American showgirl Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) arrives in Paris from Monte Carlo during a rainstorm with nothing but her clothes (an evening gown). With no money and no place to stay, she persuades soft-hearted Hungarian taxi driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) to drive her to nightclubs looking for a job in exchange for her doubling his fare. After an unsuccessful search, Tibor buys her dinner and offers to let her stay overnight at his apartment while he finishes his night shift. While attracted to Tibor, she slips away.

Seeking shelter from the rain, Eve sneaks into a black tie classical concert. Without an admission card, she uses the pawn ticket for her suitcase. Stephanie (Hedda Hopper), the hostess, learns that an imposter got in using a pawn ticket, and interrupts the concert to ask if "Eve Peabody" is there. Eve tries to slip away, but is intercepted by Marcel Renaud (Rex O'Malley), who invites her to play bridge in another room. The other players are Madame Helene Flammarion (Mary Astor) and Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer), a wealthy ladies' man. Eve introduces herself as "Madame Czerny" and is partnered with Jacques.

Helene's husband, Georges (John Barrymore), enters the room and notices the woman who left during the search for the gatecrasher. Pretending to recognize Eve as the wife of "Baron Czerny", he chats with her. When the game ends, Eve and Jacques owe their opponents a few thousand francs. Eve thinks she must try to pass an IOU, but discovers 10,000 francs in her purse. Jacques insists on escorting her back to the Ritz, where she claims she is staying. Eve is stunned to find a lavish suite reserved for her.

Meanwhile, Tibor searches for her. He recruits his fellow taxi drivers by organizing a pool, where everyone puts in five francs and whoever finds Eve wins the money.

The next morning, Eve awakens to find that "her" luggage has arrived: a set of expensive trunks containing a complete wardrobe. Her car and chauffeur are waiting outside. Eve is mystified and frightened until Georges arrives, her mysterious benefactor. He explains that Helene and Jacques think they are in love. Last night, he noticed that Jacques had eyes only for the "Baroness". George proposes that Eve encourage Jacques and break up his affair with Helene. Georges will pay her well if she succeeds, and Jacques might even marry her. He gives her an expense account of fifty thousand francs and invites her to the Flammarion estate in Versailles for a weekend house party.

Jacques becomes thoroughly captivated by Eve. While driving to the party, the couple are spotted by one of the taxi drivers. He collects the prize money from Tibor, who cannot believe she is staying at the Ritz under his name. Meanwhile, Helene learns that Stefanie accused the wrong person of being the gatecrasher. Suspecting the "Baroness", Helene has Marcel retrieve Eve's suitcase.

At the Flammarion estate, Eve and Jacques arrive together, much to Helene's jealousy. When Marcel arrives with the suitcase, they search its contents and find a photograph of some showgirls, one of whom looks like the "Baroness". Helene is about to expose Eve when "Baron Tibor Czerny" is announced. Tibor informs the hosts that he has come to be with his "wife". Later in private, Tibor professes his love for Eve, who hints that she feels the same way, but she is still determined to marry for money.

The next morning, Eve suspects that Tibor is about to reveal his true identity, so she explains that the Czerny barons are prone to fits of delusional madness, a story confirmed by Georges. Tibor appears as a taxi driver, but the Flammarions simply humor him, and he walks away in anger. Jacques offers to help Eve get a divorce and then marry her.

Eve appears in court for a sham divorce. Although Tibor is angry with her, he accepts payment from Georges to go along. During the proceedings, however, Tibor pretends to be insane, knowing that this will prevent a divorce under French law. Finally cured of her infatuation, Helene leaves arm-in-arm with Georges, while Tibor and Eve head to the marriage bureau—much to the surprise of the judge who just denied their divorce.

Ron "Cat" Catlan once led the New Orleans Saints to a championship (something the real-life Saints wouldn't accomplish until Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, nearly a half-century after the film was made). After fifteen years in pro football, he tries to compensate for his failing skills with booze and an extramarital affair. ("You're not even worth the price of a ticket anymore", a fan yells at him after Cat refuses her an autograph.)

