S missile that can't be redirected. This will cause the nerve gas to spread in the USA, which in turn will help overthrow the US government. The Hardys learn that an Indian freighter, ''Nanda Kailash'', is going to dock at Baltimore. They explore the ship as all the clues point towards India. There, an attempt is made on Joe's life. The Hardys also capture the Mercury gang. They find a new friend, Akshay, who takes them to a ship called the ''Bombay Batarang,'' where they uncover some clues to the mystery. In the end, with trickery the Hardys capture the rest of the gang. Later they are abducted, but they fight off the criminals and capture the mastermind in the end by way of Chet throwing a boomerang and disabling a jet which the gang is in.
The Hardy boys and two friends Chet and Biff take a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to locate a gang of credit card counterfeiters.
The Hardy brothers' search for the missing son of a wealthy industrialist leads them to Brazil and great danger. Chet's hobby at the time was retrieving golf balls from the bottom of ponds at the golf courses around the Bayport area. Chet's hobby brings important clues that help the Hardys round up a gang of criminals who help other criminals change their identity.
Characters
Joe Hardy, Frank Hardy, Fenton Hardy, Laura Hardy, Aunt Gertrude, Chester Morton, J.G Retson, Phil, Tony, Joachim San Marten, Gus McCormick, Mr Jackson, Mrs Martha Jackson, Harris, Harry Grimsel, Sam Radley, Belkin, Moreno.
Setting
Granite city, Bayport, New York, Belem, Manaus
Danger is the name of the game when the Hardys agree to help their pen pal from Greece, Evangelos Pandropolos, search for a priceless, ancient Greek helmet. Years ago, Evan's uncle had loaned it to a Hollywood movie company for use in a silent motion picture, ''The Persian Glory'', for a role in the movie, but the treasured helmet was lost after the movie was done.
At Hunt College, where Evan, Frank, Joe and Chet Morton are taking a summer course in film-making, the boys are harassed by Leon Saffel whose harassments get more and more vicious. All the while a gang is trying to force Mr. Hardy to give up his investigations of a national crime syndicate and also trying to find the helmet, which after speaking to Evan's billionaire uncle, they learn may have belonged to King Agamemnon, making the helmet even more valuable.
The clues that the Hardys unearth keep them constantly on the move—from their college campus to California and finally to Greece. In a sizzling climax, the Hardys, Evan and Chet match wits with their powerful enemies on the island of Corfu.
The Hardy brothers and Chet meet a wealthy balloonist named Albert Krassner, who is in possession of the Ruby King, a valuable life-sized chess piece that is the prize for a chess tournament. The boys soon learn that a gang wants to steal the Ruby King. Then the Ruby King mysteriously disappears from the Krassner safe, sending the Hardy Boys to Hong Kong. There they capture the gang and find the Ruby King.
On a winter vacation in Jamaica, the Hardy Boys begin a dangerous adventure when an ancient bronze death mask is discovered near their beach house (where Frank comically loses and finds his underwear). The case takes them from Jamaica to their hometown of Bayport to Casablanca to Marrakesh. They meet William along the way, a kind African who is willing to help them uncover secrets of the mask, which they find out is Jamaican property.
William scares off the enemies of the Hardy Boys in Swahili, telling them he is an even more powerful Juju man then theirs and eventually Mr. Hardy comes after Frank and Joe thought he was dead. Back at the Celliers', they celebrate and Christine, the gorgeous, black-haired teen who also assisted them in solving the case lets the Hardys call home to their worrying mother and eats dinner with Aunt Gertrude. William even receives a Basenji dog as a present for saving the Hardys from the predicament.
In East Anglia, England, Frank and Joe Hardy are investigating one of the unusual cases of their lives, involving burglary, witchcraft, and maybe even kidnapping. Soon they are caught in a battle for their lives against the forces of evil.
Somebody steals gold from the Wakefield Mint without even triggering the alarm. The Hardy Boys must track the gold down. Then, after that, the Early Art Museum is robbed of a gold artifact. Their main suspect is a man named Pedro Zemog, who ran out of the museum after the alarm was triggered. A strange note with Zemog's name on it sends them to Zurich, where somebody claims to know about the Wakefield gold theft. Then another note with Zemog's name on it sends the boys to Mexico City, where they discover a pyramid in the jungle. In the pyramid are many gold coins and sculptures. Afterward, the boys discover the gang's hideout and thwart the gang with their father Fenton's help.
The Hardy Boys help their detective father, Fenton Hardy, search for a famous rocket scientist whose disappearance endangers the launching of the ''Firebird'' rocket from the Woomera Test Range. They are threatened multiple times, but still do not give up with their lives at risk. Frank and Joe Hardy aid their father and others. However, they soon learn that they are working for a criminal. While they are captured, the police arrive and rescue them, arresting the criminals except for the true mastermind who tries to flee. However, Frank and Joe stop the truck he uses and he is captured.
During their father's investigation of the ruthless Scorpio gang of terrorists, the Hardy Boys witness an explosion and an elephant falling from an airship named Safari Queen of Quinn Airport which was carrying animals of the newly opened Wild World Zoo. Strange events are happening at Wild World, so the Hardy Boys search for the truth. They fall into a trap and almost escape injury. They capture the gang in an all-out fight.
Actress Connie Stuart tells her husband, composer Gary Stuart, that she spent an evening in a country inn with rival composer Courtney Craig. He accuses her of infidelity. She, in turn, accuses him of adultery with dancer Lilly Adair. The couple divorce.
Several weeks pass as the couple waits out the 60-day period for the divorce decree to be final. One day, Gary goes to Connie's apartment to speak to her about retrieving his piano, as a hole must be cut in the wall to get it out. He discovers she has agreed to appear in Courtney's new play. Her performance draws the attention of uranium mining millionaire Frank McGraw, and they begin dating. Gary, jealous of Courtney but unwilling to admit he still loves Connie, bribes his piano movers to take their time so that he can repeatedly visit Connie.
Gary's brother, Chet, tells Gary that Connie is seeing the miner Frank, not the playwright Courtney. Gary spends the night at Connie's, composing a song for her in an attempt to win her back. When Frank shows up at dawn and sees Gary at Connie's, he assumes Connie is two-timing him.
Gary's new musical is a hit, but he is morose without Connie as the star. Chet tells him that Connie's claim about spending the night with Courtney in a country inn was a fabrication designed to make Gary jealous. Deciding to marry Connie to get her away from Gary, Frank goes to Connie's apartment to propose. Courtney attempts to prevent the engagement; he arrives before Frank, but Connie shoos him into the bedroom. Gary shows up moments later, furious to find Courtney there. Frank arrives to propose marriage, while Gary and Courtney fight in the bedroom. Frank withdraws his proposal of marriage and dumps Connie when he finds the two men exchanging blows.
After finding Courtney at Connie's, Gary remains convinced Connie committed adultery. He now begins dating socialite Deborah Randolph.
Connie finally gets Gary to come to her apartment to get the piano out. While there, Gary telephones Deborah. Connie attempts to interfere in their relationship by singing a romantic song. Deborah overhears the woman's voice, and Gary claims that it is his sister doing the singing. "Gary's sister" then dupes Deborah into hosting a party for Gary and inviting her. Connie shows up at the party in a fashionable gown and sings for the guests. Deborah, realizing that "Gary's sister" is really Connie, tells Gary to go back to his wife. Gary realizes he was a fool to show interest in Lilly Adair. With only minutes before the divorce decree goes into effect, Connie admits she has always been faithful and Gary pledges renewed fidelity to her. They embrace and resume their marriage.
On the planet Koam, Daba Myroad and his friend Mirao Kyao fight off a group of thieves. One, Fanneria Amu, defects after falling in love with Daba. Daba promises one dying thief to deliver a cash card to Amandara Kamandara, and they head to Prearmo, where Daba meets Lillith Fuau, the last remaining fairy in the Pentagona world. Daba cannot find Amandara Kamandara, but the thieves’ new leader Gavlet Gablae finds him and is recruited to the Poseidal military, serving under Chai Char, one of the military's 'Elite 13'.
Amandara leaves for the planet Mizum, with Daba’s group following in a stolen space shuttle to return the cash card, with Poseidal military officer Gaw Ha Leccee on board. They arrive on Mizum pursued by Gavlet, but are saved by rebels. Leccee falls in love with Daba and defects from the military, so her lover Giwaza Lowau, head of the Elite 13, sends Nei Mo Han to fight the rebels. Nei, Gavlet and Chai attack the rebels without success. Daba’s group join the rebels, led by Stella Coban. Daba finally meets Amandara and returns the cash card; Amandara gives the rebels a lot of money and weapons. The military then massacre the rebels, with Chai and Stella killed in the battle. Daba’s group leave Mizum, but Amu decides to stay.
Daba and Kyao head to Theart Star, an independent asteroid base populated entirely by women, led by Full Flat. Gavlet follows in a planetary bomber, forcing them out of Theart Star. Daba launches an assault on Poseidal’s capital Sveto, on the planet Gastogal. Hopelessly outnumbered, they escape when Amu arrives with a ship given to her by Amandara. Heading to the planet Trydetol, they encounter Daba's half-sister, Quwasan Olibee, who is under Poseidal’s control.
Reaching Trydetol, they are bombarded by the military. A radical from Poseidal's army ambushes Daba with his Heavy Metal, but is unsuccessful. Gavlet controls many Heavy Metals, but performs poorly with them. Kyao kidnaps an inventor, Mesh Maker, a rebel sympathizer, who helps Kyao upgrade his technology using the L-Gaim, creating the L-Gaim Mk-II, which defeats the Heavy Metals with ease. Leccee leaves in desperation at the rebels’ slow progress. Joining rebel leader Semuj Shato, Daba builds the rebels’ power, planning an assault on Gastogal. Poseidal promotes Olibee over Giwaza, who gathers the Elite 13 to overthrow her in revenge and take over Pentagona. The rebels return to Mizum and reunite with Leccee. After numerous battles, Daba leaves Mizum, again encountering Olibee, still in Poseidal's grasp.
Giwaza sends word to Poseidal that Full Flat is assisting the rebels, and captures Daba, convincing Full Flat to ally with Giwaza. It is revealed that Poseidal and Full Flat have eternal youth, bestowed upon them by Amandara. Daba escapes from Full Flat, who directs Theart Star towards Gastogal. Semuj is revealed as Full Flat's spy, but Daba forgives him. Leccee rejoins the rebels with reinforcements, heads to Sveto and encounters Poseidal. She finds Nei, Poseidal's captive since Giwaza abandoned her, and orders her to assassinate Giwaza, but Nei is killed in the attempt.
The rebels enact the StarDust Plan, launching hundreds of asteroids towards Sveto. Giwaza advances his forces towards the planet, capturing Olibee. Gavlet, who is in love with her, and Daba try unsuccessfully to save her. The factions converge around Sveto and the battle begins. Full Flat confronts Poseidal, reminding her that she is a puppet of Amandara, the real Poseidal. The battle escalates and Flat is killed when the L-Gaim Mk-II falls on her. Daba and Gavlet board Giwaza's ship and rescue Olibee, following a duel with Giwaza.
Poseidal, whose real name is Mian, is struggling to regain her lost memories when Amandara appears and confronts her, to retake his position as Poseidal. Amandara sends Daba a message to entrap him, hoping to kill him, but Daba sees through this. Olibee, who bonded with Mian, feels that she is in danger, and Daba agrees to save Mian, while Amu and Leccee support the rebels bombarding Sveto. Daba and Olibee fight their way into Sveto. Angered by Amandara's manipulative behaviour, Mian turns on him with her personal guard, who remain loyal to her despite Amandara being the true Poseidal. Daba arrives to rescue Mian, but Amandara takes her hostage. An explosion interrupts the conflict and Amandara flees, pursued by Daba. Mian’s bodyguards help her to the control center which powers her and Amandara’s eternal youth, though stopping Amandara will also kill her.
Amandara reveals his Heavy Metal, the Auge, powered by the population's energy, which keeps him eternally young and invulnerable. Amandara's Auge grows increasingly powerful, overwhelming Daba. Mian deactivates the bio-relation, cancelling their eternal youth and immediately killing them, as Daba attacks the now-vulnerable Auge, assisted by the arrival of Gavlet. Giwaza's forces are annihilated by the rebels, and with the death of the true Poseidal, the rebels declare victory. Giwaza attempts to escape in a shuttle, attacking Daba and Gavlet in desperation. Daba fires one last shot of the Buster Launcher and incinerates Giwaza. After the battle, Daba returns to Koam to live, to take care of Olibee, left brain damaged by Poseidal's control. Gavlet, Leccee, and Amu bid them a sad farewell.
The novel tells the story of Princess Marguerite "Daisy" Valensky. She is the daughter of Prince Alexander "Stash" Valensky, a wealthy Russian-born polo player and former playboy, and his wife Francesca Vernon, a beautiful and talented American actress. Stash and Francesca, madly in love, are thrilled by her pregnancy and the news that she is carrying twins. However, a problem during delivery denies one of the twin girls, named Danielle, enough oxygen, and she is born brain-damaged, while Daisy is healthy. Francesca suffers from acute post-partum depression and enters a fugue state for several weeks. Stash, who has a fear and disgust of illness and abnormality after a childhood spent watching his mother slowly waste away from tuberculosis, is unable to accept or love Danielle. When Francesca recovers from her depression, he lies to her, telling her that the second-born twin died soon after birth. She discovers the truth and flees with both infants to California, where she is helped by her former agent and his wife. For several years, she lives a secluded life in Carmel and grants Stash short visits with Daisy.
Francesca dies in a car accident, and Daisy and Dani are reunited with their father, who immediately places Dani in an expensive but remote home for retarded children, much to Daisy's distress. When Daisy turns 16, her father dies in a plane accident, after which her older half-brother, Ram, who has become obsessed with her, seduces and then brutally rapes her. To get her away from Ram, her father's mistress, Anabel (a mother figure to the girl), sends her to the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she forms what will be a lifelong friendship with Kiki Kavanaugh, an auto industry heiress from Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Because of Daisy's total estrangement from Ram, who is a trustee of her inheritance, she neglects to read his letters regarding her stock portfolio at a crucial moment and thus loses everything her father left her. As a result, she is forced to drop out of college and go to work. She paints portraits of rich, horse-mad people's children on ponies in order to pay Dani's bills and also works in a demanding job at a production company that makes television commercials.
When Anabel becomes ill and needs money for treatment, Daisy must make a decision to abandon her private life. Up to this point, Daisy has lived out of the public eye, refusing to trade on her title for financial gain, but she ultimately accepts an opportunity to do so. In the process, Daisy must learn to trust a man who loves her, to come to terms with her sister's disability, and to make peace with the life she has been given.
In New York City amidst a hot summer, body parts of men are showing up in the Hudson River. The police suspect it to be the work of a serial killer who is picking up gay men at West Village bars such as the Eagle's Nest, the Ramrod, and the Cock Pit, then taking them to cheap rooming houses or motels, tying them up and stabbing them to death.
Officer Steve Burns, who resembles the victims' dark-haired, slim profile, is sent deep undercover by Captain Edelson into the urban world of gay S&M and leather bars in the Meatpacking District in order to track down the killer. Burns is at first reluctant to accept the assignment, but he is ambitious and sees a high-profile case as a way to rapidly advance his career. He rents an apartment in the area and befriends a neighbor, Ted Bailey, a struggling young gay playwright who does tech support to pay the bills. Burns's undercover work takes a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy due to his inability to tell her the details of his current assignment and his developing friendship with Ted, who himself is having relationship problems with his jealous and overbearing dancer boyfriend, Gregory.
Burns mistakenly compels the police to interrogate a waiter, Skip Lee, who is intimidated and beaten to coerce a confession before the police discover Skip's fingerprints do not match the killer's. Burns is disturbed by the brutality, and tells Captain Edelson he didn't agree to the assignment so people could be beaten simply for being gay. Exhausted by the undercover work, Burns is close to quitting, but is convinced by Edelson to continue with the investigation. Edelson in turn reprimands the officers behind the interrogation of Skip.
Following a new lead, Burns investigates students at Columbia University who studied with one of the previous victims, a college professor. Burns thinks that he has found the serial killer: Stuart Richards, a gay music graduate student with schizophrenic disorder. He breaks into his apartment and discovers a box of letters to his father. Burns later meets Richards in Morningside Park and cruises him for sex. After Burns asks him to pull his pants down, Richards tries to stab him, but Burns stabs him in the side, incapacitating him. Burns brings Richards into custody, where his fingerprints are a match for those discovered at one of the stabbings.
Shortly afterward, Ted's mutilated body is found. The police dismiss the murder as a lover's quarrel turned violent and put out an arrest warrant for Gregory, with whom Burns had an earlier confrontation due to Gregory's jealousy. The police consider the case closed with Richards in custody and Burns, now promoted to detective, moves back in with Nancy. As Burns shaves his beard in the bathroom, Nancy tries on his leather jacket, cap, and aviator sunglasses. Burns stares at himself in the mirror and he briefly looks at the camera, which then cuts to the tug boat patrolling the Hudson River from the beginning of the film, bringing the audience full circle.
Paul Clarus, a French actor (played by "Paul Clarus") is chatting with his fellow actors (the "Molière Players") as they put on their makeup before a performance. He reminisces about a very unpleasant Vichy official, the Chef de la Sûreté, (Paul Bonifas) that he knew when he was part of the Resistance on the island of Madagascar during the Second World War. The events on Madagascar are shown in flashback.
Paul Clarus pretended to be loyal to the Vichy official, while he simultaneously worked as the head of the Resistance movement. He ran an illegal pro-Resistance radio station "Madagascar Libre", and helped arrange numerous boats to take loyal Frenchmen out of the island to safety. Finally when the Vichy government falls, we see that the Vichy official is nothing but a turncoat; in his office he rapidly replaces a portrait of Marshal Philippe Pétain with a portrait of Queen Victoria, and he changes his bottle of Vichy water for bottles of Scotch and soda water.
The plot revolves around a girl called Mikiko "Kuromi" Oguro who grows up watching the fictional anime ''Luis Monde III''. She decides that animation is something she wants to do, and so enrolls in animation school. When she gets out of school, she is delighted to find a job at a small animation studio named Studio Petit. The director of the studio shows her around and gives her the nickname "Kuromi," a name meant to abbreviate her own.
Very soon after Mikiko arrives the director falls seriously ill and leaves his post, but not before he appoints Mikiko with the job of Production Desk Manager, on the second episode of the studio's current anime, ''Time Journeys''.
The audience follows Mikiko's frantic attempts and schemes to convince the studio's artists to work harder and produce their key frames in time to send them for production.