Friend and former teammate Richie Fowler (Bruce Dern) offers Cat a job with his auto-leasing company, and a management position in the computer industry is also on the table, but Catlan hesitates, insisting he can still lead the squad to future glory. The associate with the computer firm (Bobby Troup) warns him not to put off making a decision: "There are a lot of kids coming out of college, Cat, and they're smart kids. A year from now, I might not be able to offer you a job driving the company truck."

Things are no better at home for Catlan: his long-suffering wife, Julie (Jessica Walter), threatens to leave him after too many booze-fueled outrages and late nights with other women. She begins to drift away into her own life, leading Cat to an abortive affair with Ann (Diana Muldaur).

Cat finally begs Julie to stay, saying everything will be alright after he leads the Saints to another title. In the next game, against the Dallas Cowboys, Catlan succeeds in leading the Saints down the field, even scoring a touchdown himself. In the end, though, he is crushed in a violent sack by a Cowboys player, seemingly ending his football career (and possibly his very life, as Catlan takes what appears to be his last breath). Julie, unable to watch, is seen leaving the stadium.

The film involves two married couples: Nick and Charlotte and Luis and Eva.

Nick and Charlotte are more than busy earning money, there is no time for love or sex - only Tuesdays. Soon, Charlotte finds a lover, Luis, an unsuccessful artist. Luis and Eva also have no time for sex: he must find his inspiration for art and Eva has agreed to give up her own occupation as an artist to support themselves and their 3 and 6 year old kids by working in a restaurant.

The secret affair between Luis and Charlotte lasts quite a while, they decide to spend a romantic week in Venice, Italy, but accidentally Eva finds out about the affair and their destination.

Eva kidnaps Nick on her trip to Venice in order to restore her marriage as well as his. During their stay in Venice, Luis becomes ill and spends the entire week in the bathroom. On their way from Munich, Germany (where the first half of the story takes place) to Venice, Eva's car breaks down somewhere in the Alps, so she, Nick, and her two children are forced to walk and hitchhike the rest of the way.

Nick is allergic to children and continually sneezes but the children grow warm on him, since Eva's no-nonsense attitude forces him to spend a lot of time with them. They arrive in Venice without money, passports, credit cards, their clothes torn and burnt, on a Friday evening, which means that they have to spend the weekend without any support from the German consulate. When they finally meet their respective spouses, things are not quite the same for neither of them.

The film is set in a Japanese prisoner of war labour camp where the inmates are building the Burma Railway during the last three and a half years of World War II.[https://variety.com/2002/film/reviews/to-end-all-wars-1200549004/ "Review: ‘To End All Wars’"]. ''Variety'', Dennis Harvey. June 18, 2002 Captain Ernest Gordon was a company commander with the 2nd Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who fought in several battles in the Malayan Campaign and the Battle of Singapore before being captured and made a prisoner of war by the Japanese.

The series featured many firsts for the franchise, including the start of the story in a movie rather than the series proper. ''Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact'' was the prequel to the series and took place eight years before episode 1. In it, 11-year-old Musashi Haruno encounters the being of light, , and befriends him as the two confront a threat to Earth.

Ten years later, Musashi, now 19 and a member of Team EYES, once again encounters the being of light from his childhood. The dark being Chaos Header has appeared and is corrupting the monsters of Earth, making them become ravenous and violent creatures that threaten humanity. Through Musashi's will to see the beasts and humans live in peace, Cosmos grants him a new power that will allow him to heal the corrupted creatures.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Earth has crossed over the Unbalance Zone once in every 3 million years, which caused various unnatural phenomenon on Earth to occur. Having survived the destruction of a space satellite, Kagura was bonded to Ultraman Neos as they fight against the monster brought to life by the Dark Matter mutations with the assistance of HEART and a fellow Ultra veteran, Ultraseven 21. During that time, Kagura crosses paths with Alien Zamu, a race of extraterrestrial aliens who took refuge on Earth when their planet was ravaged by the effects of Dark Matter. In the final episodes, Mensch Heit try to exterminate this alien race by sending Grall and threatened the Japanese defense forces for cooperation. With Neos and Seven 21 nearly died from exhaustion, Esura, the last surviving Alien Zamu sacrificed his life to replenish both Ultras as they defeated the demonic ruler and avenge the extinct alien race. Neos and Seven 21 returned to their home planet as the former separated from Kagura and HEART vowing to restore the Zamu race.

The story of ''The Raj Quartet'' begins in 1942. World War II is at its zenith, and in South East Asia, the Allied forces have suffered great losses. Burma has fallen, and the Japanese invasion of the Indian subcontinent from the east appears imminent. The year 1942 is also marked by Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi’s call for the Quit India movement to the British rulers of India. ''The Raj Quartet'' is set in this tumultuous background for the British soldiers and civilians stationed in India who have a duty to manage this part of the British Empire, known as the "jewel in the crown" of the British Monarch. One recurrent theme is the moral certainty of the older generation as contrasted with the anomie of the younger. Another theme is the treatment of Indians by Britons living in India. As a reflection of these themes. the British characters let themselves be "trapped by codes and principles, which were in part to keep their own fears and doubts at bay." Most of the major characters suffer difficulties, and some die, either because they try to follow codes which have become outmoded (Ahmed Kasim, Merrick, Teddie Bingham) or because they reject the codes and become outsiders (Kumar, Lady and Daphne Manners, Sarah Layton). Some critics have compared ''The Raj Quartet'' to the epic novels of Proust and Tolstoy. Though some critics have thought the ''Quartet'' to be a straightforward example of nineteenth-century style realism, others have argued that its non-linear narrative style and occasional "outburst of dreams, hallucinations and spiritual revelations" give it an added dimension.

The main characters of the first novel are Daphne Manners, a young Englishwoman who has recently arrived in India, and her British-educated Indian paramour, Hari Kumar. Ronald Merrick, a British police officer belonging to the Indian Police Service, is another main character.

''Ceremony of Innocence'' has an elaborate mystery game format to tell the story of Griffin, a young English artist, and Sabine, a woman from a (fictional) South Sea Island. The game takes the form of a series of postcards sent between the two, which the player must explore to continue.

Wai Siu-bo is a bard known for his quick wit and tall stories. One day, the police ambush Chan Kan-nam, the leader of the revolutionary Heaven and Earth Society, at the brothel where Siu-bo works. Siu-bo saves Chan Kan-nam and asks him to teach him kung-fu in return. Kan-nam accepts and inducts Siu-bo into the Heaven and Earth Society as his apprentice, with his first assignment being to infiltrate the palace and steal some secret materials. Members are marked by the Society's mantra on their feet, but Kan-nam only manages to write down two on Siu-bo's left foot before he flinches from ticklishness.

On the day of the palace recruitment, Siu-bo accidentally stumbles into the eunuch room before being saved by Hoi Tai-fu, the palace's head eunuch. Suspicious of the Empress Dowager's identity and unable to confront her himself, Tai-fu strongarms Siu-bo into stealing the Empress Dowager's copy of the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters. When Siu-bo is discovered, Tai-fu fights off the Empress, who possesses an unexpected level of combat prowess. Amidst the conflict, Siu-bo inadvertently befriends the Princess and the Emperor, thinking that they are eunuchs. The Emperor offers to give Siu-bo both his copy and the Empress' copies of the Sutra if he can defeat the Emperor in a fight. Siu-bo fights dirty and defeats the Emperor after grabbing his crotch, only to realize that the pair are royalty. Shortly afterward, one of the Emperor's seditious Generals, Oboi, bursts in to make demands. When Siu-bo successfully maneuvers the Emperor around a political confrontation with Oboi, and the Princess uncovers that Siu-bo is not a eunuch himself, he is promoted to the position of spy for the Emperor, told to keep an eye on Tai-fu and Oboi.

The Princess, enamored with Siu-bo, has her way with him that evening. When the Empress Dowager finds them in the bedroom afterward, she threatens to kill him before Tai-fu once again interferes. They deliver critical wounds to each other, bringing the fight to a standstill. Siu-bo then accidentally injures Tai-fu, turning him into a child-like state and becomes subservient to Siu-Bo. With Tai-fu incapacitated, Siu-bo is promoted once more to an official.

After Oboi kills another courtier, the Emperor assigns Siu-bo and To-lung, a royal guard, to devise a plan to deal with him. but Oboi proves too strong for their plans. Provoked, Oboi fights back and tears down the Emperor's defenses, even with Tai-fu's help. Reminded of the Empress' strength, Siu-bo rushes to her chambers, where she quickly subdues Oboi. Unable to reveal her fighting capabilities to the Emperor, the Empress credits Siu-bo for everything, who is then promoted once more and given Oboi's assets, including his copy of the Sutra.