Mikiko "Kuromi" Oguro is still working as Production Desk Manager at Studio Petit, and thanks to the excellent job she did, she is now in charge of 3 anime series. Luckily for Mikiko this time around she has some help from a veteran producer in the form of Takashimadaira. Unfortunately Takashimadaira is concerned only with getting the product out on time, even if it means cutting on the quality of the product. This leaves Mikiko with a difficult decision on which is the more important, the quality of the product or the deadline.
Osfameron Tanamoril (Moril) Clennenson is a travelling musician, who travels with his father, Clennen, his mother, Lenina, and his elder siblings, Dagner and Brid, through Dalemark, a country torn by civil war between the South and the North. They travel around, playing music, taking passengers and messages, and spreading news throughout the country.
When Clennen (the father and main performer) is murdered by the Earl of South Dales, who suspects him of being a spy for the North, Lenina (who is high-born and gave up the chance of being a Lady when she married Clennen) takes her three children and their passenger Kialan, the fugitive son of a Northern earl, back to her home town of Markind in South Dalemark. Within the same day as her husband's death, Lenina is married to her former fiancé the Lord of Markind, guided by the belief that this is the only way to counter the bad luck caused by Clennen's murder.
Dagner, Brid, and Moril encounter their father's murderer among the wedding guests in Markind and together with Kialan they flee the town and try to reach the North, while continuing to perform for a living. However, without Clennen and Lenina, they find this difficult to do. The oldest son, Dagner, tries to continue their father's work as a Northern spy, but is arrested for treason against the Earl of South Dales. Brid, Moril, and Kialan are forced to flee, believing that Dagner will be hanged.
Before he died, Clennen left his youngest son Moril a magical cwidder (a common musical instrument in Dalemark similar to a lute with some properties of an acoustic guitar). It is rumoured to have been owned by Moril's ancestor and namesake Osfameron, who was both a minstrel and a famous magician, featuring in many of the legends of Dalemark. Throughout their travels from the South to the North, Moril discovers that he has the power to use the magic of his newly inherited instrument.
As they travel, they become embroiled in the civil war. As the Southerners are about to attack the North, Moril uses his magical cwidder to make the mountains 'walk' and close Flennpass, the only mountain pass between the North and the South, just as his ancestor, the famed Osfameron, did in so many of the songs Moril's father had sung nearly every day. The walking mountains crush the attacking Southern army, killing the evil Earl of South Dales, Clennen's murderer, and saving the North. However, after the battle, Moril is wracked with guilt, as he caused the deaths of hundreds of men, and mainly because he was angry that his beloved horse, Olob, had been shot.
In the end, when all safely reach Hannart, the earldom of Kialan's father, they are joined by Dagner who has been released from jail after the death of the Earl of South Dales and travelled to North Dalemark with another travelling Singer, Hestefan. Moril decides that he should travel with Hestefan and learn how to be a proper Singer. Hestefan accepts, and they leave to continue travelling through Dalemark.
The film follows Percival and Rooster, who have been close friends since childhood. In 1935, Percival works at his father Percy Senior's morgue during the day and plays piano at a local club called Church at night. Rooster becomes a singer at the club and a bootlegger; he also marries Zora, with whom he has five children.
On a night Rooster is performing, gangsters Spats, Trumpy, Ace, and Rose attend to talk about a deal they have with the club. Angel Davenport, a singer from St. Louis who has a contract with the club, arrives backstage. Angel is actually Sally B. Shelley, an aspiring singer who stole the contract from the real Davenport.
Rooster and Rose have sex in a car in a warehouse. When they hear people coming into the building, Rose jumps out of the car, gets dressed, and confronts Spats, Trumpy and Ace, who have just arrived. She then runs off, and Trumpy kills Spats and Ace to get the business for himself.
Rooster runs into Trumpy while taking his family shopping, and Trumpy explains that the debt owed by Ace is now Rooster's problem. He has to come up with this money by selling liquor at Church bought from Trumpy's "suppliers." Rooster goes to Rose's house to warn her, but she is already packed up and ready to leave. Rose drives away in a taxi, being watched by one of Trumpy's henchmen.
Meanwhile, Rooster begins to have more problems at the club and forces Angel to sing. After she has an attack of stage fright, Percival calms her and gives her a song that he wrote. The song is a hit, Angel becomes an overnight star, and she and Percival fall in love.
Roosters's wife Zora grows tired of his cheating and moves with their children to her mother's house. Angel gets a record deal in Chicago and asks Percival to go with her, but he reluctantly declines, as he feels obligated to his father. When Angel finds out that Percival knows who she really is, she pledges her love to him and persuades him to go to Chicago.
Rooster devises a plan to buy liquor from bootlegger GW and his partner. One day, as Rooster is making his rounds to pick up hooch from GW, he sees a car on the road that seems to be stuck. He approaches the car and sees an old woman, Mother Hopkins, and her grandchildren. Mother Hopkins tells Rooster that he is an angel and gives him a bible. Rooster walks into the abandoned house of the two bootleggers and sees that Trumpy's henchmen have beaten up GW and killed his partner.
Rooster is caught and brought to Trumpy, and GW is shot and killed. During a fight between Rooster and Trumpy's henchmen, a shot at Rooster is blocked by the bible in his jacket. After Rooster escapes, Trumpy follows him to the club, where Angel and Percival have also decided to stop before going to Chicago. Rooster and Trumpy fight and, just as he is about to shoot Rooster, Trumpy is shot and killed by Percival. Percival then notices that Angel has been shot and runs to her aid, though she dies shortly afterward.
A grieving Percival prepares Angel for her burial, dressing her in a wedding gown and slipping a ring on her finger. Afterward, he attempts to commit suicide by hanging himself in his room, but is interrupted when Rooster rings the doorbell. Percival is consoled and gives Angel's Chicago bound-ticket to Rooster, who reunites with his wife and children. Percival then begins to make records and tour in clubs throughout America, to great success.
The film ends with pictures of Percival and Angel, hung next to a picture of Percival's mother in her coffin.
The game plays in the fictional future of the year 2048 AD, where a global nuclear disarmament and the coincidental murder of a beloved American archaeologist leads to an American military incision on Iraq. Which, in turn, elicits a European military power play and begins World War III. The commander of the American force sent to invade Iraq questions his mission. With no suitable answers, he abandons his country and takes his troops on the quest for truth. In the try to recover what really happened at Golgotha they discover a supernatural conflict behind a veil of political discord.
Idealistic television executive David Weiss joins struggling TV network IBS, only to discover it is a place of backstabbing, constant competition, and a fair bit of bad programming. His colleagues include: Mike McClaren, an exec who will do anything to get ahead in the business, including hiding his own homosexuality; Lindsay Urich, an air-head who gets by on her looks; Joanne Walker, who exists as the token black person at the network; and head of programming Paul Weffler, who has an ability to get things done but is so clueless that often it is by accident. Overseeing them all is the president of the network, Red Lansing, whose orders – no matter how far-fetched – are ''always'' right.
The series didn't shy away from surprising storylines. Episode one featured David sleeping with Lori Loughlin which caused a scandal at the network; episode three – "Death Be Not Pre-Empted" – featured the team going after ratings by airing the execution of a serial killer, and episode six revolved around David's attempt to please all sorts of minority groups without displeasing others.
''I Love to Singa'' depicts the story of an owlet (singing voice of Jackie Morrow, speaking voice of Tommy Bond) who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his German-accented parents wish him to perform. The plot is a tribute to Al Jolson's film ''The Jazz Singer''.
The owlet's disciplinarian violinist father, Professor Fritz Owl (voiced by Billy Bletcher), kicks him out of the family's home after catching him singing jazz instead of "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" to the pump organ accompaniment of his mother (voiced by Martha Wentworth). While wandering, he encounters a radio amateur contest (clearly a takeoff of the ''Major Bowes Amateur Hour''), hosted by "Jack Bunny" (a pun on Jack Benny and later used in ''Goofy Groceries'', voiced by Tedd Pierce). Billing himself as "Owl Jolson" (a reference to Al Jolson), he performs and his parents, worried sick about him (his father now regrets throwing him out) hear him over the radio. They rush to the station.
Jack Bunny has decided Owl Jolson wins First Prize, but when the owlet sees his family watching him from outside the studio, he reverts to singing "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes". Jack Bunny is about to revoke the prize, but the family bursts in and Owl Jolson's father, finally having realized his son's potential, allows him to freely sing jazz.
The film opens with pub landlord and frequent holidaymaker Vic Flange (Sid James) openly flirting with the sassy saucepot widow Sadie Tompkins (Barbara Windsor) as his battleaxe wife, Cora (Joan Sims), looks on with disdain. Their twitching friend Harry (Jack Douglas), who is prone to elaborate and violent twitches, arrives and reveals that the package holiday Vic has booked to the Mediterranean island Elsbels (a pun on the slang expression "Hell's Bells") which is on the Costa Bomm, also includes Sadie, much to Cora's outrage. Cora, who avoids holidays because she hates flying, suddenly decides to accompany her boorish husband on the trip, to ensure he keeps away from Sadie.
The next day, Stuart Farquhar (Kenneth Williams), the representative of Wundatours Travel Agency, and his sexy, seductive assistant, Moira Plunkett (Gail Grainger), welcome the motley passengers. Among them are the henpecked and sex-starved Stanley Blunt (Kenneth Connor) and his overbearing, conservative, frigid wife, Evelyn (June Whitfield); a drunken, bowler-hatted mummy's boy, Eustace Tuttle (Charles Hawtrey); brash Scotsman Bert Conway (Jimmy Logan); young and beautiful friends Lily and Marge (Sally Geeson and Carol Hawkins respectively), who are each hoping to find a man to fall in love with; and a party of monks, including Brother Bernard (Bernard Bresslaw), a timid young monk who has difficulty fitting into his new path of life.
Unfortunately, upon their arrival they discover their hotel is only half-finished; the builders have just quit suddenly for unspecified reasons, leaving the remaining five floors unfinished. Distraught manager Pepe (Peter Butterworth) desperately tries to run the place in myriad different guises – the manager, the doorman and the porter – and the chef is his irate, ill-tempered wife, Floella (Hattie Jacques), who battles repeatedly with the temperamental stove while their handsome, womanising son Georgio (Ray Brooks) idles behind the bar. The hotel also hides an assortment of faults, and Pepe is soon overrun with complaints: Evelyn finds Mr Tuttle in her bath, Vic discovers Sadie naked in his shower; Lily and Marge's wardrobe has no back to it, allowing them to be accidentally seen by Brother Bernard in the opposite room; sand pours out of Moira's taps; the lavatory drenches Bert. The phone system itself is faulty, and the guests end up complaining to each other for much of the time. Nevertheless, Stuart is determined to ensure everyone has a good time.
Dinner on the first night is foul, and made even more unpleasant by the smoke from the burning food in the kitchen, which forces the motley group of holiday-makers to open the windows, prompting the arrival of mosquitos. Although agreeing to play leapfrog with Tuttle, Lily and Marge have their eyes on other things. Marge takes a shine to Brother Bernard, and they develop an innocent romance, while Lily lures the dashing Nicholas (David Kernan) away from his jealous (and, it is implied, gay) friend, Robin (John Clive). Meanwhile, Stanley attempts to seduce Cora whilst his nagging wife is not present, but Cora is more interested in keeping Vic away from Sadie, who grows fond of Bert. Vic tries to put Bert off Sadie by telling him that she is a black widow who murdered her two previous husbands, when in fact both were firemen who died on the job.
The next day, the holidaymakers are awakened very early in the morning by the builders, who have returned to work. While most of the party go off on an excursion to the nearby village, Stanley ensures his wife is left behind so that he can spend the day attempting to woo Cora. Vic samples a local drink, "Santa Cecelia's Elixir", which blesses the drinker with X-ray vision and he is able to see through women's clothing. However, the tourists are arrested for causing a riot at Madame Fifi's (Olga Lowe) local brothel after Vic, Bert and Eustace annoy the girls there; left-behind Evelyn is seduced by Georgio, which leads to her abandoning her frigid manners.
In the local prison, Miss Plunkett seduces the Chief of Police, and the tourists are released. Back at the hotel, Mrs Blunt resumes her sex life with a surprised Stanley after having a brief affair with Georgio. The last night in the hotel starts as a success, with all the guests at ease with each other thanks to the punch being spiked with Santa Cecelia's Elixir. Midway through the night it begins to rain, and the hotel is shown to have been constructed on a dry river bed. As the hotel begins to collapse Pepe finally loses his patience and sanity with the guests, intoxicated by the spiked punch, party on oblivious to the fact the hotel is disintegrating around them.
The film then shifts forward an unspecified period of time, and shows an Elsbels reunion at Vic and Cora's pub. Farquhar has also lost his job at Wundatours and started working at the pub. All the guests are happy, and reminisce about the holiday they barely survived.
Film producer James Ballard and his detached wife Catherine are in an open marriage. The couple engage in various trysts but, between them, have unenthusiastic sex. Their arousal is heightened by discussing the intimate details of their extramarital sex. She recounts sex that day with a stranger in a prop plane hangar. She was, however, left unsatisfied. When James replies he did not achieve satisfaction during his sexual encounter with one of his coworkers, Catherine replies, "maybe the next one".
While driving home from work late one night, James' car collides head-on with another, killing its male passenger. While trapped in the fused wreckage, Dr. Helen Remington, the driver and the dead passenger's wife, exposes a breast to James when she pulls off the shoulder harness of her seat belt.
While recovering, James meets Helen again, as well as a man named Dr. Robert Vaughan, who takes a keen interest in the brace holding James's shattered leg together and photographs it. While leaving the hospital, Helen and James begin an affair, one primarily fueled by their shared experience of the car crash. Attempting to understand why they are so aroused by their car wreck, they go to witness one of Vaughan's cult meetings/performance pieces, during which he thoroughly re-creates the car crash that killed James Dean with authentic cars and stunt drivers. When Department of Transport officials break up the event, James flees with Helen and Vaughan.
James soon becomes one of Vaughan's followers who fetishize car crashes, obsessively watching car safety test videos, photographing traffic collisions, and recounting the deaths of famous people in road accidents. Catherine, whom Vaughan has followed in his car on several occasions, begins to fantasize about him and James having sex. Although Vaughan initially claims that he is interested in the "reshaping of the human body by modern technology", his actual project is living out the philosophy that the car crash is a "benevolent psychopathology that beckons towards us".
James drives Vaughan's Lincoln convertible around the city while Vaughan picks up and has sex with a prostitute in the back seat. A short time later, James invites Catherine on one of his and Vaughan's drives. On an interstate, they come across a car wreck involving Colin Seagrave, a member of the group, who had been planning to authentically recreate the car accident that killed Jayne Mansfield with Vaughan. Amongst the wreckage, the three see Colin's bloodied corpse, wearing a dress and a blonde wig to accurately resemble Mansfield. Vaughan photographs the wreck as they pass by. Afterward, when police search Vaughan's convertible regarding a pedestrian hit-and-run, James drives it through a car wash while Vaughan and Catherine have sex in the back seat.
James subsequently has another dalliance with Gabrielle, another of the group members whose legs are clad in restrictive steel braces and who has a vulva-like scar on the back of one of her thighs, an injury suffered in a crash. Later, Vaughan invites James to visit a tattooist who tattoos car emblems on Vaughan's body. Afterward, James and Vaughan, both highly aroused, have anal sex in Vaughan's car.
Vaughan and James go for a drive in separate cars, aggressively pursuing each other. On an overpass, Vaughan intentionally crashes his car, landing on a passenger bus below, killing himself. After Vaughan's death, Gabrielle and Helen visit a junkyard, and affectionally embrace while laying in the wreck of Vaughan's car.
Later, James and Catherine perform a similar stunt, with James pursuing her on a freeway at a high speed. Catherine unbuckles her seatbelt as she sees James approaching, and he rams into the back of her car, forcing it to topple down into a grass median. James exits his car and approaches Catherine's, which has flipped upside down. Catherine lays partly under the car, apparently superficially injured. When James asks if she is okay, she tells him she is not hurt. As the couple kiss and begin to have sex near the wrecked vehicle, James whispers to her, "maybe the next one", implying that the only possible result of their extreme fetish is death.
The film is about an all-female motorcycle gang named the "Cycle Sluts", who cruise into the isolated town of Zariah looking for a good time. Here, an evil scientist-turned-mortician has been killing local townspeople with the aid of his long-suffering dwarf assistant and turning them into zombies to use as labor at an abandoned mine. The mine is too radioactive after underground nuclear testing to be mined by living people. Although the scientist later admits that the real reason he has been doing it is not the money, but because he is just plain mean.
The zombies escape after a curious little boy removes the lock to explore the mine, becoming the zombies' first victim. Around this point, a bus-load of blind orphans become stranded just on the outskirts of town as their ride breaks down. Luckily their bus-driver always keeps an Uzi on the bus "for sentimental reasons".
With vague memories of life to guide them, the zombies eventually find their way back to town and begin devouring live flesh. Going against the wishes of their leader and despite some rough treatment from the locals earlier in the film, the Cycle Sluts ride to the rescue and begin killing the zombies using chainsaws, baseball bats, welding torches, a garrote and a staple gun.
In the final scene, the Cycle Sluts use fresh meat to lure the remaining zombies to the town church, which they have packed with dynamite. They are now aided by the doctor's dwarf who has decided that there are better lines of work than being a henchman. With all the undead inside and the church sealed up, the timer goes off and the church goes up in flames, zombies and all. The Cycle Sluts are rewarded with a sack full of cash and induct the dwarf and several of the blind orphans as honorary Cycle Sluts. They then ride out of town with some of the men folk in tow (their new "bitches") and throw the sack of money to the wind.
U.S. Navy sailor Alex Winkley (Bill Williams) wakes up from a night of drinking in New York City and finds he has a wad of cash. His memory is hazy, but he knows he got it from a woman he had visited earlier in the evening, Edna Bartelli (Lola Lane).
With the help of dance-hall girl June Goffe (Susan Hayward), he attempts to return the money, only to find out that the woman is dead. The sailor is not sure if he is the killer or not. Alex and June, along with a philosophical cabbie (Paul Lukas), stay up all night, attempting to solve the murder mystery before the sailor has to catch a bus to the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, in the morning. Their deadline is at dawn.
During the film, the many false leads and red herrings involve a blind piano player named Sleepy Parsons (Marvin Miller) and a young couple.
Bartelli had been blackmailing men with whom she had had affairs, thus many suspects are possible. The woman's brother Val (Joseph Calleia) adds a touch of menace to the plot. The surprise ending resolves all issues, including the relationship between Alex and June.
The following is the current version, The Scarlet Pimpernel 4.0.
The play opens at La Comédie Française, an elegant theatre where Marguerite St. Just is performing in her final show ("Storybook"). As she announces to the crowd her marriage to wealthy English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney, Citizen Chauvelin, a fanatical agent of the French republican revolutionaries, closes the theatre before the performance is finished. Percy, Marguerite, and her brother, Armand, leave for England, and Chauvelin oversees the execution of the Marquis de St.-Cyr by guillotine in the miserable streets of Paris ("Madame Guillotine").