With Oboi imprisoned, Chan Kan-nam intends to stage an assault on the palace to kill both him and the Emperor before Oboi's lackeys break him out. He bequeaths twin female bodyguards to Siu-bo and orders him to coordinate for the attack from the inside. Unable to disobey his master, Siu-bo reluctantly returns. When he arrives, the Empress Dowager interrogates him on what he has learned from the Sutras. When Siu-bo, illiterate, fails to deliver, she throws him into Oboi's prison. When Oboi's lackeys arrive, Siu-bo is taken hostage and carried into the woods. There, they meet the Heaven and Earth Society on their way to infiltrate the palace. Oboi and Kan-nam decimate the soldiers from the opposing sides. Kan-nam defeats Oboi when Tai-fu's surprise sacrifice reveals Oboi's weak spot and retreats with heavy wounds. The false Empress Dowager arrives to kill Siu-bo but not before the palace guards surround them. The false Empress tries to pin the blame on Siu-bo by revealing Siu-bo's feet. However, the letters do not match the Society's mantra. Unable to keep the farce up when the Princess brings out the real Empress Dowager, the false Empress flees. And with all the fighters either dead or missing, Siu-bo takes credit for Oboi's death and for the ousting of the false Empress and is promoted to a duke. Elsewhere, the false Empress transforms back to her true form and vows to come back for Siu-bo, who will not recognize her next time.

A group of 5 rebellious youths rob a bank with the intention of shooting police officers before making their escape. Inspector Chan Kwok-wing (Jackie Chan) and his squad are called to arrest the gang after their hideout is revealed. However, the place is rigged with traps, and the entire squad is decimated. After being defeated at several challenges with the rebels, Chan, the sole survivor of the incident, takes a year long leave from the police force to binge-drink after losing the squad, including Hong, the younger brother of Chan's girlfriend, Ho Yee (Charlie Yeung).

Chan is discovered by a stranger (Nicholas Tse), who identifies himself as Frank Cheng, Chan's new partner. Frank tries to convince Chan to cancel his leave and reopen the case; Chan refuses, but comes to his senses by apprehending two youths who robbed him earlier while Chan was drunk. Chan's superior Chiu Chan (Yu Rongguang), initially believing that Chan's overconfidence alone was responsible for the disastrous raid, challenges them to solve the case before he does. Frank explains to Chan about his persistence on the case that he is kin of a deceased squad member.

Frank and Chan visit and convince former colleague Sam Wong (Dave Wong), who is hiding in a bar, to reveal a clue from the night of the first robbery, a watch which he snatched from one of the robbers. Wong tells them that one of the gang members is a woman and that they like to play X-games. Chan and Frank are tailed by Chiu and the police as they search for the owner of the watch at an upcoming X-Games event; Sam has been arrested by the police to assist in the investigation. At the event, held on the rooftop of a skyscraper, Frank and Chan manage to locate one of the gang members, Fire (Terence Yin), while Sam and the police interrupt the event and single out the woman robber, Sue (Coco Chiang). Before they can apprehend them, Fire fatally wounds Sam, and the two escape. Sam confesses to Chan that he was blackmailed by the gang to aid them in ambushing Chan's team. Chiu, upon overhearing this, has a change of heart.

In the ensuing chase, Sue, Fire, Chan and Frank scaled down the building on a tightrope. To distract Chan, Fire shoots a bus driver, forcing Chan and Frank to save the bus. When Chan's old commanding officer, Inspector Tai, comes to him to complain about the collateral damage, he reveals that he never assigned a partner to Chan. Chan angrily confronts Frank, who is neither a cop nor a kin of deceased squad member. Frank admits that even though he wanted to be a cop, he failed the exam. Chan is convinced that Frank is sincere, and the two are briefed by Frank's friend, Officer Sa Sa (Charlene Choi), that the gang members all come from rich families and the leader Joe (Daniel Wu) is actually the son of the police chief. The gang also created online video games based on their raids.