Percy and Marguerite wed in England ("Believe"). However, on the night of their wedding, Percy learns that his wife betrayed the Marquis de St.-Cyr, his friend, to the revolutionary government ("Wedding Dance"). Heartbroken, Percy is torn between his love for Marguerite and the knowledge of what she has done ("Prayer"). The Blakeneys' marriage grows cold.
Percy determines to make amends for his friend's death by saving other innocents from the guillotine. He takes on the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel and convinces some of his friends (subsequently called "bounders") to join him in his daring rescue attempts; Armand, Marguerite's brother, insists on being included ("Into the Fire"). The band pretend to be inane fops, effectively throwing off any suspicions about the identity of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Under Percy's strict orders, Marguerite is told nothing of this.
Over the next five weeks, the League rescues many potential victims of the guillotine in Paris ("The Rescue"). The furious Robespierre orders Chauvelin to discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel with the help of a Belgian spy named Grappin (Percy in disguise). Frustrated, Chauvelin vows to succeed ("Falcon in the Dive").
Back in England, Marie, Marguerite's old costume designer and best friend, has come to the Blakeney estate and is painting Percy's portrait. The Blakeneys' maids gossip about the Scarlet Pimpernel with Percy, who continues his foppish act ("Scarlet Pimpernel Transition"). Marguerite cannot understand how Percy is so drastically different from the man whom she married ("When I Look At You").
Informed that she has a visitor in the garden, Marguerite goes outside. Percy looks out at her in awe, yet remains confused about how he should act around her ("When I Look At You (Reprise)"). Marguerite's visitor turns out to be Chauvelin, who attempts to convince her to join him in his mission to unmask the Pimpernel, as the French believe he is a member of the Blakeney's circle. Percy joins the conversation and perplexes Chauvelin with his ridiculous ways. When Percy leaves, Chauvelin tries to remind Marguerite of the fiery passion they once shared for the Revolution and each other ("Where's the Girl?"). Marguerite rejects Chauvelin's advances and sends him away.
Armand, just returned from a trip for the League, tells Marguerite that he is going on another trip, this time to France. She becomes upset because she believes that Armand is putting himself in danger—and because he is the only one whom Marguerite feels truly loves her. Marguerite begs Armand to stay, but after trying to comfort her, he leaves, taking Marie back to Paris with him to assist the League ("You Are My Home").
Percy tells his remaining men that the Prince of Wales, suspicious of their trips to France, wants to meet with them. To allay the Prince's suspicions, Percy shows the League how it is a man's duty to dress elegantly and flamboyantly, and they all display the latest fashion ("The Creation of Man"). At the palace, the League convinces the Prince that they have nothing to do with the Pimpernel's activities.
Chauvelin arrives to meet with the Prince but is brushed aside so that the League can help the Prince select his attire for the royal ball that night. Having received a note from Chauvelin, Marguerite meets him at the palace, and Chauvelin once again enlists her aid. Armand has been captured in France, and Chauvelin threatens to have him guillotined if Marguerite refuses to help find the Pimpernel ("Marguerite's Dilemma (Instrumental)"). Both Marguerite and Chauvelin wonder if they can trust each other; Percy finds them talking and wonders if he, too, can trust his wife ("The Riddle").
At the Prince's ball ("Entr'acte (Instrumental)"), Percy and the other guests discuss the Pimpernel, who they all know is there that evening ("The Scarlet Pimpernel"). Percy then recites a poem he has created in honor of the Pimpernel, and the guests join in ("They Seek Him Here").
Marguerite, desperate, convinces one of Percy's men to ask the Pimpernel to meet her on the footbridge at one o'clock ("The Gavotte"). She informs Chauvelin of the plan and goes to the footbridge. Percy comes but remains hidden in the shadows, keeping his identity concealed. Marguerite tells him of Chauvelin's plans and explains that she betrayed the Marquis de St.-Cyr under coercion. Torn, Marguerite begs the Pimpernel to escape before Chauvelin arrives, but the Pimpernel promises to save Armand and sends Marguerite away. Overjoyed, Percy now understands why he has loved Marguerite all along—and that she has always remained the same ("She Was There"). Chauvelin arrives, but Percy's antics fluster him into leaving without discovering the Pimpernel's identity. The League then sets out for France to save Armand.
Still unaware of the Pimpernel's identity, Marguerite does the same. Disguised as a tart, Marguerite attempts to uncover information about her brother, but she is quickly recognized and apprehended by Chauvelin ("Storybook (Reprise)"). While Chauvelin admires Marguerite's courageous efforts, he is angry that she was defying his threats, and he sends her to prison with Armand.
Unable to get access to Marguerite and Armand, Grappin poses a plot to Chauvelin to have Armand lead them to the secret harbor that the League uses, where they can capture the entire group. Grappin tries to convince Chauvelin to let him dispose of Marguerite, but Chauvelin orders him to stick to the plan. Alone, Chauvelin rages over his failure to win Marguerite back ("Where's the Girl? (Reprise)").
The League meets with Percy, Marie, and Tussaud (Marie's fiancé) in Paris to try to find a way to save Marguerite and Armand. Unable to get close to them, even disguised as Grappin, Percy starts to think the situation is almost hopeless. He vows to go it alone, not wanting the rest of the League to continue to risk themselves, but they reassuredly state they will stand by him ("Into the Fire (Reprise)").
In prison, Armand assures Marguerite that the Pimpernel will save them. Refusing to believe it, Marguerite mourns the loss of Percy and of her life ("I'll Forget You"). However, the two are "rescued" by "League members" and set off for the League's harbor at the coastal town of Michelon, having no idea that Chauvelin is on their trail. On the way, Marguerite learns her husband's secret identity.
At Michelon, Marguerite and Armand discover that a guillotine has been erected at the harbour. Chauvelin and his soldiers arrive, and when Marguerite desperately calls for Percy to run, Chauvelin finally begins to suspect who his adversary truly is.
Grappin turns up and informs Chauvelin that the Pimpernel—who Grappin confirms is Sir Percy Blakeney—is heading for Calais. Chauvelin sends some of his men off to intercept the Pimpernel but still keeps soldiers to assist him. When Percy "accidentally" lets his identity slip, he and Chauvelin duel. Marguerite steps in several times to help Percy, but Chauvelin still wins ("The Duel"). Percy is then immediately guillotined.
Confident in his triumph, Chauvelin sends most of his remaining soldiers away to carry the news to Robespierre, leaving only a small squad. However, to Chauvelin's utter bewilderment, Percy stands up from the guillotine unharmed. The head that fell is, in fact, a wax one that Marie (who, having married Tussaud, is revealed to be Marie Tussaud) created to fool Chauvelin. The whole duel and execution was but a ruse to lull Chauvelin into a sense of overconfidence and send the majority of his forces away. The remaining soldiers turn out to be the League in disguise.
Percy's men tie up Chauvelin and leave him with planted evidence incriminating him as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Percy, Marguerite, Armand, and the bounders then set off for England. Marguerite and Percy confide in each other the true love that they have always had for each other ("Believe (Reprise)").
In the future and after 20 years of being in development, the Override mainframe supercomputer, which is buried on the South Pole in order to keep its core at very low temperatures from overheating, went online on schedule and its main function is to handle information of the ever-increasingly complex internet, called I-Way, through advanced processing capabilities that the technology inside of the supercomputer offers and as such, society started depending on it and worked for years without exhibiting issues until its databases started mutating and computer viruses began to clog the I-Way, leading to delays, slow information transfers, among other issues that brings the Override to the point of self-destruction as a result of the now-mutated databases. In response to the situation, the player is assigned to pilot an antivirus tank vehicle in order to destroy mutated databases and viruses that are clogging the I-Way, in addition to collecting datapods. After traversing multiple nodes, the player finally arrives to the Override Central Block and destroys the boss database by overloading it with viruses, saving I-Way in the process until next time.
As Springfield celebrates its bicentennial, Miss Hoover assigns Lisa's second-grade class to write an essay on Jebediah Springfield, the town's founder. Meanwhile, Mayor Quimby proclaims Homer the town crier during tryouts for historical figures in the town's upcoming celebration. Because his "criering" is better than Ned Flanders', Homer seizes Ned's heirloom hat and bell as props.
Lisa visits the town's historical society to research Jebediah's life. Hollis Hurlbut, the curator of the society's museum, appreciates Lisa's enthusiasm and grants her access to Jebediah's possessions. While examining his fife, she finds a document inside that purports to be a confession of his secret past as the vicious pirate Hans Sprungfeld, as he was known until 1796. He had attempted to kill George Washington while the latter was having his portrait painted, and later wrote and hid his confession, confident that no one in Springfield would ever find it.
Lisa tries to convince the townspeople of the truth about Jebediah, but is met with disbelief and hostility. Hurlbut dismisses the confession as a forgery, and Miss Hoover gives Lisa a failing grade for writing her essay about it, accusing her of political correctness. Continuing her research, Lisa discovers that Jebediah wore a prosthetic silver tongue after his own was bitten off in a fight. She persuades local government officials to exhume his remains and search for it, but there is no sign of it when the coffin is opened. Exasperated at Lisa's meddling, Quimby strips Homer of his position as town crier.
Seeing a copy of the unfinished Washington portrait in her classroom, and remembering a dream in which he urged her to find the "one piece left in the puzzle," Lisa realizes how she can establish the confession as authentic. She returns to the museum and matches its torn edge to that of the portrait, proving that Jebediah had written it on a scrap of the canvas that got caught on his boot when he escaped after failing to kill Washington. The missing silver tongue is found in one of the museum's exhibits, stolen from the coffin by Hurlbut in an effort to protect his own career and the myth of Jebediah. Lisa and Hurlbut decide to reveal the truth about him during a parade celebrating the bicentennial, but at the last moment Lisa decides that the myth has served to inspire the town and chooses to keep the secret. As Homer watches proudly, he notices that Ned has been reinstated as town crier and pushes him aside, then lets Lisa ring the crier's bell while riding on his shoulders.
Joan Crawford is a driven actress and compulsively clean housekeeper who tries to control the lives of those around her as tightly as she controls herself. To prepare to work at MGM Studios, she rises at 4:00 a.m., scrubbing her face and arms with soap and boiling water before plunging her face into a bowl of witch hazel and ice to close the pores. Helga, a new maid, thinks Joan's living room is spotless, but Joan finds a detail she overlooked and loses her temper.
Joan is in a relationship with Hollywood lawyer Gregg Savitt, but her career is on a downswing. Despite wanting a baby, she cannot get pregnant; seven pregnancies when she was married to actor Franchot Tone ended in miscarriages. When denied an application for adoption, she enlists Gregg's help to secure a baby. Joan adopts a girl, Christina, and then a boy, Christopher. Joan lavishes Christina with attention and luxuries such as an extravagant birthday party, but also enforces a code of denial and discipline. When Christina is showered with birthday gifts, Joan allows her to choose just one to keep and donates the rest to charity.
When Christina rebels against her mother, confrontations ensue. Joan beats Christina in a swimming pool race and laughs at her; when Christina reacts angrily, Joan becomes enraged and locks the child in the pool house. Later, when Joan discovers Christina wearing her makeup and imitating her, she takes offense and cuts off chunks of Christina's hair to punish her.
Joan resents Gregg's allegiance to studio boss Louis B. Mayer. Arguing with Gregg, she downs glasses of vodka and throws a drink in his face. When Gregg breaks up with her, she cuts him out of photos. When Mayer forces Joan to leave MGM after theater owners brand her "box-office poison", she hacks down her prized rose garden with a pair of gardening shears and an ax.
Joan finds Christina's expensive dresses hanging from wire hangers, which she despises and prohibits. Enraged, Joan yanks dresses from Christina's closet, throwing them all over her room, and beats Christina with the metal hanger as she squeals. Declaring that the sparkling clean bathroom floor is dirty, Joan throws cleaning powder all over it before striking Christina across the back with the can and wailing for someone to clean it.
Joan sends Christina to Chadwick School. Years later, when a teenage Christina is caught kissing a boy, Joan brings her home. Barbara Bennett, a reporter from ''Redbook'', is there, writing a puff piece on Joan's home life. After Joan lies about Christina, saying she got expelled, Christina confronts her in front of the reporter. Joan slaps Christina twice in the face. The confrontation ends with Joan tackling Christina to the floor and choking her. Christina thrashes around helplessly until Joan's live-in assistant and the reporter pull her away.
Joan sends Christina to Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, where she is allowed no contact with the outside world. Joan marries Alfred Steele, CEO of Pepsi Cola, moves to New York City, and pressures him to go into debt to fund their lavish lifestyle. After his death, the board tries to force her to resign, but Joan threatens to publicly badmouth the product if they do not let her retain her position.
After graduating from Flintridge, Christina rents an apartment in Manhattan, and is acting in a soap opera. When Christina is hospitalized for an ovarian tumor, she is temporarily replaced on the show by her visibly drunk mother. Joan dies of cancer in 1977, and Christina and Christopher learn she has disinherited them both. Christopher says their mother has the last word, as usual; Christina says, "Does she?".
The story concerns a 70-year-old Englishman, John Sidney Howard, who goes on a fishing holiday in Jura, France partly to recover from grief at the loss of his son during the Battle of the Heligoland Bight. Although the Second World War has begun, he does not expect the speed with which the Nazi German forces invade France. His urgent desire to return home is delayed by a request made by an English couple he meets at the hotel. They ask him to take their two young children to England and safety. While delayed in Dijon by the sudden illness of one of the children, he accepts a request by one of the hotel maids to also take her young niece to safety in England where the child's father is working. Along the way, Howard accepts two more children: a boy whose parents were killed on the road by German aircraft, and a Dutch boy who is being attacked by panicking French villagers who mistake him for a German. Along the way he is overtaken by events and turns for help to some acquaintances in Chartres whom he barely knows, but remembers from a skiing holiday he took with his son, some years before.
Eventually, Howard and the children reach Brittany, hoping to escape Nazi-occupied France on a fishing boat. However, when one of the children is overheard speaking in English, the Nazis discover that Howard is an enemy Englishman and arrest him. He is accused of being a spy and threatened with death by the Gestapo, but in a final plot twist, the German commandant secretly allows Howard and the children to sail to England on the condition that they take his niece with them and send her to her uncle in the United States. His niece is apparently orphaned and had a "non-Aryan" mother.
The hazardous boat trip from France to England is successful and, ultimately, all the children are repatriated to the USA where they are cared for by Howard's daughter.
The tale is told in the form of a flashback by Howard to an acquaintance he meets in a London club during the Blitz.
Krusty's gambling debts and spendthrifting land him in deep trouble with the Springfield Mafia. To make more money, he launches a training college for clowns, where Homer enrolls. After graduating, he impersonates Krusty at events that the real Krusty deems beneath him, such as children's birthday parties and the unveiling of a new sandwich at Krusty Burger.
The stress of impersonating Krusty makes Homer consider quitting. He soon discovers his uncanny resemblance to the clown has its benefits: Chief Wiggum rips up a speeding ticket when he mistakes Homer for Krusty, and Apu gives him a discount at the Kwik-E-Mart.
Later, Homer realizes that impersonating Krusty also has its pitfalls: Homer is kidnapped by the Mafia when they mistake him for Krusty, who still owes them money. Don Vittorio DiMaggio tells Homer he will kill him unless he performs a loop-the-loop on a tiny bicycle, the only trick Homer never did master at clown college. After he fails to perform the stunt to DiMaggio's satisfaction, the Mafioso is deeply offended.
Soon the real Krusty arrives and the confused DiMaggio forces them to perform the stunt together on the same tiny bicycle — they succeed and their lives are spared, but Krusty is still made to pay off his $48 gambling debt to the mob.
Josie Geller is an insecure 25-year-old copy editor for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' who has never had a real relationship. One day, her editor-in-chief, Rigfort, assigns her to report undercover at a high school to help parents become more aware of their children's lives.
Her first day at South Glen South High School is miserable. Josie reverts to the old geek persona that ruined her first high school experience. She also has an unfortunate run-in with three obnoxious popular girls, Kirsten, Gibby and Kristin, and the school's most attractive and popular student, Guy Perkins. Josie loses hope but is reassured when a kind-hearted nerd named Aldys befriends her. Aldys, who loathes Guy and his gang, invites Josie to join The Denominators, a group of intelligent students.
Josie falls in love with her English teacher, Sam Coulson, and becomes the top student in his class. After reciting a romantic excerpt from Shakespeare to Sam, Josie has horrible flashbacks to when she read a romantic poem aloud in class to her high school crush, a popular boy named Billy Prince, who later asked her to their senior prom, making her dream come true. However, on the night of the prom, Billy arrives with another girl and both of them hurl eggs and insults at Josie, humiliating her and breaking her heart.
One night while out driving with Aldys, Josie encounters Guy and his gang at a local hangout called "The Court" where promiscuity and underage drinking take place. Her managing editor Augustus "Gus" Strauss loses patience with Josie after a rival paper scoops The Court story, and orders Josie to become friends with the popular kids. He arranges for her to wear a hidden camera, and soon the whole office becomes obsessed with her story.
Josie confides in her brother Rob about her fears. Rob, who was their high school's most popular boy in his teens, urges her to let go of her old self and start anew. To help her, Rob enrolls as a student and becomes an instant hit. He then uses his influence to draw Josie into the cool crowd, much to the dismay of Aldys.
Sam and Josie grow closer, but Sam struggles with his feelings as he thinks she's a student. Guy and Josie attend the prom as Rosalind and Orlando from Shakespeare's ''As You Like It''. Anita, Gus and Josie's other co-workers watch through the camera and are overjoyed as she is voted prom queen. As Guy dances with Aldys as an alleged act of friendship, the mean girls attempt to dump dog food over Aldys. Outraged, Josie prevents the incident, throws her crown away and reveals her true identity. She praises Aldys for her kindness and warns the students that one's persona in high school means nothing in the real world. Sam is hurt by her lies and states he wants nothing to do with her. Also angered is Rob, who as a phony student received a second chance at baseball. Josie, ultimately making amends, secures him a coaching job.
Josie vows to give Gus a story and writes an account of her experience. In it, she admits she's never been kissed, describes the students of South Glen South, and avows her love for Sam; the entire city is moved by it. She writes she will stand in the middle of the baseball field and wait for Sam to come and kiss her. Josie waits, but the clock runs out with no sign of Sam. On the verge of giving up... cheers, then a booming roar, as Sam emerges to give her a romantic kiss. The movie ends with Sam telling her though it took him a long time to get where he is, he finally is here and then they kiss again.
While on a charting mission, the Federation starship ''Enterprise'', under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, discovers a zone of pure blackness in space; probes launched into the area simply disappear. As they study it further, the zone expands and soon envelops the ''Enterprise'', leaving them in a black void with sensors reporting complete nothingness outside. Picard orders the ship on a return course, but they find that they cannot escape; they leave a stationary beacon behind them, only to have it reappear ahead of them again.
A Romulan Warbird suddenly decloaks in front of the ship and attacks, and Picard orders the crew to return fire; they destroy the Warbird, but Picard is suspicious of how easily this occurs. The crew then detect what appears to be their sister ship, the USS ''Yamato'', approaching, but it does not respond to hails. Commander Riker and Lt. Worf beam over to search the ship, where they find it empty with various inconsistencies in its construction, including more seemingly impossible physical loops. The ''Enterprise'' then detects an exit from the darkness, but cannot lock onto the away team to retrieve them before the opening disappears. The ''Yamato'' begins to fade away, but the ''Enterprise'' is able to beam Riker and Worf back just in time. More openings appear in the blackness, each closing as soon as the ''Enterprise'' approaches them. Picard realizes that they are being manipulated, and orders a full stop.
Suddenly, an entity with a distorted, almost childlike face as a result of it attempting to look humanoid, appears in the void, calling itself Nagilum. It announces its curiosity about humans and their "limited existence" and would like to test the limits of the human body. It causes Ensign Haskell to experience violent convulsions, and he then falls to the floor dead. Nagilum then states that it wants to know everything about death, asserting absent-mindedly that it would take between a third and a half of the ''Enterprise'' s crew to complete its experiments. Picard decides to activate the ship's self-destruct sequence rather than to submit to Nagilum's whims. As the crew prepares for their end, Picard is tested again by Nagilum through peculiar behavior displayed by doppelgangers of Counselor Troi and Lt. Commander Data, both of whom question the self-destruct order. After these facsimiles are gone and the countdown nears zero, the void suddenly vanishes, leaving the ''Enterprise'' in normal space. Picard orders the ship to move away at high speed, and when he is finally satisfied that they are truly free, cancels the self-destruct sequence. As the ''Enterprise'' continues on its mission, Picard is met by the face of Nagilum on his ready-room computer. Nagilum offers its evaluation of humanity, criticizing the species's faults and claiming they have nothing in common with its kind. Picard disagrees, pointing out that their recent encounter shows that both species are curious, a logical statement to which Nagilum concedes before disappearing.
Aboard a commercial Boeing 747 airliner, U.S. Marshals brothers Terry and Pete Nessip are escorting computer expert Earl Leedy to a high-security prison. When an apparent terrorist hijack attempt blows a hole in the airliner, Terry is sucked out falling more than 30,000 feet to his death, and the terrorists parachute out of the same hole, taking Leedy with them.
Ex-DEA agent and renegade skydiver Ty Moncrief is the mastermind behind the attack, which culminated in the first ever parachute jump from a commercial jet at 30,000 feet. Ty plans to use Leedy to hack into the DEA mainframe computer in Washington, D.C. so Ty can auction off the names of undercover agents to drug cartels worldwide. Ty has scheduled this to be accomplished during an Independence Day parachute exhibition and fireworks display, which is the one day every year when security is loosened around the airspace above D.C.
Pete believes that the hijacking may have been an elaborate prison break meant to free Leedy. However, the FBI declares that sneaking a parachute through airport security is impossible, and that parachuting at the jet's altitude and speed is not survivable. A devastated Pete is blamed for overreacting to the incident, and forced to turn in his badge.
Undeterred, Pete consults a U.S. Navy high-altitude military parachuting instructor who confirms that he and his team have parachuted from that height and speed, but also states that the high-density metal rings in the parachutes would not pass airport metal detectors and that the operation required either rare skills or suicidal recklessness. The instructor believes the world class skydiver Don Jagger could perform the jump, but does not know his current whereabouts. Pete is instead referred to Jagger's reckless ex-girlfriend, ex-con Jessie Crossman, who runs a skydiving school in the Florida Keys. Jessie, who is unaware that Jagger is part of Ty's crew, agrees to train Pete how to skydive, if he will sponsor her team for the parachute exhibition.
Soon after, Jagger is found dead, tangled in some high voltage power lines, after his identity was exposed by a passenger during the hijacking. Jessie breaks into the police impound to examine Jagger's parachute, declares that his death was a murder engineered by Ty, and swears revenge. Pete inquires as to the parachute's lack of metal, which Jessie explains is a custom "smuggler's rig" made with high density fabrics to deter detection.
When Pete discovers Ty's plan to hack into the DEA mainframe, the rest of the parachuting team agrees to help Pete with the situation. Jessie's parachuting friend Selkirk is severely injured after using a faulty parachute that Ty had intended for Jessie to use.
On the night of the Independence Day exhibition, Jessie sneaks into Ty's parachuting aircraft, holding them at gunpoint in order to determine an explanation for Jagger's death. But Ty's men kick her outside and then parachute out. Jessie, managing to grab hold of the aircraft door bar, lets go on a free fall just as Pete and the parachuting team arrive and rescue her, floating down safety to the roof of the DEA mainframe office building where Ty has already arrived.
Pete tries to find access to the DEA mainframe control room, eliminating Ty's men one by one, with the help of the parachuting team. He breaks in and holds Leedy (who has already started downloading the identities) as hostage. Ty, having kidnapped Jessie, appears and threatens to kill her unless Pete releases Leedy. A fight breaks out between Pete and Ty that results in both of them falling out the building window.
Luckily, Pete opens his emergency parachute as Ty tumbles to his death. Pete lands safely on the ground and is escorted away by paramedics, but spots Leedy wearing a DEA jacket leaving the scene. One of the team members, Swoop, leaps from the building, parachuting down onto Leedy and stopping him in his tracks. Pete tells Jessie jokingly that he would try skydiving again in 40 or 50 years.
Nichols' original Broadway play has the couple meeting in France during World War I. The young man is a wounded soldier and the girl a nurse who tended him. The priest and the rabbi from the wedding are veterans of the same war, and recognize one another from their time in the service.
The rest of the plot was summarized by Judge Learned Hand in his opinion on the copyright lawsuit filed by Nichols: :''"Abie's Irish Rose'' presents a Jewish family living in prosperous circumstances in New York. The father, a widower, is in business as a merchant, in which his son and only child helps him. The boy has philandered with young women, who to his father's great disgust have always been Gentiles, for he is obsessed with a passion that his daughter-in-law shall be an orthodox Jew. When the play opens the son, who has been courting a young Irish Catholic girl, has already married her secretly before a Protestant minister, and concerned about how to soften the blow for his father securing a favorable reception for his bride, while concealing her faith and race. To accomplish this he introduces her to his father as a Jewish girl in whom he is interested and conceals the fact they are married. The girl somewhat reluctantly agrees to the plan; the father takes the bait, becomes infatuated with the girl, insists that they must marry. He assumes they will because it's the father's idea. He calls in a rabbi, and prepares for the wedding according to the Jewish rite. :Meanwhile the girl's father, also a widower who lives in California and is as intense in his own religious antagonism as the Jew, has been called to New York, supposing that his daughter is to marry an Irishman and a Catholic. Accompanied by a priest, he arrives at the house at the moment when the marriage is being celebrated, so too late to prevent it, and the two fathers, each infuriated by the proposed union of his child to a heretic, fall into unseemly and grotesque antics. The priest and the rabbi become friendly, exchange trite sentiments about religion, and agree that the match is good. Apparently out of abundant caution, the priest celebrates the marriage for a third time, while the girl's father is inveigled away. The second act closes with each father, still outraged, seeking to find some way by which the union, thus trebly insured, may be dissolved. :The last act takes place about a year later, the young couple having meanwhile been abjured by each father, and left to their own resources. They have had twins, a boy and a girl, but their fathers know no more than that a child has been born. At Christmas each, led by his craving to see his grandchild, goes separately to the young folks' home, where they encounter each other, each laden with gifts, one for a boy, the other for a girl. After some slapstick comedy, depending upon the insistence of each that he is right about the sex of the grandchild, they become reconciled when they learn the truth, and that each child is to bear the given name of a grandparent. The curtain falls as the fathers are exchanging amenities, and the Jew giving evidence of an abatement in the strictness of his orthodoxy."
There have been some variations of the plot, as to setting, or how the characters meet, in later versions of the play or in adaptations for film.
The game begins with a Furon, Cryptosporidium-136, hovering over a launch site with military personnel testing a rocket. The rocket is launched and destroys the ship carrying Crypto-136, and leaves him fatally wounded. Crypto-136 is later captured by the U.S. Army. Some time later, Cryptosporidium-137 travels to Earth with another Furon, Orthopox-13. Cryptosporidium (nicknamed 'Crypto') comes with the intention of rescuing 136, while Orthopox (nicknamed "Pox") desires to extract human brain stems for study. Crypto arrives at Turnipseed Farm in the Southern United States, where Pox mistakes cows for Earth's dominant life-form. The Majestic agency is alerted to the Furon presence when Crypto decimates an army brigade passing through the area. Pox, communicating with Crypto through a hologram-like device, then reveals to Crypto that the reason he requires human brain stems is because they contain pure Furon D.N.A. handed down to them by Furon scouts eons ago when the Furons stopped on Earth for "shore leave" following a war with Mars, which was rendered uninhabitable by the Furon Empire.
After several missions in the Midwestern town of Rockwell and the California suburb of Santa Modesta, Crypto and Pox become aware of the Majestic, and begin crippling government attempts to stop them by performing acts such as destroying Area 42 with an atomic bomb and defeating his recurring foe, Armquist, the head of the army. Throughout the game, Crypto's various acts are covered up by the government and media, which attribute them either to freak accidents or to Communism.
After being temporarily captured in Union Town, the game climaxes in Capitol City, where Crypto assassinates President Huffman and brutally slaughters all members of Congress. Soon, the U.S. government seemingly surrenders to the Furons. Crypto meets Silhouette, the leader of Majestic, in front of the Capitol. After a brief scuffle with Silhouette, Crypto discovers that "he" is a woman. Silhouette unveils the Robo-Prez, which is a towering mech controlled by President Huffman's brain. Crypto defeats Robo-Prez in his flying saucer, and then defeats Silhouette in a final battle at the Octagon. As Silhouette dies, she reveals that there are other Majestic divisions all over the world. Crypto, however, is confident that without Silhouette's leadership, Majestic will be totally powerless to resist the Furon takeover.
The game ends with Huffman making a televised speech, assuring America that the recent events were the work of communists, who have poisoned the U.S. water supply, and that as a result testing centers have been set up all across the country to scan people for harmful toxins. People are then shown being herded reluctantly by Army soldiers into strange machines, apparently for brain stem extraction. Huffman is then revealed to be Crypto in disguise.
Timeline: 1950. Returning to the Swamp after a long session in the OR, Hawkeye receives a letter announcing that Ho-Jon has been accepted into his alma mater, though he and Trapper still have the task of coming up with $2,000 for travel and tuition. Hawkeye convinces Trapper that they can accomplish it by raffling off a weekend pass to Tokyo with the company of a gorgeous nurse. They go to Colonel Henry Blake's office to propose the idea to him, and he nervously gives them permission. Hawkeye convinces a nurse, Lt. "Dish", to agree to be the nurse who will accompany the winner to Tokyo, but he promises that she'll be able to get out of spending any time with the winner.
Later on, Hawkeye and Trapper get into an argument with Frank Burns, who, in a fit of rage, destroys their still. Furious with him, they put a bag over his head and throw him out of the tent. When Henry hears about it, he withdraws the passes and cancels the party they had planned to throw for fear that Frank will complain to General Hammond. He adds that he has to see Hammond in Seoul and was unhappy about the party taking place in his absence. However, as Henry is leaving, Radar reveals that he tricked him into signing two passes, so the party can take place. Unfortunately, Hawkeye's and Trapper's happiness is short lived as they discover that Frank was made temporary commander. To get rid of him so they can have their party, Hawkeye injects him with a sedative, wraps a bandage around his face, and puts him in a bed in post-op, prescribing a dose of sedative every hour.
An upset Margaret comes to the party in search of Frank, whom she has been unable to find. Suspicious of the activities of Hawkeye and Trapper, she calls General Hammond, a former lover, who is so excited to hear from her that he departs for the 4077 at once. Meanwhile, Hawkeye announces that they have raised $1800 and then has the nurse draw a name for the raffle. Hawkeye has fixed the raffle so that the winner is Father Mulcahy, but unfortunately, he announces this just as Hammond walks in.
While the infuriated general questions Hawkeye and Trapper, Margaret walks in with Frank, still sedated and with bandages around his head, and screams at the two of them. Hammond demands that they be arrested, but just in the nick of time, choppers arrive loaded with casualties. After the session, which Hammond participates in, he tells Henry that Hawkeye and Trapper are two of the best surgeons he has ever seen and, for that reason, he is dropping the charges.
Physicist Dr. Lionel Barrett is enlisted by eccentric millionaire Rudolph Deutsch to undertake an investigation on the afterlife at Belasco House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses." The house was originally owned by Emeric Belasco, an imposing, perverted millionaire and supposed murderer, who disappeared soon after a massacre occurred at the home. The house is believed to be haunted by the victims of Belasco's twisted and sadistic desires.
Accompanying Barrett are his wife, Ann, as well as two mediums: mental medium and spiritualist minister Florence Tanner and physical medium Benjamin Franklin "Ben" Fischer, who is the only survivor of an investigation conducted 20 years before. The group arrive to begin their investigation a week before Christmas Eve, and the rationalist Barrett is rudely skeptical of Florence's belief in "surviving personalities", spirits which haunt the physical world, and he asserts that there is nothing but unfocused electromagnetic energy in the house. Barrett brings a machine he has developed, which he believes will rid the house of this energy. Though not a physical medium, Florence begins to manifest physical phenomena inside the house. When, after a quarrel with Tanner, Barrett is attacked by invisible forces, he suspects that Florence may be using the house's energy against him. Meanwhile, Fischer remains aloof, with his mind closed to the house's influence, and is only there to collect the generous paycheck.
Ann is subjected to erotic visions late at night, which seem linked to her lackluster sex life. She goes downstairs and, in an apparent trance, disrobes and demands sex from Fischer. He strikes her, snapping her out of the trance, and she returns to herself, horrified and ashamed. A second incident occurs a day or so later after she has become drunk. Her husband arrives a moment later to witness her advances to Fischer. He is resentful, and spurns Fischer's warnings that the house is affecting Ann. Stricken by the accusation, Fischer drops his psychic shields, but he is immediately attacked.
Florence is convinced that one of the "surviving personalities" in the home is Daniel, Belasco's tormented son, and she is determined to prove it at all costs. She finds a human skeleton chained behind a wall. Believing it to be Daniel, Florence and Fischer bury the body outside and Florence performs a funeral. Nevertheless, Daniel's "personality" continues to haunt Florence; she is scratched violently by a possessed cat. Barrett suspects that Florence is mutilating herself. In an attempt to put Daniel to rest, Florence gives herself to the entity sexually, but the entity brutalizes her and possesses her body.
Barrett's machine is assembled. Possessed by the malevolent spirit, Florence attempts to destroy it, thinking that it will harm the spirits in the house, but she is prevented from doing serious damage. She enters the chapel, "the unholy heart" of the house, in an attempt to warn the spirits, but she is crushed by a falling crucifix. As she dies, she leaves a symbol written in her own blood. Barrett activates his machine, which seems to be effective. Fischer wanders the house afterwards, attempting to sense psychic energy; in astonishment, he declares the place "completely clear!" But violent psychic activity soon resumes, and Barrett is killed.
Fischer decides to confront the house, and Ann accompanies him despite her misgivings. Deciphering Florence's dying clue, Fischer deduces that Belasco is the sole entity haunting the house, masquerading as many. He taunts Belasco, declaring him a "son of a whore", and that he was no "roaring giant", but instead more likely a "funny little dried-up bastard" who fooled everyone about his alleged height. Even as objects begin to hurl themselves at Fischer, he continues to defy the entity, and insults Belasco's physical stature. At that, all becomes still. Fischer then concentrates, and a stained-glass partition in the chapel shatters, revealing a hidden door.
Fischer and Ann discover a lead-lined room, containing Belasco's preserved body seated in a chair. Pulling out a pocket knife, Fischer rips open Belasco's trouser leg, discovering his final secret: a pair of prosthetic legs. Fischer realises that Belasco had had his own stunted legs amputated, and that he had used the prosthetics with which they were replaced in a grotesque attempt to appear imposing. Belasco also had the specially built room lined with lead, presaging the discovery of the electromagnetic nature of life after death.
With the room now open, Fischer activates Barrett's machine a second time, and he and Ann leave the house, hoping that Barrett and Florence will guide Belasco to the afterlife without fear.
Troy McClure hosts a television special from the "Museum of TV and Television" introducing three spin-off productions, created using characters from ''The Simpsons''. The Fox network has only three programmes — ''The Simpsons'', ''The X Files'' and ''Melrose Place'' — prepared for the next broadcasting season, and so commissions the producers of ''The Simpsons'' to create thirty-five new shows to fill the remainder of the lineup. Unable to handle such a workload, the producers create only three new shows.
"'''Chief Wiggum, P.I.'''" is a crime-dramedy spin-off and a parody of ''Magnum, P.I.'', which follows Chief Wiggum, Ralph and Seymour Skinner. Chief Wiggum and his son Ralph move to New Orleans following Wiggum's removal from the Springfield Police Department for corruption, with Seymour Skinner as Wiggum's sidekick. Wiggum has proclaimed that he will "clean up the city" of New Orleans, but it does not take long before he meets his nemesis, Big Daddy, who warns Wiggum to stay out of his business. Soon after, Ralph is kidnapped and Wiggum finds Big Daddy's calling card left behind. Wiggum manages to track Big Daddy's ransom call to the Mardi Gras, where he briefly runs into the Simpson family, and the two chase each other to Big Daddy's mansion in the New Orleans bayou (in reality the Louisiana governor's mansion which Big Daddy had managed to steal). Chief Wiggum then threatens Big Daddy with a gun, but Big Daddy counters by tossing Ralph at his father, then jumping out the window and swimming away (at an extremely slow speed, due to his weight). Wiggum ultimately lets the villain escape, feeling that he will meet him again "each and every week," a riff on serialized, weekly television dramas.