Sue and Fire return to the gang's new hideout, where Joe kills Sue, who was critically wounded during the chase. His gang accesses Chan's police file on a computer and plants a bomb on Ho Yee after luring her to the police station. Chan and Ho Yee cut the wires, with no effect, leading the police to believe that it is a fake. But when the two get ready to leave, a small wire attached to Ho Yee's back activates a secondary trigger, causing the bomb to explode. The blast causes pipes to land on Ho Yee, knocking her into a coma. When Frank's false identity is revealed, Chan and Frank are arrested. The gang visits them and taunts them about their next target. Frank and Chan are later unofficially released to apprehend the gang.

Through the online game, Chan, Frank and Sa Sa learn that the gang's next target is the Bank of Hong Kong. In order to avoid another botched raid, Chan has the officers escort the public out of the building, and brings the gang members' parents to cause dissent within Joe's gang, prompting Joe to kill gang member Max (Hiro Hayama) for surrendering. In the resulting altercation, Frank blindsided Fire, injuring him before retreat away from Joe's firing. At a Lego exhibit, Chan catches up with him and has a rematch of hand-to-hand combat with Tin Tin (Andy On) and prevails, before Tin Tin is critically shot by Joe's friendly fire. Chan follows Joe, the last man standing, to the roof, where Joe threatens to throw Frank, whom he has captured, to his death. Joe challenges Chan to a race to assemble a semi-automatic pistol, a rematch of another earlier challenge which Chan wins this time by loading the bullet directly into the chamber of the gun instead. A number of policemen arrive on the roof, along with Joe's outraged father. Chan attempts to talk him into surrendering; Joe admits defeat, but deliberately aims his empty gun at Chan, choosing suicide by cop with his father watching. Chan rushes to rescue Frank, and both of them fall off the building, landing on a fireman's inflated cushion.

In the hospital, Ho Yee has recovered and prepares to leave before accepting Chan's marriage proposal. Frank is taken under arrest for assumption of authority. When Chan looks at the jacket Frank left behind, he remembers meeting him as a child after Frank's impoverished father was killed by a speeding truck while trying to steal some food, and giving comfort to the orphaned boy, prompting Frank to become a policeman and repay Chan for his kindness.

wai siu-bo was given a chance to go thru the modern-day hong kong. the Time Machine was taken over thru wai in the help of the Kangxi empire. he was taken here goes thru the future and met the modern Cantonese girl siu ha.

Chris Guthrie's mother, broken by repeated childbirths and learning she is again pregnant, kills her baby twins and herself. Two younger children go to live with their aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, leaving Chris, her older brother Will, and her father to run the farm on their own. Will and his father have a stormy relationship; and Will emigrates to Argentina with his young bride, Mollie Douglas. Chris is left to do all the work around the house. Soon after this, her father suffers a stroke, leaving him bedridden. For a time, he tries to persuade her to commit incest with him; but, as he is badly hurt, he is not able to force her. He dies shortly afterwards. At his funeral, Chris realises what happened to her father and breaks down in tears as she never knew the hardship he has endured for them.

Chris, who has had some education, considers leaving for a job as a teacher in the towns, but realises she loves the land and cannot leave it. Instead, she marries a young farmer called Ewan Tavendale and carries on farming. For a time, they are happily married, and they have a son, whom they also call Ewan. However, when World War I breaks out, Ewan Sr. and many other young men join up. When he comes home on leave, he treats Chris badly, evidently brutalised by his experiences in the army. Ewan dies in the war; and Chris subsequently hears from Chae Strachan, who is home on leave, that Ewan was shot as a deserter but that he died thinking of her. She begins a relationship with the new minister, and she watches as he dedicates the War Memorial at the Standing Stones above her home. The Sun sets to the ''Flowers of the Forest'', bringing an end to their way of life, forever.

Emily's friend Angelica invites her to a rave party in the woods. Emily's parents, Leo and Justine, tell her she must return by midnight or call if she's going to be late. At the party, Angelica asks Swan, another party guest, for ecstasy. Swan says he has some in a nearby cabin, where his friends live, and the girls agree to accompany him there. They are unaware that Swan's friends are actually his father Chaos, a notorious and wanted criminal, Chaos's girlfriend Daisy and felon Frankie, and that Chaos has sent Swan to the party to lure unsuspecting women to him.