"'''The Love-matic Grampa'''" is a sitcom about Moe's love life, a parody of ''My Mother the Car''. He receives advice from the ghost of Abraham Simpson, who was crushed by a store shelf containing cans of figs that toppled on him and subsequently "while travelling up toward Heaven...got lost along the way" and now possesses Moe's love tester machine. Moe ends up getting a date he meets at the bar. On Grampa's advice he takes his date out to a French restaurant and hides the Love Tester in the bathroom so he can get advice while at the restaurant. After Kearney, Dolph and Jimbo whack the machine because it said they were gay, it malfunctions and advises Moe to tell his date that "her rump's as big as the Queen's, and twice as fragrant." Moe returns with a bowl of snails dumped on his head and his dependence on the machine is revealed, so he confesses to receiving advice. His date is actually happy when she hears this, flattered that Moe would go to all that trouble for her. Grampa asks to be introduced to an attractive payphone in front of the restaurant, much to the mirth of Moe and his date.
"'''The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour'''" is a variety show featuring various songs and sketches in a parody of ''The Brady Bunch Hour'' and ''Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In''. It features Homer, Marge, Bart, and Maggie. Lisa refuses to participate, but is replaced by an attractive, teenaged blonde bombshell. After the introduction there is a sketch, where the family are portrayed as beavers living in a dam with Tim Conway as a skunk and Homer's boss. The show ends with a medley of songs about candy sung by the family, Jasper Beardley and Waylon Smithers.
Troy ends the special with a look at the upcoming season of ''The Simpsons'', filled with ridiculous plot twists, such as Homer turning Lisa into a frog using magical powers, the discovery of Bart's two long-lost identical twin brothers (one African-American, the other a cowboy), Selma marrying Lenny, Bumblebee Man, and Itchy (in succession), and Homer meeting an alien named Ozmodiar whom only he can see.
The main characters travel to Haiti on the ''Medea,'' a Dutch ship serving the capital Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic. The narrator is Mr. Brown, returning from an unsuccessful trip to the United States to sell his hotel, located in the capital. Other figures are Mr. Smith, a US Presidential candidate who ran on the vegetarian ticket in the 1948 United States presidential election; he and Mrs. Smith plan to build and operate a vegetarian centre in Haiti. "Major" Jones, an Anglo-Indian businessman, is personable and has many war stories that are not quite believable.
Brown returns to his hotel, where he finds that government minister Philipot has committed suicide in his pool. He had apparently become a target of the government. Brown has to dispose of the body to avoid being implicated. Meanwhile, Jones is arrested as soon as he sets foot on Haitian soil. Brown convinces Mr. Smith to use his 'political weight' to help Jones get out of prison. With only the help of a pen and some paper, Jones is able to forge his way into the Haitian government.
The body of Secretary Philipot is found and his family tries to hold a funeral. The president's death squad, the Tontons Macoutes, ambush the procession and steal the body. Philipot's nephew decides to join the rebel forces, and first is required to take part in a voodoo initiation ceremony.
Brown reunites with his lover, Martha Pineda, wife of the Uruguayan ambassador. She is still unwilling to leave her husband and child. Realizing they can't pursue their dream in Haiti, Mr. and Mrs. Smith leave for the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
Jones has become an enemy of the state, and Brown tries to get him out of the country. Believing Jones is a threat to his relationship with Martha, he persuades him to join the rebels in the north. Jones' lack of military sense is soon revealed and he is killed in action, while the rebellion fails. Duvalier consolidates his power and Brown, unable to return to his hotel, goes to Santo Domingo. There he works as a mortician.
In October 1924, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor, arrives from Scotland to work as assistant to Doctor Page in the small (fictitious) Welsh mining town of Drineffy (Blaenelly is the name given in some adaptations). He quickly realises that Page is unwell and disabled and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage. Shocked by the unsanitary conditions he discovers, Manson works to improve matters and receives the support of Dr Philip Denny, a cynical semi-alcoholic who, Manson finds out in due course, took a post as an assistant doctor after having fallen from grace as a surgeon. Resigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a miners' medical aid scheme in "Aberalaw", a neighbouring coal mining town in the South Wales coalfield. On the strength of this job, Manson marries Christine Barlow, a junior school teacher.
Christine helps her husband with his silicosis research. Eager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners, Manson dedicates many hours to research in his chosen field of lung disease. He studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD. The research gains him a post with the "Mines Fatigue Board" in London, but he resigns after six months to set up a private practice.
Seduced by the thought of easy money from wealthy clients rather than the principles he started with, Manson becomes involved with pampered private patients and fashionable surgeons and drifts away from his wife. A patient dies because of a surgeon's ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his principles. He and his wife repair their damaged relationship, but then she is run over by a bus and killed.
Since Manson has accused the incompetent surgeon of murder, he is vindictively reported to the General Medical Council for having worked with an American tuberculosis specialist, Richard Stillman, who does not have a medical degree, even though the patient had been successfully treated at his clinic. Stillman's treatment, that of pneumothorax, involved collapsing an affected lung with nitrogen, and was not universally accepted at the time.
Despite his lawyer's gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register.
After a day watching mind-numbing videos in class, Lisa worries that her education is not challenging enough. Bart's class goes on a field trip to the Springfield Police Department, where Bart finds a room with several megaphones. By placing them all end-to-end and speaking into one, he amplifies his voice enough to create a sonic shock wave that shatters all the glass in Springfield. Chief Wiggum suggests sending Bart to military school to correct his behavior. Under the ruse they are going to Disneyland, Homer and Marge drive the kids to Rommelwood Military School; while visiting a poetry class, Lisa decides to enroll as well in order to experience the challenge she seeks. Homer and Marge reluctantly agree to her plan and depart, ignoring Bart's pleas to let him come home.
As the school's first female cadet, Lisa is assigned a barracks to herself, angering the corps of cadets. After she and Bart endure hazing, Bart is eventually accepted by the other cadets and distances himself from his sister. Lonely, Lisa considers going home, but decides to see it through. As the school year comes to a close, the Commandant reveals the final test for the students: the "Eliminator", a hand-over-hand crawl across a rope suspended high above thorn bushes. Lisa fears she will not be able to complete the task, but Bart helps her train in secret.
On the day of the test, Lisa is the last to cross the Eliminator. She loses her grip on the rope and is in danger of falling as the cadets jeer her, but Bart cheers her on and she successfully completes the task. The other cadets vow to make the rest of the semester unbearable for Bart, but realize that their graduation ceremony is only three hours away. The Commandant awards Lisa a medal engraved "For Satisfactory Completion of the Second Grade". Homer and Marge again promise to take her and Bart to Disneyland, but instead drive them to a dentist's office.
According to LucasArts, ''Masters of Teräs Käsi'' takes place during ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and ''Return of the Jedi''. The destruction of the Death Star at the hands of Luke Skywalker has severely crippled the Galactic Empire. The Emperor seeks retaliation against Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance and recruits the services of the mysterious assassin Arden Lyn to eliminate the Alliance's key leaders. Luke and the others discover the Empire's plot and challenge Arden, face to face, in the art of Teräs Käsi, an unarmed combat discipline. This pits the rebels in one-on-one fights against the Empire's elite warriors.
Unlockable character
The five members of Mystery, Inc. go their separate ways after becoming bored of mystery solving because culprits are always people in costumes. Daphne Blake, along with Fred Jones, starts running a successful television series; Velma Dinkley owns a mystery book store; Shaggy Rogers and his dog Scooby-Doo bounce around jobs due to their eating habits regularly getting them fired.
Determined to hunt down a real ghost for the show, Fred contacts the others, and the entire gang is brought back together for Daphne's birthday. They embark on a road trip scouting haunted locations across the U.S. for Daphne's show. After encountering a lot of fake monsters, the gang arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana, fed up by this time. They are invited by a young woman named Lena Dupree to visit her workplace at Moonscar Island, an island allegedly haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar. Although skeptical, the gang decides to go with Lena. On the island, they meet Lena's employer Simone Lenoir, who lives in a large Southern home on a pepper plantation. They also meet the ferryman Jacques and Simone's gardener Beau. Shaggy and Scooby encounter the ghost of Moonscar, who becomes a reanimated corpse, and the gang gets several ghostly warnings to leave. Despite this, they stay overnight, still skeptical. Shaggy sees another ghost, one of a Confederate colonel warning them to leave.
That night, Shaggy and Scooby are chased by a horde of zombies. Velma suspects Beau while Fred and Daphne capture a zombie. They believe it is a mask until Fred pulls its head off, revealing that the zombies are real. As the horde chases them, the gang gets split in the chaos and Daphne accidentally causes Fred to drop his video camera in the quicksand, losing film evidence for their show. In a cave, Shaggy and Scooby discover wax voodoo dolls resembling Fred, Velma, and Daphne. Playing with the dolls, they involuntarily control the gang's actions with the things they make the dolls do, leaving the gang confused. Shaggy and Scooby drop the dolls and flee when they disturb a nest of bats.
The rest of the gang and Beau discover a secret passageway in the house. Lena tells them that the zombies dragged Simone away. The passageway leads to a secret chamber for voodoo rituals, where Velma confronts Lena about her lie: the footprints in the passageway were Simone's, as she had walked to the chamber as opposed to being dragged away. After trapping the gang in the chamber with the voodoo dolls, Simone and Lena reveal themselves, along with Jacques, to be evil werecats. Simone tells them that 200 years ago, she and Lena were part of a group of settlers on the island who worshipped a cat god. When Moonscar and his crew invaded the island, they chased the settlers into the bayou, leading them to be eaten alive by alligators, but Simone and Lena escaped the carnage. They prayed to their cat god to curse Moonscar. Their wish was granted and they were transformed into werecats. They killed the pirates, but later realized that invoking the cat god's power had also cursed them, so every harvest moon, they lure and exploit all victims by draining their lives to preserve their immortality. Jacques became their ferryman to bring them more victims as he wanted to have immortality. The zombies and ghosts are just their previous victims who awaken every harvest moon to try to scare people away in order to prevent them from suffering the same fate.
Shaggy and Scooby disrupt the werecats' draining ceremony. The gang free themselves but the werecats surround them. However, it is too late; the time for the ceremony has passed. The werecats crumble into dust, allowing the zombies' souls to finally rest in peace. Beau reveals himself to be an undercover police officer who was sent to investigate the numerous disappearances on the island. Daphne asks Beau to guest-star on her show, and they all leave the island in the morning.
One year before the events of the film, Jack Skellington is preparing for Halloween. When Oogie Boogie hears from his henchmen Lock, Shock and Barrel that Jack is scarier than him, he sends them to kidnap Jack. They, however, bring Sally, a rag doll-like creature who is Doctor Finkelstein's new assistant and has a crush on Jack.
On Halloween, Jack finds the town deserted and hears from the Mayor that everyone is hiding from a bug infestation. Lock, Shock and Barrel wreak havoc around the town. Along the way, Jack helps the townspeople and in return collects weapons, upgrades, and information. Jack learns of Oogie Boogie and that he lives under the treehouse on the edge of town.
Jack confronts Oogie and learns that he is behind the whole mess and wants to turn Halloween into Crawloween. Jack and Oogie battle to decide who will rule the town. Oogie claims he will win and turn Halloween Town into Bug Town. Jack defeats Oogie and orders him to fear him and not to leave the lair. Jack rescues Sally, meeting her for the first time, and Halloween goes ahead as planned. Oogie vows to get his revenge.
Spyro and Sparx are on holiday with Bianca and Hunter, when Hunter panics mistaking a balloon for a sheep in a flying saucer. Spyro finds on the balloon a message from Zoe asking for help from Grendor who is kidnapping fairies. Bianca left her spellbook behind in the library while she was looking for holiday pamphlets. Grendor had been browsing in Bianca's library and came across Bianca's spellbook. He tried it out, hoping to become a powerful magician, however, he read it upside down and became a two-headed Rhynoc with 4 headaches. He planned to capture all the fairies and use their wings to make a cure for his problem. Spyro and his friends head off to stop Grendor from carrying out his plans.
After Spyro traverses many levels (including a first confrontation with Grendor) and saves all the fairies besides Zoe herself, he confronts Grendor for a second time and defeats again, rescuing Zoe. Once free, Zoe lightly chastises Grendor for causing trouble, then uses her magic to cure him of his extra head and all his headaches. Grendor apologizes for his actions, and Spyro and his friends return to their vacation.
In the Professor's lab, The Professor shows Spyro and Sparx his two new inventions. The first is a projector-like peephole machine, enabling them to spy on Ripto. The Professor then displays his next new invention – Butler, a large mechanical bear designed to help him in his lab. Unfortunately Butler malfunctions and the Professor has failed to equip it with an "off" switch. Spyro manages to short Butler out by luring him into a power generator, then the peephole machine malfunctions and the hole in the fabric of space begins to expand rapidly.
A terrified Professor tells Spyro about "Hearts" – magical objects with very special properties and the only way to control the problem. The Professor is about to give him a warp device that will allow him to travel to all the other lands, when Ripto appears through the hole and claims the device for himself with the advantage he can rapidly conquer the surrounding lands. Ripto warps out Spyro along with Sparx and Butler to the Dragon Shores.
After Spyro is able to travel back to the Professor's Lab and travel through the peephole's vortex to Ripto's Chateau, he finds Ripto about to lower the Professor into a pit of lava, but engages in combat with Spyro. After being defeated, Ripto captures him and Sparx. Butler reappears, and the Professor orders him to trap Ripto. Ripto, now incapacitated, yields the final heart and the Professor permanently seals the hole in space.
After the events of ''Spyro: Season of Ice'', Spyro returns to the Dragon Realms and learns an army of Rhynocs infiltrated the Dragon Realms and stole all of its fireflies during Spyro's absence. Without the magic of the fireflies, the dragons cannot breathe fire; their breath, including Spyro's, has been turned icy cold. As a result, the temperatures of the Dragon Realms begin to drop, which threatens to force the dragons to migrate. Spyro, Sparx, Bianca and Hunter set out to uncover the culprit behind the stolen fireflies. Later in the game, a fairy informs the trio that Ripto was the one that stole the fireflies. So the trio set out to stop him. Along the way, They fight Crush and Gulp, Ripto's minions. After crossing more levels they face Ripto in a volcano and defeat him. When he is defeated, the fireflies fly out to warm Up the Dragon Realms.
The story begins shortly after the events of ''Year of the Dragon''. The dragons are celebrating a rite of passage for the young dragons and the Grand Dragon Parade, with the arrival of new young dragonfly guardians for the baby dragons.
However, during the party, Ripto teleports in via a portal along with his henchmen Crush and Gulp, disrupting the celebration. His intent is to capture the new young dragonflies to weaken the baby dragons, but his spell misfires, and the dragonflies become scattered throughout the Dragon Realms.
Spyro is tasked with recovering the realms' new crop of dragonflies. Spyro eventually completes his mission and faces Ripto. Spyro wins the battle and Ripto runs for his life, swearing that he will be back. The game ends back at the party, with the celebration being continued.
Trixie Zurbo is an eccentric woman who longs to quit her job as a security guard in a department store and become a private detective. She finally gets her wish when she takes a job in security at a casino. She accidentally becomes involved in a murderous plot and Trixie takes her first case; however, her unschooled command of the English language and comedy intervenes and the mess begins.
Mr Fox is an anthropomorphic, tricky, and clever fox who lives underground beside a tree with his wife and four children. To feed his family, he makes nightly visits to local farms owned by three cruel, rude, wicked and dim-witted farmers named Boggis, Bunce and Bean, whereupon he seizes the livestock available on each man's farm; chickens from Boggis, ducks or geese from Bunce, and turkeys from Bean. Tired of being outsmarted by Mr Fox, the triumvirate devise a plan to ambush him as he leaves his burrow, but they succeed only in shooting off his tail.
The three farmers then dig up the Foxes' burrow using spades and then excavators. The Foxes manage to escape by burrowing further beneath the ground to safety. The farmers are ridiculed for their persistence, but they refuse to give up and vow not to return to their farms until they have caught Mr Fox. They then choose to lay siege to the fox, surrounding Mr Fox's hole and waiting until he is hungry enough to come out. Cornered by their enemies, Mr Fox and his family, and all the other underground creatures that live around the hill, begin to starve.
After three days trapped underground, Mr Fox devises a plot to acquire food. Working from his memory of the routes he has taken above ground, he and his children tunnel through the ground and wind up burrowing to one of Boggis's four chicken houses. Mr Fox kills several chickens and sends his son to carry the animals back home to Mrs Fox. On the way to their next destination, Mr Fox runs into his friend Badger and asks him to accompany him on his mission, as well as to extend an invitation to the feast to the other burrowing animals - Badger and his family, as well as the Moles, the Rabbits and the Weasels - to apologize for getting them caught up in the farmers' hunt. Aided by Badger, the animals tunnel to Bunce's storehouse for ducks, geese, hams, bacon and carrots, and then to Bean's secret cider cellar. Here, they are nearly caught by the Beans' servant Mabel and have an unpleasant confrontation with the cellar's resident, Rat. They carry their loot back home, where Mrs Fox has prepared a great celebratory banquet for the starving underground animals and their families.
At the table, Mr Fox invites everyone to live in a secret underground neighbourhood with him and his family, where he will hunt on their behalf daily and where none of them will need to worry about the farmers anymore. Everyone joyfully cheers for this idea, while Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are left waiting in vain for the fox to emerge from his hole.
The book ends with the words "And so far as I know, they are ''still'' waiting."
Twelve is the story of 17-year-old White Mike, the privileged son of a restaurant tycoon. His mother succumbed to breast cancer several years before the novel began. White Mike is a drug dealer who has taken his senior year in high school off to sell marijuana to his wealthy peers. When he is not selling drugs he is reminiscing of his childhood and philosophizing about a world he feels he is not a part of.
The novel takes place over a five-day period in December 1999, beginning on the night of the 27th and ending on New Year's Eve. It is told in a 3rd person narrative and follows not just White Mike but many other characters, but despite this White Mike is the central figure in the book.
;Part 1 -- December 27 The novel begins with White Mike thinking about his deceased mother and musing about the state of New York in the Winter. He then visits the rec center, where Hunter, a friend of his has gotten into a fight with a black basketball player named Nana. The fight ends with both covered in copious amounts of each other's blood. White Mike and Hunter head to a nearby Goody's, where they discuss college. White Mike then leaves to make a sale.
Hunter then leaves and goes home, thinking about the fight with Nana while listening to James Taylor on his discman. At home he makes sporadic conversation with his father, who is quite wealthy and a borderline alcoholic. Hunter then leaves the apartment and goes for a walk.
The narrative then shifts to Nana, who is going home to his apartment in the Harlem housing projects. Before he can get into his building he witnesses a drug deal between two shady characters, a pale white boy and a heavy black man. The deal then erupts into violence when the heavy man shoots the pale boy with a gun wrapped in a hand towel. Nana tries to escape but is killed as well by the heavy man, who pockets the pale boy's revolver before fleeing the scene.
We then shift to Sara Ludlow, the "hottest girl in school" and her girlfriends as they head to a party. They discuss school and their friends.
White Mike is at the party. He sells some pot to Chris, the boy throwing the party, but declines Chris's invitation to come in. After wondering how smart Sara Ludlow is, he leaves, musing about how rich everyone is.
We then meet Chris, the boy throwing the party, a 17-year-old boy desperate to lose his virginity. There is an overview of the party and we then meet Jessica, a school mate of Sara and Chris who heads to the bathroom to do some cocaine. Instead of cocaine she does a drug given to her by a boy. The drug is called Twelve. She takes some and is overwhelmed by the high that follows. She compares it to the first time she read The Gettysburg Address before passing out.
The narrative shifts to Claude, Chris's brother, and Tobias, a male model, taking a trip through China Town. They smoke some pot together and then buy bladed weapons at a shop. Claude takes home his weapons and arranges them in his closet, all in perfect order like some private shrine.
;Part 2 -- December 28 The corpses of Nana and the pale boy are found. After talking with some boys who witnessed the fight at the rec center, two detectives place Hunter under arrest because of the blood still on his clothes.
Jessica wakes up and heads to the skating rink with some girlfriends. Once there, she accidentally injures a boy named Andrew by cutting his forehead with her skate. Andrew is taken to the hospital and the girls leave the rink. Jessica calls Chris and asks for White Mike's phone number, telling him that she wants more of the drug she had the party, Twelve.
At the hospital, Andrew undergoes surgery and is placed in a room for an overnight stay. He is placed in the same room as Sean, the high school football star who happens to be Sara Ludlow's boyfriend. Sean was involved in a car accident. Sara arrives to visit him and strikes up a conversation with Andrew. Andrew loans her his Dave Matthews Band CD, thinking it will make a good excuse to see her again.
Sara then goes to see Chris. She asks him to host another, bigger party on New Year's Eve, since his parents are out of town. Chris is apprehensive, but Sara tempts him with sexual favors so he gives in.
White Mike meets Jessica with Lionel, a mysterious drug dealer who supplies Mike with Marijuana. Lionel sells the Twelve to Jessica, who asks for Lionel's beeper number in case she wants more; Lionel gives her the number.
White Mike and Lionel then converse about Charlie, White Mike's cousin who got him into drug dealing and is away at College. It is revealed here that Lionel killed Charlie and Nana. He tells White Mike he has not seen Charlie, and departs.
Tobias heads to a shoot at the modelling agency. There he meets Molly, a fellow model who he is interested in. He takes Molly to Chris and Claude's where he is keeping his flesh-eating piranhas. After showing her the fish, he invites her to the New Year's Eve party and she agrees.
Hunter is placed under arrest for the murders of Nana and Charlie since the blood on his clothes is verified as Nana's. He finds he does not have an alibi.
Chris and Claude go to a cocktail party hosted by their aunt. Chris converses with a wannabe-author friend of his aunt's about The Beatles and Eminem.
After the party Claude returns to China Town with Tobias and illegally buys an Uzi submachine gun from one of the shops.
;Part 3 -- December 29 Chris is having a boxing lesson when Sara shows up, requesting money for some Twelve which she will give to Jessica. Chris reluctantly gives her the money.
Molly visits White Mike, who is a good friend of hers even though she is unaware of his "profession". She tells him about Tobias and the party. White Mike gently tries to dissuade her from going.
Andrew is bored so he goes for a walk and ends up in Carl Schurz park where he meets and eccentric old man named Sven. He plays a game of chess with Sven, who beats him. Andrew feels he is being insulted by Sven and tries to leave, but Sven insists on taking him to a nearby pub for a drink. He does. At the bar, Andrew and Sven drink Scotch and Sodas and discuss school and Sven's old life as a merchant sailor. Feeling weirded out, Andrew leaves.
White Mike is walking home and sees Captain, a homeless bodybuilding black man, injuring himself by hitting a brick wall and calls an ambulance.
;Part 4 -- December 30 That morning, Andrew calls Sara under the guise of getting his CD back. She invites him to Chris's party and asks him to bring weed. Andrew does not smoke pot but decides to score some anyway.
We are then introduced to Timmy and Mark Rothko, two unlikely wanna-be "cool kids" who get their kicks stealing CDs, smoking weed and speaking in an exaggerated hip-hop vernacular. They contact White Mike with the intent of buying some weed.
White Mike has a phone conversation with an old friend of his and Hunter's, Warren, and then decides to take a train ride down to Coney Island.
The perspective shifts to Sean, who has to go to the hospital for a check-up on his broken arm. He takes a taxi and is annoyed by the driver.
White Mike goes to Coney Island and observes people. Back on the train he gets the call from Timmy and Mark Rothko.
Jessica wakes up and watches the talk shows. She enjoys watching the "dregs of humanity" on television and holds a fake talk show with her stuffed animals in which she comments on a fictional school massacre. Here we are given the impression that Jessica may not be all there.
Timmy and Mark Rothko stop to buy cigarette usings a fake I.D. It fails and they threaten the store clerk, who in turn pulls an empty revolver on them. They leave all too quickly.
Jessica has lunch with her mother, who advises she visits a psychiatrist. She reluctantly agrees and wonders what she will tell her psychiatrist.
White Mike sells some weed to Timmy and Mark Rothko, who both irritate and amuse him with their lifestyle.
In jail, Hunter finally contacts his father through Andrew's father. Hunter tells his father he is frightened. Hunter's father remembers an incident that happened when he was in school, when a boy died at a drunken fireside party.
White Mike meets Andrew at the amphitheatre and sells him weed. White Mike is curious as to why Andrew is buying it. Andrew tells him it is for a girl.
;Part 5 -- New Year's Eve Andrew wakes up and decides to get a haircut. He does, then at home decides he looks bad. He decides to go to the party and resolves to get himself drunk.
Chris goes out and buys toiletries and condoms, thinking that tonight will be the night that he loses his virginity. He goes home and throws out his collection of pornography.
Timmy and Mark Rothko call White Mike for more weed. They follow him to his house, much to his annoyance. He gives them their weed and they talk about birds. Mark Rothko and Timmy then go to the supermarket and smash a container of Marshmallow fluff. White Mike receives a call from his dad telling him Charlie is dead. White Mike breaks down and wonders who could have done it. Jessica prepares for the party and to score more Twelve.
At the party, Jessica gives her cell phone to a girl who beeps White Mike for weed. White Mike rushes over.
Andrew and Molly meet in the kitchen and grow closer, deciding to head out for pizza when Lionel arrives.
Lionel and Jessica go upstairs and she realises she does not have enough for a bag. She offers to have sex with Lionel in exchange.
White Mike arrives at the party and in a fit of rage trashes the house stereo. He punches Chris when Chris attempts to kick him out.
He bursts in on Lionel and Jessica, who are having sex. Lionel pulls Charlie's revolver, which he took from the murder scene, on White Mike. White Mike realises Lionel killed Charlie and attacks him, only to be shot.
The gunshot causes Claude to snap, and he leaves his room armed with his submachine gun and sword. He goes on a rampage, killing many of the partygoers including Mark Rothko, Timmy, Andrew and Molly. After charging through the house, he steps outside and opens fire on the police, who fatally shoot him on the spot.
An afterword by White Mike explains that he underwent surgery for his wound and survived. It also states that Hunter was cleared of all charges after the bullets from Lionel's gun were examined. He also explains that he is now studying in Paris and that he likes it better than New York.
After the title page is the inscription, "Dedicated to my father." The next page reads, "Can we please all stand and have a moment of silence for those students who died? And can we now have a moment of silence for those students who killed them?"
Miss Stevens (voiced by Jennifer Aniston), the leader of the "Getting Gay With Kids" environmentalist choir tour, visits South Park Elementary, trying to recruit more kids to the group. The boys get themselves into trouble after calling the choir names and belittling their cause. They are sent to Mr. Mackey's office, so as punishment, the boys will join the choir, since he happens to be on the board of directors. Kenny is the only one who is happy about it, since he has developed a crush on a girl in the choir named Kelly.
The choir goes to San José, Costa Rica, to tour, where Miss Stevens tells Cartman that she plans on changing his views on third-world countries. Upon arriving, Cartman immediately starts to make trouble, including yelling at Costa Ricans, directing everyone's attention to prostitutes and commenting that San Jose "smells like ass." The children get to meet the Costa Rican President and do a preview dance routine for some citizens of San Jose (with a pre-recorded song for the kids to lip-sync to), but Miss Stevens is dismayed by Kyle's lack of coordination. Cartman offers the opinion that Kyle cannot dance because he is Jewish, and "Jewish people don't have any rhythm." Kyle angrily denies this as a stereotype, but Stan wonders if it is true, making Kyle fear that it is.
The children then take a tour to see the "wonders" of the rainforest. Cartman starts hitting the animals that live in their natural habitats, irritating Miss Stevens. Eventually, their tour guide is killed, eaten, and excreted by a coral snake, all surprisingly in the space of less than a minute, leaving Miss Stevens and the children on their own in the jungle. Cartman hits the snake on the head, which causes it to temporarily chase him, likely to try and do the same thing to him as it did to their tour guide. They run into a group of guerrilla rebels and try to convince them to help them get back to San José, but the leader merely criticizes and insults them. When government troops arrive, the choir has to run away. After more time spent wandering lost, Cartman announces that he is leaving the "hippie" group. Only moments later, he finds a friendly crew of white construction workers tearing down trees and tells them all about the group getting lost, though not before asking for food. Meanwhile, Kelly takes Kenny to one side and admits her feelings for him, but tries to stop herself from going too far, which annoys Kenny, as she lives on the other side of the US and cannot manage a long-distance relationship.
Back in San José, the concert is about an hour away from starting, and the President stalls for time by telling poorly-thought-out "Polak" jokes. Miss Stevens and the remaining children are captured by a tribe of indigenous people called the Yanagapa (a phonetic parody of the South American indigenous demonym Yanomama), who offer up Miss Stevens, now dressed in a Stanford-looking cheerleading outfit, as an offering to a giant indigenous man, with Kelly voicing that this offering is more than likely that of a sexual nature. At this point, Miss Stevens changes her mind and decides that the rainforest is not such a good place, after all. She screams profanities about everything rainforest-related, much to the shock and confusion of the indigenous inhabitants (and to the boys' annoyance over how long it had taken for her to "get it"). Just then, Cartman and the white construction workers arrive to destroy the village, kill the indigenous people, and save the children. Just as Kelly is making arrangements with Kenny over maintaining a long-distance relationship, he is immediately struck dead by a bolt of lightning. Afterwards, Kyle and Stan say their usual lines, but Kelly asks them who "they" are, since Kenny was struck by lightning, not people. Kyle and Stan are unable to answer her, claiming: "You know, They. They're bastards." Frustrated, Kelly asks them to help Kenny, but the two are fulfilling their usual role on the show, outraging Kelly even more. She then desperately attempts CPR and successfully revives Kenny, to the amazement of Stan and Kyle. With this result, Kenny has successfully survived an entire episode for the second time (the first time being "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo").
When the group escapes the forest, Miss Stevens and the children are so happy to leave the jungle that they change their tune: different lyrics are applied to the original song, which now rebukes the rainforest rather than praises it. It however meets with a positive response from the audience, as if they were still singing rainforest activism. The episode ends with a message telling people about the dangers of the rainforest and to help stop it.
The book opens with former Ranger Captain Woodrow F. Call (now a bounty hunter) and Ned Brookshire, the "salaried man" of the title. Brookshire has been sent to Texas from New York City by his boss, railroad tycoon Colonel Terry, to contract Call's services in apprehending a bandit. The bandit in question is a young Mexican named Joey Garza, who has cost Terry significant business and money through his deadly train robberies. Brookshire is surprised that the old man he encounters has such a reputation, though he notes that Call does have a rather dangerous and respect-demanding aura about him. Brookshire himself does not strike a particularly imposing figure, and soon proves not to be cut out for train or horse travel, inexperienced in the ways of the west or violence, and very homesick for his bossy but loving wife, Katie. Call, on the other hand, is the very picture of experience. Though he is old and seems almost to have trouble lifting his foot into the stirrups, his reputation speaks for him. He has spent forty years on the border and the frontier, many of those with his more talkative but equally respected late partner, Gus McCrae. Protecting settlers in innumerable skirmishes with hostile Indians, rustlers, and dangerous gangs has earned him a great deal of respect and a reputation that generally strikes fear into the hearts of criminals.
Family is a focal point of McMurtry's book, with the emphasis on two very different families. One is that of Pea Eye Parker, Call's corporal, a fellow former-ranger who assists Call in his bounty-hunter duties. Pea Eye is now married to Lorena Wood (Lorie), the whore heroine of ''Lonesome Dove'' and now a school teacher and mother of five. Pea Eye is increasingly pressured by his wife and children to stop following the captain in pursuit of bandits, but his loyalty and devotion to Call usually prevails. Though he initially refuses to accompany Call and Brookshire in the hunt for Joey Garza, his guilt wins out and he soon sets out after Call, accompanied by the celebrated Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes. The second family that dominates the plot of ''Streets of Laredo'' is the family of Joey Garza. Joey's mother, Maria, is the midwife of a small Mexican village on the Rio Grande. She has had a string of brief, failed marriages and has three children, of which Joey is the oldest. Of the other two, her daughter, Teresa, is blind from birth, while her other, Rafael, is very slow.
One of Maria's husbands sold Joey to the Apache Indians as a slave when he was a small boy; by the time he came back to Maria and her family, he was a bitter, angry, silent boy who was obsessed with killing and stealing (unknown to Maria, Joey killed her third husband, the only one who was kind to her or her children). Joey possesses a fine German rifle with a telescopic sight, which enables him to shoot his victims from a half-mile away. At the outset of the novel, Joey is hiding out in Crow Town, an outlaw village deep in the borderland desert. One of the other notorious denizens of Crow Town is the legendary Texas gunfighter, John Wesley Hardin. Maria travels by horse to Crow Town to warn Joey that Call is on his trail. Joey disappears, stealing his mother's horse, and rides to Langtry, Texas, where he shoots and hangs Judge Roy Bean, the "Law West of the Pecos".
As Call and Brookshire search for Joey Garza, they discover that he is not the only outlaw preying on the railroad. A string of strange murders soon leads Call in the pursuit of a ghost from the past - Mox Mox (or, as the Apache call him, "The Snake You Do Not See"). A former flunky of Blue Duck, of Lonesome Dove fame, Mox Mox is known for burning his captives alive. Mox Mox was thought to have been killed years before, but had just been in hiding at sea, and has now returned at the head of a murderous gang. The news is especially traumatic for Lorie, who herself had nearly been burned by the villain while she was a captive of Blue Duck. Fearing for the lives of her children, Lorie sends them to Nebraska, to the protection of her friend Clara Allen. She then sets off to find Pea Eye to warn him. Pea Eye and the Kickapoo Famous Shoes, unaware of the threat of Mox Mox, continue south to find Captain Call. They are thrown into the Presidio jail when the sheriff accuses Famous Shoes of being a horse thief (he came across Famous Shoes eating a dead horse several years ago and decided that it was stolen) and decides to hang him. Captain Call hears of their plight and frees them from jail (near-killing the sheriff in the process in a furious beating) and continues in pursuit of Mox Mox. He ambushes the gang just as they are about to burn two children alive, killing outright all but two - Quick Jimmy, a renegade Cherokee, who escapes unscathed, and Mox Mox himself, who limps off to die.
After rescuing Pea Eye and Famous Shoes from a corrupt bordertown sheriff, Call and his gang close in on Joey Garza. Ned Brookshire is killed in a scuffle; the anticipated confrontation between Call and Joey leaves Call seriously wounded; Lorie must amputate a leg to save him. The Mexican bandit is instead shot and mortally wounded by Pea Eye. Garza then drags himself back to his native village and attempts to kill his younger siblings, Teresa and Rafael, for whom he has long reserved his greatest hatred. Maria, mother of the three children, attempts to stop Joey; he stabs her. A local villager then shoots Joey dead. Maria dies from her wounds, and at her request, Pea Eye and Lorie adopt Maria's two surviving children, returning with them to their farm. Call, crippled and no longer able to pursue bandits, goes to live with them. He becomes increasingly attached to Teresa, Maria's blind daughter, demonstrating for the first time an attachment to anyone besides Gus McCrae, and perhaps, secretly his son Newt.
A Galactic Service agent, Max, is in Marsport without his wife, Hilda, for the first time in a long time. He plans to visit a beautiful and accommodating woman of his acquaintance named Flora, but his plans are disrupted when he receives an unexpected assignment. His supervisor informs him that a new source of altered Spaceoline has appeared. While regular Spaceoline is a common anti-nausea treatment, a chemical modification can turn it into a dangerous narcotic. The Service suspects that one man in a group of three VIPs is smuggling the drug.
All three men appear to be in the inebriated, free-association state which regular Spaceoline produces, but since the actual criminal cannot afford to impair his own judgment, he must be faking. The easiest method of determining the criminal among them would be a simple search. However, Max's supervisor firmly rejects this: only one of three men is guilty, and the consequences of performing such a rough operation on two innocent men of very high social standing would be extremely unfortunate. Max is forced to improvise.
Max converses with the three men, trying to find the faker, but the criminal is clever enough to avoid detection. All three men take turns free-associating among themselves, and all three keep making statements which ''might'' be subtle clues or taunts, but could equally well be innocent. Growing ever more desperate as his time runs out, Max starts describing his planned evening with Flora in graphic detail. The two honest men are too inebriated to be affected, but the faker starts sweating and his breath becomes heavier, and that gives him away.
Max manages to convince his overjoyed supervisor to give him a substantial monetary bonus in return for his service, which he uses to smooth over the problems between himself and Flora that arose when he had to postpone their date. However, just as he is about to meet Flora, his wife arrives in Marsport.
In 1842, young Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are introduced quickly and brutally to the rangering life on their first expedition, in which they are stalked by the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump. After a narrow escape, the rangers return to civilization, only to quickly join an expedition to capture and annex Santa Fe, part of New Mexico (the part east of the Rio Grande) for Texas. The expedition, led by pirate and soldier of fortune, Caleb Cobb, is ultimately a failure; of the 200 initial adventurers, only about 40 survive, falling to starvation, bears, and Indians, only to be swiftly arrested by the Mexican authorities. Those survivors are forced to march the Jornada del Muerto ("Dead Man's Walk") to El Paso, and many, Mexican and Texan alike, die along the journey. The Texas contingent is reduced to ten persons when the captives panic after they observe cavalry drilling and are slaughtered in a blood lust as they flee. At their destination, the ten are forced to gamble for their lives by drawing a bean from a jar - a white bean signals life, a black bean death. Call and McCrae are among the five survivors. The last Rangers then return to Texas, escorting a Scottish woman and her son, who have also been held captive by the Mexicans, as well as an African woman the Comanches fear as she is thought to be a feared dark woman on a white horse who will ensure the Comanches’ downfall.