At the cabin, Emily and Angelica are captured by the gang and taken deep into the woods. The girls manage to escape from their captors and split up to make themselves harder to find. Angelica is caught by Daisy and brought before Chaos, who tortures her, stabs her to death, and violates her corpse. After sunset, the gang finds Emily, who steals Daisy's knife in a struggle and stabs Swan viciously in the genitals. Rather than letting his son bleed to death, Chaos suffocates him and promises to murder Emily in revenge.

Justine becomes nervous about Emily's whereabouts and convinces Leo to call the police, although she suspects that local police officer MacDunner won't take her seriously because he is racist towards her family. Justine and Leo head into the woods to search for the girls themselves, and find Angelica's corpse. They return to their home.

Chaos and Frankie recapture Emily and bind her with rope. Chaos tortures her to death by cutting her anus and genitals, but cannot rape her as a result. The gang prepares to leave the area, but Chaos's van fails to start, forcing them to abandon it and search for a car to steal. The van is then found by MacDunner and his partner Wilson, who discover blood-stained clothes within.

The gang heads to a nearby house to steal the car, unaware that they have arrived at Emily's home. Leo lets Chaos and his group inside, but notices that Daisy is wearing Emily's belt. Suspecting the group of being involved with Emily's disappearance, Leo calls the police, while Chaos and Frankie prepare to hot-wire his car and kill the couple.

Chaos is confronted by a shotgun-wielding Leo, demanding answers about Emily. In the meantime, Frankie has captured Justine, and brings her to Chaos, distracting Leo. Chaos disarms Leo and takes the shotgun, shooting Daisy when she tries to persuade him to leave the house. In the ensuing confusion, the couple escape.

Leo finds a chainsaw and attacks, killing Frankie and disarming Chaos of his shotgun. Before Leo can shoot him, MacDunner and Wilson arrive and order Leo to drop his weapon. When Leo hesitates, MacDunner fatally shoots him. Justine grabs Wilson's gun and shoots MacDunner in the back. Wilson disarms Justine, but Chaos shoots him and then Justine. Chaos's laughter is heard over the closing credits.

A new wing at Britannia Hospital is to be opened, and the Queen, (presumably Queen Elizabeth, but only ever referred to as H.R.H.) is due to arrive. The administrator of the hospital, Potter (Leonard Rossiter), is confronted with demonstrators protesting against an African dictator who is a VIP patient, striking ancillary workers (opposed to the exotic gastronomic demands of the hospital's private patients) and a less-than-cooperative Professor Millar (Graham Crowden), the head of the new wing. Rather than cancel the royal visit, Potter decides to go out and reason with the protestors. He strikes a deal with the protest leader—the private patients of Britannia Hospital are to be ejected and, in return, the protestors allow a number of ambulances into the hospital. However, unbeknown to the protestors, these ambulances actually contain the Queen Mother and her entourage.

Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is a reporter who is shooting a clandestine documentary about the hospital and its dubious practices. He manages to get inside with the help of a sympathetic nurse (Marsha Hunt) and starts to investigate Millar's sinister scientific experimentation, including the murder of a patient, Macready (Alan Bates). As mayhem ensues outside, Travis is also murdered and his head used as part of a grim Frankenstein-like experiment which goes hideously wrong.

Eventually, the protestors break into the hospital and attempt to disrupt Millar's presentation of his Genesis Project, in which he claims he has perfected mankind. In front of the assembled audience of Royalty and commoners, Genesis is revealed—a brain wired to machinery. Genesis is given a chance to speak and, in a robotic voice, utters the "What a piece of work is a man" speech from ''Hamlet'', until it continuously repeats the line "How like a God".

The novel begins with an explanation that the story is not at all "true", and that everything in it is a complete and utter lie. The narrative begins with Lucian and his fellow travelers journeying out past the Pillars of . Blown off course by a storm, they come to an island with a river of wine filled with fish and bears, a marker indicating that and Dionysus have traveled to this point, and trees that look like women. Shortly after leaving the island, they are caught up by a whirlwind and taken to the Moon, where they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between Endymion the king of the Moon and Phaethon the king of the Sun over colonization of the Morning Star. Both armies include bizarre hybrid lifeforms. The armies of the Sun win the war by clouding over the Moon and blocking out the Sun's light. Both parties come to a peace agreement. Lucian describes life on the Moon and how it is different from life on Earth.