Danny Morgan (Ifans) works as a concrete maker driver and construction worker who lives in Sydney with his girlfriend but is unhappy with his life. Danny yearns for the simple life while girlfriend Trudy (Clarke) fantasizes about bright lights and fast times. While Danny plans for their annual camping trip, Trudy tells him she has to work, so the trip is off. In reality, Trudy is using her work connections at a local real estate agency to set up a meeting with a handsome local sports reporter, Sandy Upman (Muldoon). Danny sees them together while he is shopping for a weekend barbecue, leaving him even more disenchanted with their relationship.
During the barbecue in his backyard, Danny, being an inventive character, ties a bunch of helium-filled balloons to his deckchair as his friends hold him down. When they inadvertently let go, Danny is set on an airborne adventure across Australia, which causes him to become a national sensation. As he floats over idyllically beautiful rural landscapes, totally foreign to the concrete structures of his discontent, he appears on the verge of some enlightenment. After he is beaten up in a rugged ride through a thunderstorm, fireworks from a small town's macadamia festival burst his balloons. Danny lands in a tree in Glenda's front yard as the remnants of his chair float away.
Glenda (Otto), who was watching the fireworks from her front porch, sees Danny fall into the tree but does not see the deckchair. As firemen and townsfolk arrive to find out if the fireball caused any damage, they see Glenda helping a disheveled Danny. Glenda tells them that Danny is an old professor from college days and takes him into her house, which belonged to her parents. As he recovers from the harrowing end to his journey, the lonely Glenda, fascinated by the strapping Danny, does not press him about his past. Danny does not help matters by offering only vague explanations about his origins and unorthodox arrival in the town of Clarence.
As Danny explores the town, Glenda's friends wonder about their past relationship, but they are quickly won over by Danny's whimsical ways. This was easy to accomplish as Glenda's friends are just happy to see that the withdrawn, and sometimes despised, traffic officer is with someone special. Using his easy-going manner, Danny persuades Glenda to dress-up and go with him to the harvest ball. She gives him some nice clothes (formerly her father's) to wear to the ball. After Danny looks in the mirror, he shaves his beard and trims his hair. At the ball and around town, Danny's mysterious past, detached demeanour and off-the-wall ideas make him an instant hit with the townsfolk. His ideas that were considered hair-brained in the big city seem fresh in the small town of Clarence, and he is hired to become the manager of an aspiring politician's campaign. As they spend time together at Glenda's house, Danny finds her father's old motorcycle, which for sentimental reasons Glenda keeps in the shed. After she shows Danny pictures of her parents on the motorcycle exploring the country, Danny fixes up the old motorcycle when Glenda is at work.
All the while, the big city media cannot get enough coverage of Danny's disappearance, constantly broadcasting interviews of his friends, family and co-workers. Trudy takes up with the sports reporter (Muldoon), who sees covering Danny's story and Trudy's suffering as a way to the top.
Back in Clarence, Danny is forging a deep connection with Glenda. But their budding relationship is not viewed by everyone in town as all peaches-and-cream. Their flirtations arouse jealousy and suspicion in Glenda's male co-worker, the town's police supervisor, who busts them for speeding when they take Glenda's motorcycle out for a ride. But nothing fazes Danny as he continues to immerse himself in his ideal world. He even goes so far as to give a stirring speech at a political rally, and he is asked by some of the townsfolk to run for office.
All caught up in the dizzying events surrounding the political rally, Glenda and Danny spend the night together. He wakes reveling in his new soul-mate, gets dressed in a haze of happiness and steps outside onto Glenda's porch to greet the dawn of his perfect new life. However, local kids have found and reported the deck chair causing Danny's past to come crashing down upon him in a torrent of media frenzy.
As a shocked Glenda emerges from her house to see what all the noise is about, she spots Danny running down the street with a crowd in hot pursuit. Just then, Trudy and Upman drop down in a news helicopter and land in the street in front of Glenda's yard, stopping Danny dead in his tracks. Trudy reclaims Danny amidst an explosion of camera flashes to take him back to Sydney, where she can bask in his new-found fame. As his half-truths become uncovered in the stark light of media exposure, Glenda rails against Danny as he is whisked away.
Although she is angry at being deceived by Danny, his departure brings Glenda to the stark realization that she has been deceiving herself as well. She finally admits to herself that her life is at a dead end and she decides it is time for a change.
Meanwhile, unhappily plugged back into his old job and with Trudy trying to capitalize on his fame, the deep changes within Danny that happened in Clarence make city life all the more unbearable. Sandy, now unemployed, storms into the real estate office and yells at Trudy for leaving him behind in Clarence. After ditching work, Danny confronts Trudy and tells her that it is over and uses the connections his media storm have forged to get on a military plane to win Glenda back.
Back in Clarence, Glenda has finished packing up her motorcycle and is saying goodbye to her friends. Just then, Danny parachutes out of the plane over Clarence and crash-lands in the tree in front of Glenda's house as she is starting to leave on her motorcycle.
At first, Glenda appears excited to see Danny; but immediately she starts yelling that he cannot just drop in and everything will be all right. Glenda resolutely drives off before Danny can convince her how much he needs her and his new life in the town of Clarence. Dragging his parachute, Danny runs after her, shouting that he'll do whatever it takes to get back together. As she drives away, Danny's parachute cord gets caught on the back of the motorcycle and he is lifted into the air. As Glenda glances into her mirror for one last look at her old life, she notices Danny flying behind her and stops the bike. As he comes down, Danny and Glenda get entangled in the parachute, embrace and kiss.
As the movie ends, Danny and Glenda, in their bathrobes, symbolically float upward in deck chairs as they talk about their future plans.
A map of the 98 km2-large Sahrani Island. The campaign in ''Armed Assault'' is narrated by Private First Class William Porter of the United States Army (voiced by Todd Kramer), and takes place on the fictional Atlantic island of Sahrani, an island nation which is divided in two, with the northern section a Communist nation called the Democratic Republic of Sahrani (DRS) and the southern one an oil-rich monarchy called the Kingdom of South Sahrani. The narrative begins when American forces, after a few months of training the South Sahrani military, begin to depart the island. Prime Minister Torez, leader of the DRS, uses this moment of perceived weakness to launch a full-scale invasion of South Sahrani. The player takes on the role of an American soldier in one of the U.S. Army platoons not yet rotated off the island before the conflict began. The few U.S. Army platoons remaining on the island aid the Royal Army Corps of Sahrani (RACS), the South Sahrani military, in fending off the more powerful northern neighbor's offensive, being spearheaded by the North Sahrani military, with the Sahrani Liberation Army (SLA) at the forefront. While the SLA offensive is successful at first, U.S. Army manages to halt the offensive and starts driving the occupying forces from the southern part of the island with plans to topple the regime on the north.
The campaign follows a linear storyline. However, each level in the campaign has options for the player on how to progress through the mission. The player's in-game performance and choices determine how the storyline progresses and ultimately will have a bearing on the war itself. For example, a mission to seize a crucial town can have a substantial effect on the story depending on the player's level of success or failure. Failure to successfully complete an objective does not result in the game ending but will affect the storyline. Hostile squads act independently of the player's actions so that they may be engaging in an activity dictated by the game A.I. that does not necessarily involve the player. This implies that the game has high replay value as no two games will be identical.
In the near future, due to an unusual rise in criminal activity, it has become legal to possess firearms in Japan so lawful citizens can protect themselves. At the same time, the government established the Recently Armed Police of Tokyo, whose methods are exterminating criminals rather than arresting them.
The story opens with Kyohei Tachibana, a male college student at a culinary arts school with dreams of someday becoming a pastry chef, motorcycling down an inner city street and becoming caught up in a shoot-out between a mysterious silver-haired woman and a psycho gangster. Kyohei escapes unharmed and ends up working as a cook for Jo, Meg, Amy, and Sei in an effort to gather up enough money to travel to France. The girls, ranging in ages of eleven to nineteen, turn out to be pseudo-mercenary agents for a larger international group known as Bailan.
''Burst Angel'' focuses on the group as they investigate a series of mutated human monsters with glowing brains that cause various amounts of mayhem in Tokyo.
After defeating the Arch Lich Deimos, the heroes continued on their journey through the Broken Lands of Glantri after realizing that Deimos was only part of an even greater evil plan, and he was in fact being used by a mysterious sorceress named Synn. Synn, who appears to be a young woman but commands incredibly powerful magical abilities, has been scheming to control the Kingdom of Glantri and conquer the humanoids of the Republic of Darokin. But now that Deimos has been defeated, Synn vowed to punish the land that she desired.
At the game's end the player discovers that Synn is in fact a centuries-old red dragon, bent on harnessing the mystical forces of the lands she has conquered, in order to awaken a creature of even more devastating physical prowess than herself - known and described only as The Fiend. The heroes then fight against Synn in her lair; when she is slain, her monster is also destroyed by an airship bombing.
Mr. Garrison's class is visited by an educational mascot, "Petey the Sexual Harassment Panda", who attempts to teach the kids about sexual harassment so as to prevent it in school. During the visit, Stan calls Cartman an "ass-sucker", and Cartman, "inspired" by the panda's teaching, sues Stan for sexual harassment, claiming that he's sexually harassed him for the last time; Kyle's father, Gerald Broflovski, acts as his lawyer, and Cartman wins half of Stan's possessions. Gerald then decides to encourage Cartman (and later, others) not only to sue each other but also the teachers and the school, leading to chaos throughout the town as he gets rich. Kyle's dad quickly becomes the target of many people's wrath, while he continues to renovate his family's house into a mansion with his newly gained assets. Soon afterwards the whole town is suing each other and Gerald is taking advantage of this by being a lawyer for them all, getting more and more money from every case. Because everyone is scared of being sued, no one can stand up to Gerald.
Because the school board needs to cut costs, Sexual Harassment Panda is fired. He cannot get a new job as a panda mascot, and refuses to change his costume due to an apparently genuine belief that he's a panda. Thus, he goes to the Island of Misfit Mascots Commune, for mascots whose messages simply make no sense (one mascot kills Kenny by accident). Many mascots there also seem to believe they are the animals they portray. The boys, however, seeing the negative results of the lawsuits on their school, track Sexual Harassment Panda down and convince him to return to town with a new message. Meanwhile, Gerald is litigating the biggest sexual harassment lawsuit ever, ''Everyone vs. Everyone,'' where he represents ''everyone'' who hires him to take on everyone else (flagrantly disregarding conflict of interest in the process).
The panda arrives back in South Park under a new name, "Petey the Don't Sue People Panda", and delivers a sermon on how people should not sue each other constantly because it does nothing but damage the school system, taking away money from classrooms, schools and themselves, the taxpayers. The people, realizing the sagacity of this statement, angrily cry that they should sue Gerald, who quickly agrees to file no more lawsuits about sexual harassment in schools or anywhere else. In the end, all the sexual harassment suits are dropped and Kyle's dad presumably gets away with millions of dollars.
After the execution of Raziel in ''Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver'', Kain used the Chronoplast - a time-streaming device - to advance to his return, seemingly abandoning his empire. With the resulting power vacuum, the vampire clans of the empire fell against each other in a bloody civil war that nearly wiped out Raziel's clan. With the vampires occupied by their own internal struggles, humanity slowly became resurgent as escapees and free humans united to rebuild their shattered civilization.
Reconstructing cities and defences, and building themselves into a legitimate fighting force, the humans came to occupy a swath of southern Nosgoth. Attacks on key territories under vampire control eventually alerted the vampires to the danger posed by their former slaves and prompted the co-operation of the vampire clans in the face of the new threat - and a new war began for control of land of Nosgoth.
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong play versions of themselves being invited to Amsterdam for a film festival devoted to Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. After initially assuming that Cheech was Reynolds, the promoter soon finds out that neither Reynolds nor Parton will appear, forcing the festival to be canceled. In need of a replacement act, he goes to Cheech and Chong for help, and the duo happily volunteers to give a live stand-up performance.
Most of the sketches are presented as cutaways, culminating in their live performance (filmed at the Tuschinski Theater in September 1982) ending with the Ralph and Herbie routine.
Fifteen-year-old Vicky Austin and her family are spending the summer on Seven Bay Island with her maternal grandfather, who is dying of leukemia. At the beginning of the story, Vicky attends a funeral for Commander Rodney, a family friend. Also present are the commander's wife, his sons Leo and Jacky who own a launch boat business, and Adam Eddington, an intern at the Island's research base and friend of Vicky's brother, John.
After the funeral Vicky encounters Zachary Gray, her boyfriend from the previous summer whom her family does not particularly like. She soon learns that Zachary indirectly caused Commander Rodney's death; the commander had his heart attack while saving Zachary from a suicide attempt. This revelation and others set Vicky on a train of thought that continues throughout the book; the mysterious and (to Vicky) frightening topic of death. Death and the threat of it seem to loom everywhere, from news reports to the death of a baby dolphin, from the recent demise of Zach's mother in an automobile accident to Grandfather Eaton's slow deterioration.
During the course of the story, Vicky finds herself in a tangle of three romances; one with the solid, unexciting Leo, one with dark and dangerous Zachary, and one with the gentle but emotionally damaged Adam, whom she is helping with a project on dolphin and human communication (ESP) with three dolphins: Basil, Norberta, and Njord. Vicky discovers a remarkable rapport with the dolphins, an unspoken communication that borders on telepathy. Her ability extends to communicating with Adam as well, but he pulls away, unwilling to allow that level of intimacy after a devastating betrayal the previous summer.
Meanwhile, Vicky must help out at home, facing her grandfather's increasing confusion as he identifies Vicky with his dead wife. He has also been hemorrhaging, and Vicky often goes with Leo to pick up blood. There at the hospital, she meets a girl named Binnie who is sick with a type of leukemia and has seizures. Binnie's father is radically religious and is constantly disposing of the medication that controls the seizures.
One night, her grandfather starts to hemorrhage and is sent to the hospital. Vicky is on a date with Zachary, and does not know about her grandfather's medical crisis until they come to the dock and see that Leo is not there to pick them up. Zachary rushes Vicky to the hospital, and eventually abandons her there. As she waits in the emergency room, she is spotted by Binnie's mother, who leaves her unconscious daughter with Vicky while she goes to find a nurse. Binnie has a convulsion and dies in Vicky's arms. This latest trauma sends Vicky into a wave of darkness, an almost catatonic state in which she is only vaguely aware of reality. Vicky's parents and Leo, who are already upset because Vicky's grandfather has been bleeding internally, try unsuccessfully to comfort and communicate with her. Then she feels hands on hers - Adam's. He tells her that she "called" him (meaning with ESP) and he came.
The next day, Vicky is still in a wave of darkness. Her grandfather tells her that it is hard to keep focused on the good and positive in life but she must bear the light or she will be consumed by darkness. He also removes the emotional burden he placed on her earlier, when he asked her to tell him when it was time to die. Vicky is unable to listen, too caught up in her own misery. Finally Adam takes her into the ocean, where Vicky's dolphin friends break through her mental darkness, until she is able to play with them and face the light again.
Players take the role of a Rebel pilot fighting the Galactic Empire before and during the climactic battle of the first ''Star Wars'' film (A New Hope). The story consists of three tours of duty of 12 to 14 operations each; although the tours can be played out of order, operations within each tour are played linearly. Briefings, cutscenes, and in-flight messages advance the plot. Additionally, a limited edition of the game came packaged with a 96-page novella, ''The Farlander Papers'' by Rusel DeMaria, that provides story information. The novella, later made part of Prima Publishing's strategy guide, presents a pilot name Keyan Farlander as the player's character for most of the operations.
Progress through the game depends on fulfilling each operation's primary objectives; if the player fails an operation, he or she can attempt it again. The initial game's storyline concludes with the player flying as Luke Skywalker in his attack against the Death Star. Two expansion packs extend the story beyond the events in ''A New Hope'', up to the establishment of the Rebel base depicted at the beginning of ''The Empire Strikes Back''.
Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has been released from a mental institution to the care of her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman), who has given up his job as string bassist for the New York Philharmonic and purchased a rundown farmhouse outside of the city. When Jessica, Duncan, and their hippie friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) arrive, they are surprised to find a mysterious drifter, Emily (Mariclare Costello), already living there. When Emily offers to move on, Jessica invites her to dine with them and stay the night.
The following day, Jessica, seeing how attracted Woody is to Emily, asks Duncan to invite her to stay indefinitely. Jessica begins hearing voices and sees a mysterious young blonde woman (Gretchen Corbett) looking at her from a distance before disappearing. Later, Jessica is grabbed by someone under the water in the cove while she is swimming. Jessica is afraid to talk about these things with Duncan or Woody, for fear that they will think she is relapsing. She also becomes aware that Duncan seems to be attracted to Emily, and that the men in the nearby town, all of whom are bandaged in some way, are hostile towards them.
Duncan and Jessica decide to sell antiques found in the house at a local shop, one of which is a silver-framed portrait of the house's former owners, the Bishop family—father, mother, and daughter Abigail. The antique dealer, Sam Dorker (Alan Manson), tells them the story of how Abigail drowned in 1880 just before her wedding day. Legend claims that she is still alive, roving the island as a vampire. Jessica finds the story fascinating, but Duncan, afraid that hearing about such things will upset his wife, cuts Dorker short. Later, as Jessica prepares to make a headstone rubbing on Abigail Bishop's grave, she notices the blonde woman beckoning her to follow. The woman leads Jessica to a cliff, at the bottom of which lies Dorker's bloodied body. By the time Jessica finds Duncan, however, the body is gone. Jessica and Duncan spot the woman standing on the cliff above them, causing Duncan to give chase. When the woman is caught and questioned by the couple, she remains silent and quickly flees when Emily approaches.
That night, Duncan tells Jessica that she needs to return to New York to resume her psychiatric treatment. Jessica forces him to sleep on the couch, where he is seduced by Emily. The next day, Jessica finds the portrait of the Bishop family, which she and Duncan had sold to Dorker the previous day, back in the attic; she observes that Abigail Bishop, as seen on the photo, bears a striking resemblance to Emily. Jessica agrees to go with Emily to swim in the cove. While swimming, Emily vanishes from sight; Jessica hears Emily's voice in her head and watches as Emily emerges from the lake in a wedding gown. Emily attempts to bite her neck, but Jessica flees, locking herself in her bedroom in the house. Hours pass and Jessica leaves to hitch a ride into town. Woody, who has been working in the orchard, returns to the house, where Emily bites his neck.
When Jessica gets into town, she sees Duncan's car and asks about his whereabouts, but no one will speak to her; she then encounters Sam Dorker, and terrified, runs back to the house. She collapses in the orchard and later is found by Duncan, who takes her home. In their bedroom, the couple go to lie down; Jessica notices a cut on Duncan's neck, and Emily then enters the room brandishing a knife, with the townsmen following behind her. Jessica flees the house, knocking over Duncan's bass case, which contains the corpse of the mute blonde woman.
Jessica runs through the orchard and comes across Woody's corpse, his throat slashed. At daybreak, Jessica makes it to the ferry and tries to board, but the ferryman, also bearing a scar on his neck, refuses to let her on. She jumps into a nearby rowboat and paddles out into the lake. When a hand reaches into the boat from the water, she stabs the person in the back several times with a pole hook. As the body floats away, Jessica sees that it is Duncan. From the shore, Emily and the townsmen watch her.
The story takes place at the fictional St Gregory Hotel in New Orleans, owned by Warren Trent.
The hotel is in financial trouble. Hotel manager Peter McDermott involves himself in the proposals from three potential buyers of the property. He also takes a romantic interest in Jeanne Rochefort, the beautiful French mistress of one of the bidders, and deals with a wide range of routine problems, including a faulty elevator.
Jeanne is the mistress of Curtis O'Keefe, who intends to renovate and "modernize" the hotel, with conveyor belts carrying luggage automatically around the building as if it were some sort of modern airport terminal, and even presenting the customer's bill on a conveyor belt. While this is O'Keefe's vision for a hotel of the future, his immediate plans for the St. Gregory are different: He would remove the fountain in the center of the lobby and replace it with a circular news stand and bookstore; he would remove the comfortable lobby seating, forcing guests to go to a restaurant or lounge and spend money to sit; he would change the mezzanine promenade with rows of little shops; and he would chop up the great suites into smaller guest rooms.
Among the guests at the hotel are the Duke and Duchess of Lanbourne, a wealthy couple hiding out after fleeing from an accident in their car. A hotel detective, Dupere, attempts to blackmail the Duke and Duchess. The Duchess responds by asking Dupere to drive the car from the accident to Washington D.C. for $25,000 ($ today), but he gets caught outside of the city.
Keycase, a professional thief, is working the hotel using a range of techniques and some female accomplices. In the beginning of the film he picks up a discarded key found in an ashtray at the airport. During the course of the film he sneaks into hotel rooms and steals the guests' money, but now that they can buy things by credit card, he finds that most of the guests carry very little cash.
Meanwhile, a black couple, Dr. Elmo Adams and his wife, attempt to rent a room at the St. Gregory, having previously made a reservation. However, Trent tells the assistant manager filling in for McDermott (McDermott having been offered a sexual liaison with Jeanne at his French Quarter apartment) not to allow them accommodation. The Adamses are denied their room, the couple then disappear only to be followed by a man with a camera. When McDermott finds out he berates Trent for doing something that would jeopardize the preferred bid, from a union that will maintain the style – and jobs – of the St. Gregory. After tracking them down to another hotel, McDermott offers the couple their room back, but when he goes to pick them up, they have already left the hotel. After contacting the NAACP, they inform McDermott that they had not had anything planned (yet) for the St. Gregory in terms of pushing to allow blacks to check into the hotel. The couple then winds up in a Washington newspaper, damaging both O'Keefe's deal and the alternate deal with the union, leaving only the option of selling the hotel to a buyer who plans to destroy it and build an office tower.
O'Keefe makes a final offer on the hotel and asks Trent, who brings McDermott along, to hear it. During the meeting, McDermott gets a call revealing that "Dr." Elmo Adams is not a doctor after all and actually works as an employee for an O'Keefe Hotel in Philadelphia. McDermott also reveals that O'Keefe offered him $20,000 ($ today) to convince Trent to take the deal, and implies that Rochefort slept with him so that he wouldn't be at the hotel to properly handle the arrival of the black guests. Hotel owner Trent decides to reject the unscrupulous O'Keefe's offer and sell the St. Gregory to the man who will demolish it.
Keycase's luck changes when he blithely talks himself out of one tough spot by grabbing an ordinary-looking attache case, which belongs to the Duke and Duchess. He gets to a room, calms his pounding heart, and uses one of his key collection to open the case to see what it contains. The case is filled with the cash to pay off Dupere. Counting himself lucky, Keycase heads for the elevator to leave.
In the elevator, Keycase is joined by the Duke and other guests. The elevator stops between floors as the control relays and emergency brakes begin to fail. McDermott and his assistant manager take the adjacent elevator to the same level and transfer passengers through the roof. The Duke and Keycase are the last two in the failing car. Keycase refuses to leave his briefcase, which contains the stolen money. The Duke is able to wrestle the case away and help Keycase out of the car, but right then the brakes completely fail, sending the Duke to his death.
The Duchess tells police she was responsible for the auto accident, hoping to save her late husband's reputation. She also saves Dupere by denying that any blackmail had occurred. The police detectives, seeing through the ruse, decide not to press charges. McDermott rounds up the remaining guests, including Jeanne, and buys drinks on the house as a final toast to the St. Gregory.
Newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Julie Bishop), on their honeymoon in Hungary, learn that due to a mixup, they must share a train compartment with Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Béla Lugosi), a Hungarian psychiatrist. Eighteen years before, Werdegast fought in World War I, never seeing his wife again. He has spent the last 15 years in an infamous prison camp in Siberia. On the train, the doctor explains that he is traveling to see an old friend, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), an Austrian architect.
Later, the doctor, Peter and Joan share a bus which crashes on a desolate, rain-swept road. Joan is injured, and the doctor and Peter take her to Poelzig's home, built upon the ruins of Fort Marmorus, which Poelzig commanded during the war. Werdegast treats Joan's injury, administering the tranquilizing drug hyoscine, causing her to behave erratically. While Peter puts her to bed, Werdegast accuses Poelzig of betraying the fort during the war to the Russians, resulting in the death of thousands of Austro-Hungarian soldiers. He also accuses Poelzig of stealing his wife Karen while he was in prison. Previously, Werdegast killed Poelzig's black cat, and Poelzig explains that Werdegast has a strong fear of the animals. Poelzig carries a second black cat around the house with him while he oversees his "collection" of dead women on display in glass cases, including Karen.
Poelzig plans to sacrifice Joan in a satanic ritual during the dark of the moon. Poelzig had married Werdegast's wife, and when she died, he married his daughter (who was told her real father died in prison). He is seen reading a book called ''The Rites of Lucifer'' while a beautiful blonde woman (Lucille Lund) sleeps next to him. The blonde is Werdegast's daughter – thus, Poelzig's stepdaughter – also named Karen. Werdegast, who is unaware of his daughter's presence, bides his time, waiting for the right moment to strike the mad architect. He also tries to persuade his foe to spare Peter and Joan, at one point gambling with their lives by playing a game of chess with Poelzig, which he loses.
This moment comes during the beginning of the satanists' service, when a female acolyte sees something which causes her to scream and faint. Werdegast and his servant Thamal (Harry Cording) snatch Joan from the sacrificial altar and carry her into the catacombs beneath the house, where Peter is rendered unconscious by Poelzig's servant. Joan tells Werdegast his daughter is alive in the building somewhere. He discovers that Poelzig has killed his daughter, and in an insane rage, shackles him to an embalming rack, where he proceeds to skin Poelzig alive. Joan tries to tear a key from the dead hand of Poelzig's servant, and Peter, regaining consciousness, mistakes Werdegast's attempt to help her as an attack and shoots him. Fatally wounded, Werdegast blows up the house, first letting the couple escape but with Poelzig's "rotten cult" still upstairs. "It has been a good game", he says before he dies.
In 1973, nine-year-old Troy Carmichael and her brothers Clinton, Wendell, Nate, and Joseph live in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn with their parents Woody, a struggling musician, and Carolyn, a schoolteacher. The neighborhood is filled with colorful characters, such as the Carmichaels' next-door neighbor Tony Eyes, whose house emits the foul smell of dog feces; Tommy La-La, who continuously sings and plays his electric keyboard; glue sniffers Snuffy and Right Hand Man; and war veteran Vic Powell, who lives upstairs from the Carmichaels.
One day, the Carmichael children get into an argument with Tony after he witnesses Wendell throwing trash into his area, which escalates when Carolyn and several neighborhood children get involved and is defused when Vic comes downstairs and then punches Tony in the face. Troy, who has sneaked out to the corner store, sees Vic getting arrested as she leaves the store.
One night, Woody and Carolyn argue about money; Carolyn resents Woody for not appreciating their financial situation and using their money carelessly to fund his solo career. The argument escalates as Carolyn yells for the children to turn off the television, before later turning it off herself.
Clinton turns his back on Carolyn and she grabs him for disobeying. Woody then grabs her and carries her out of the room. Woody carries Carolyn out of the room and down the stairs and Nate jumps on Woody's back. The other children hold Carolyn and Carolyn hurts her ankle in the struggle.
Carolyn kicks Woody out of the house, but Woody later brings flowers to Carolyn and the two reconcile. The family then decides to go on a trip, but as they are leaving, a worker from Con Ed arrives to shut off the electricity due to an unpaid bill, postponing the trip and forcing the family to use candles for light.
A few days later, the family travels to the South to stay with affluent relatives. Troy stays with her cousin, Viola, who was adopted by Uncle Clem and Aunt Song. Troy has fun with Viola despite disliking her snobby Aunt Song and her dog, Queenie. On Troy's tenth birthday, she gets a letter from Carolyn. After reading the letter and dealing with constant bickering between Viola and Aunt Song, Troy decides she wants to go home.
When Troy returns to New York, her Aunt Maxine and Uncle Brown pick her up at the airport. Troy later learns her mother is in the hospital and is taken to see her.
Later that evening, Woody tells the kids that their mother has cancer and must stay in the hospital. The boys cry, but Troy remains stoic. Troy then begins filling in the mother role, while Carolyn remains in the hospital but later dies.
Aftwards, one of Troy's brothers wonders if they have to dress up for their mother's funeral. On the day of the funeral, Troy's Aunt Maxine coaxes her into trying on the new clothes she's brought, telling her it would make Carolyn proud. Troy calmly explains that her mother hates polyester and would never let her wear it then announces to Woody that she is not going to the funeral. After Woody explains that Carolyn would want them all together at church, Troy acquiesces.
At the house gathering after the funeral, Troy is withdrawn. Joseph comes inside crying, saying that Snuffy and Right Hand Man robbed him. Following her mother's wishes to protect her younger brother, Troy goes outside with a baseball bat and hits Snuffy, telling him to go sniff glue on his own block.
Early the next morning, Troy dreams she's hearing her mother's voice. She goes downstairs to see her father trying to kill a rat in the kitchen. Woody then tells her that it is all right to cry, saying that even Clinton has cried. Troy concludes that it is good that her mother's suffering has ended.
As the summer ends, the Carmichael family and their friends resume their lives. Troy assumes the matriarch role that Carolyn left behind. Carolyn's spirit continues to visit Troy, praising her for taking on such responsibilities.
The original 15-page story for ''Rising Stars of Manga 2'' features Dogby and Snack Girl clearing Birdie of the theft of 20 pounds of hot dogs.
The two full volumes of the manga are each complete stories. In the first book, Dogby solves a murder, while the rest of the park is on the brink of civil war over the mysterious theft of a week's ticket sales. In the second book, Dogby helps defend an Alaskan town from a gang of Russian Imperialists.
At a literary luncheon Ariadne Oliver is approached by a woman named Mrs Burton-Cox, whose son Desmond is engaged to Oliver's goddaughter Celia Ravenscroft. Mrs Burton-Cox questions the truth regarding the deaths of Celia's parents. Twelve years before, Oliver's close school friend Margaret Ravenscroft and her husband, General Alistair Ravenscroft, were found dead near their manor house in Overcliffe. Both had been shot with a revolver found between their bodies, which bore only their fingerprints. The investigation into their deaths found it impossible to determine if it was a double suicide, or if one of them murdered the other and then committed suicide. Their deaths left Celia and another child orphaned. After consulting Celia, Mrs Oliver invites her friend Hercule Poirot to resolve the issue.
Poirot and Mrs Oliver proceed to meet elderly witnesses associated with the case, whom they dub "elephants", and discover that Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs; that the Ravenscrofts' dog was devoted to the family, but bit Margaret a few days before her death; that Margaret had an identical twin sister, Dorothea, who had spent time in a number of psychiatric nursing homes, and was believed to have been involved in two violent incidents in Asia, including the drowning of her infant son after the death of her husband; and that a month before the couple died Dorothea had been sleepwalking and had died after falling off a cliff. Later Poirot learns the names of governesses who served the Ravenscroft family, one of whom, Zélie Meauhourat, travelled to Lausanne after the couple's deaths.
Poirot soon turns his attention to the Burton-Cox family, and learns that Desmond was adopted and knows nothing about his birth mother. Through his agent, Mr Goby, Poirot learns that Desmond is the illegitimate son of a deceased actress, Kathleen Fenn, who once had an affair with Mrs Burton-Cox's husband and who bequeathed a considerable fortune to Desmond, to be held in trust until he was of age or had married, and which would go to his adoptive mother if he died. Poirot suspects that Mrs Burton-Cox wants to prevent the marriage of Desmond and Celia in order to maintain the use of the money, but he finds no suggestion that Mrs Burton-Cox wishes to kill her son. Eventually he begins to suspect the truth about the Ravenscrofts' death and asks Zélie to return to England to help him to explain it to Desmond and Celia.
Poirot reveals that the woman who died with Alistair was not his wife but her twin, Dorothea. A month before the deaths she had fatally injured Margaret and Margaret had made her husband promise to protect her sister from arrest. Alistair had Zélie help him to conceal the truth of his wife's death by planting her body at the foot of a cliff and fabricating the story that it was Dorothea who had died, then having Dorothea take the place of his wife. While she fooled the Ravenscrofts' servants, the family dog could not be deceived and thus bit her. A month after his wife's death Alistair murdered Dorothea to prevent her from injuring anyone else, making certain that she held the revolver before she was killed, and then he committed suicide. Knowing the facts, Desmond and Celia can face the future together.
The Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh
The title of the book refers to the Old Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the time in the heart of the Scottish county of Midlothian. The historical backdrop was the event known as the Porteous riots. In 1736, a riot broke out in Edinburgh over the execution of two smugglers. The Captain of the City Guards, Captain John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing several people. Porteous was later killed by a lynch mob who stormed the Old Tolbooth.
The second, and main element of the novel was based on a story Scott claimed to have received in an unsigned letter. It was about a certain Helen Walker who had travelled all the way to London by foot, to receive a royal pardon for her sister, who was unjustly charged with infanticide. Scott put Jeanie Deans in the place of Walker, a young woman from a family of highly devout Presbyterians. Jeanie goes to London, partly by foot, hoping to achieve an audience with the Queen through the influence of the Duke of Argyll.
The novel portrays the contrasting fortunes of two sisters: Jeanie and Effie Deans. In volume 1, Captain Porteous is initially condemned for murder, but is reprieved at the last moment. A young nobleman George Staunton (under the guise of "Geordie Robertson") leads a mob that storms the prison and lynches Porteous. Staunton also attempts to free his lover Effie Deans, who he impregnated. She has been imprisoned for the alleged murder of her baby but she refuses as to escape would be to admit guilt. Reuben Butler, a young minister who is in love with Jeanie, witnesses Effie's refusal to escape. This fact strengthens Jeanie's belief that her sister is innocent.
Volume 2 covers the trial of Effie, where she is unable to prove her innocence as she cannot produce the baby and had hid the pregnancy from her family. Jeanie is unable to lie in court to save her sister, and Effie is sentenced to death.
In volume 3, Jeanie decides to walk to London to beg a royal pardon. Butler is unable to convince her to stay, and eventually contacts the Duke of Argyle, who may owe his family a favour, asking for help. On her way, Jeanie is waylaid by Madge Wildfire and her mother Meg Murdockson. Jeanie learns that they stole the baby out of jealousy of Effie's relationship with Staunton. Meg attempts to murder Jeanie, but the latter escapes. In London, the Duke of Argyle, impressed with Jeanie's fervor, arranges an audience with Queen Caroline. The Queen is so touched by Jeanie's eloquence and grace that she convinces the King to grant the pardon and Effie is freed. Jeanie returns to Scotland, her father is given land to superintend by the Duke, and Butler receives a promotion which comes with a large increase in income.
Jeanie later marries Butler in volume 4, and they live happily on the estate of the Duke of Argyle. Effie reveals that the son was not murdered but sold to a work gang by Meg, and that Staunton is in fact the criminal Robertson. Effie marries Staunton. The long-lost son, who has been raised as a violent criminal, travels to Scotland and murders Staunton, before escaping to America to live with Native Americans. Effie finally decides to travel to France and become a nun, which requires a conversion to Catholicism, which surprises Jeanie.
Captain Picard is working late on a speech that he will present to visiting archaeologists when Counselor Troi tells him that the council members have arrived and been assigned quarters. Picard returns to his quarters and finds Vash waiting for him, and the two kiss. The next morning, the two are sharing breakfast when Doctor Crusher arrives and offers to give Vash a tour. Vash expresses surprise and slight anger at the fact the Captain hasn't told his friends about her and confronts him about this at a reception for the delegates. After the reception, Q returns to repay Captain Picard for saving him in "Deja Q". Picard requests nothing, so Q decides to save Picard by testing Picard's love for Vash.
While Picard is addressing the delegates, Q transports the bridge crew to medieval England, where Captain Picard is Robin Hood and the bridge crew are the Merry Men. English soldiers attack the group and the group retreats to the forest.
Q assumes the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham and has imprisoned Vash, now Maid Marian. Picard must rescue Vash as she is sentenced to die for treason. Vash manipulates Sir Guy of Gisbourne into sparing her life by professing love and promising marriage. Picard realizes that if he does nothing, Vash will die. He orders his officers to remain in the woods, then disguises himself and infiltrates the castle as a peasant worker.
Picard climbs up to the tower and through the window. The two bicker over the merits of Picard's rescue plan, and Vash refuses to go. Picard begins to carry her away when a group enters. Picard is taken away by the guards, and Vash tries to send a message to Commander Riker, which is stopped by Q, who reveals himself to Vash and has her taken away.
At the chopping block, Picard's officers reveal themselves disguised as monks and create a diversion. Picard and his staff prove themselves formidable fighters and win. Picard frees Vash, who leaves with Q to explore the galaxy. Q guarantees Vash's safety; with that, Picard considers Q's debt paid in full.
''Chimera Beast'' takes place on a planet which is described as distant and Earth-like. The planet is overrun by monsters known as ''eaters'', capable of eating other creatures and acquiring their abilities or characteristics. The player controls one of these eaters and progresses through the game by means of the food chain, consuming microscopic organisms in the first stage, fish in the second, and so on. When the player's creature gets big enough to take on humanity, the goal of the game is revealed. The planet's humans have developed space travel, which the player must thwart, so as not to give the eaters a means of escaping the planet. There are two possible endings: one in which the player is able to stop the eaters from escaping the planet, and one in which the eaters do escape and, we are told, eventually make their way to Earth.