After returning to Earth, the adventurers are swallowed by a whale, in whose belly they discover a variety of fish people, against whom they wage war and triumph. They kill the whale by starting a bonfire and escape by propping its mouth open. Next, they encounter a sea of milk, an island of cheese, and the Island of the Blessed. There, Lucian meets the heroes of the Trojan War, other mythical men and animals, as well as Homer and Pythagoras. They find sinners being punished, the worst of them being the ones who had written books with lies and fantasies, including Herodotus and Ctesias. After leaving the Island of the Blessed, they deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus explaining that he wishes he had stayed with her so he could have lived eternally. They discover a chasm in the ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent and decide to explore it. The book ends abruptly with Lucian stating that their future adventures will be described in the upcoming sequels, a promise which a disappointed scholiast described as "the biggest lie of all".

The film opens as a couple named Tom and Gwen are in a national park and are attacked and taken hostage. Later Gwen is raped and impregnated while Tom is killed.

Mark Till is a young CEO, a self-made sporting goods tycoon who sees human survival as a skill to be honed and cherished in the boardroom and beyond. That's why each year he sponsors a week-long survival getaway to test the mettle of twelve lucky employees, to challenge them, body and mind. This year it's a paintball war in the remote woods / national park in northern California. Total outsiders to the wary locals, these urban Rambos think they're ready for anything.

On the first day, the Alpha and Bravo camps are set up. In the night, one of Mark's team, Adam Benson hears a noise in the dark and goes to investigate, but sees nothing. The next day the paintball war begins. A few minutes later a member of Mark's team pops a figure ambling through the woods. Score one for Alpha, until they realize that the person they hit isn't part of either team.

While attempting to make it back to camp, the Beta team comes across an abandoned house. Inside they are attacked and kidnapped by men with axes and bows. The men who kidnapped them are part of an overzealous religious group, who have mistaken the team for FBI Agents, and believe they've come to claim their land. The Alpha group return to their camp and find it ransacked and their gas siphoned off. As they try to find some gas, Johnny spots two men across the lake from their campsite. One points and the other shoots Johnny through the neck, killing him instantly. The others try to make a break for it and manage to escape.

Adam then attempts to contact the Park Ranger, but his call is intercepted by one of the cult and he and the others are captured by a man posing as a Park Ranger. Maggie (the only girl in the Beta group) is shown with the leader of the cult (called "Mother"), who tells her the cult's camp is her home now. When Maggie resists, she is taken away and raped by Mother's biological son, a large beast-like man. Gwen, the woman who was captured at the beginning of the film, is now shown to be pregnant, and a servant to the cultist group. Lee (the only girl from Group Alpha) is also taken and prepared to be used as a vessel for Mother's son's "seed", while the boys are put into cages and brutally abused by the males in the cult.

The fake ranger, who appears to be Mother's husband and the Cult's protector, takes Adam and tortures him, attempting to get information about the FBI's plans. When Adam resists, he sends one of the other cult members to finish him off. As his throat is about to be slit, Adam breaks free of his ropes, and attacks and kills his would-be murderer. He then sets the surviving team members (Perry and Basso, the only two have survived the brutalizing) free. They escape, killing several cult members along the way, and rescue the girls. Maggie is hysterical after her ordeal. The group escapes with Lee, who seduced Mother's son into setting her free with touches and kisses, and a good kick in the face.

The survivors are pursued by the cultists. After setting fire to the compound, they are cornered outside it. As they are about to be executed, they turn the tables, taking Mother hostage. Basso is killed and the others escape, severely injuring and killing several cultists, including Mother. Later, Perry falls prey to a tripwire-rigged trap, impaling him through the gut. Although painful, he manages to survive long enough to kill off several more cultists and give the others the time they need to get away, after which his head is bashed in by Mother's son.

Lee, Maggie and Adam make it up to a mountain where Maggie, who is now delusional from the trauma, commits suicide by jumping off the cliff. Lee and Adam escape by jumping into a river and swimming to the shore, where they meet the real Park Ranger. Then Mother's husband, her son, and another cultist arrive in a truck and shoot the Ranger with an arrow. Adam then takes his gun and shoots both the cultists. Mother's husband attempts to run Adam down, but collides with the Ranger's truck. Adam shoots him as he begs for help.

Much later, the FBI and the Police arrive, giving medical attention to Adam and Lee. Adam is disturbed to hear that only two bodies were recovered from the final confrontation.

An FBI team treks through the forest, searching for the cult, when Gwen comes out of a cave, having finally escaped herself. As the agent leading the group walks toward her, Gwen shouts for her to run. The head agent is taken by surprise by Mother's son, who has survived the gunshot wounds, and the movie ends.

Ringing bells in a lazy town announce that it is time to go to church. A black preacher with caricatured enormous lips greets his parishioners as he sings the song for which the short is named. A minstrel show dandy and his gal jazz up the song as they dance their way to church. A succession of gags featuring stereotyped black characters follows: a mammy and old uncle shine the heads of pickaninny children; a woman takes a bra off a clothesline to use as a bonnet for her twin children. Lindvall notes that mammies were "ubiquitous in films dealing with black culture".Lindvall 128.

Freleng introduces the cartoon's protagonist, Nicodemus, when Mammy Two-Shoes finds him playing dice. She exclaims, "You good fo’ nothin’! Get yo’self to dat church. De Debbil’s gonna get you sho as yo’ born!" and drags him off by the ear. Nevertheless, Nicodemus slinks out the door, opting to steal some chickens instead. Unfortunately, a knock on the head sends him to the "Hades Court of Justice", where a demon reviews his crimes and sends him deeper into hell. Big-lipped demons carry him to the Devil himself, who sings to Nicodemus that "you've got to give the Devil his due." The boss orders some demons to "give 'em the works," but Nicodemus wakes to find the prods of pitchforks are nothing but the pecks of chickens in the land of the living. He hears the church bells and makes haste to the meeting house.

''Clean Pastures'' opens in Harlem, New York City, where African American caricatures gamble, drink, and dance in a sea of bars, clubs, and dancing girls. In Heaven, known as "Pair-O-Dice", a black Saint Peter reads the headline, "Pair-O-Dice Preferred Hits New Low As Hades Inc. Soars". The angel rings an angelic Stepin Fetchit with enormous lipsGoldmark 94.Weisenfeld 79.—probably a reference to Oscar Polk's performance as Gabriel in ''The Green Pastures''—Weisenfeld 80. and orders him to rectify the situation. Gabriel descends to Harlem and stands by a sign (modeled after James Montgomery Flagg's World War I Uncle Sam poster) that reads, "Pair-O-Dice Needs You! Opportunity, Travel, Good Food, Water Melon, Clean Living, Music, Talkies". Nevertheless, the denizens of Harlem continue with their iniquity.

Angels, caricatures of jazz performers Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, The Mills Brothers, and Jimmie Lunceford, tell Saint Peter that to get people to paradise he will need "rhythm" (the short's credits list no voice actors, but a member of the all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds —possibly Leroy Hurt—provides the cartoon's celebrity impressions).Goldmark 186, note 44. The musicians go to Harlem and break into a performance of "Swing for Sale", and the Harlemites flock to listen. The film's climax takes on the characteristics of "a revivalist camp meeting" as the band makes its way to Pair-O-Dice, and people follow them in droves. The newcomers receive their halos, and in the cartoon's final gag, the Devil himself asks to be admitted.

''Clean Pastures'' is a musical film, which means that it shifts between musical and non-musical sections, both of which are integral to the story. Carl Stalling's musical score makes use of both public-domain music and songs owned by Warner Bros. Stalling's music "supplies both the foundation for the story and the driving force behind the animation." Music is of such importance that characters in ''Clean Pastures'' dance about even when no performers are pictured. The all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds performs the backing vocals for these songs.

A choir of a cappella, black male voices opens the cartoon with "Save Me, Sister, from Temptation", a song from the 1936 Warner Bros. film ''The Singing Kid'' featuring Al Jolson. Thus, Stalling establishes one of the cartoon's themes, that sinners may be redeemed, from the opening credits. As the scene shifts to Harlem, the jazz standard "Sweet Georgia Brown" accompanies the bevy of African American vices. Caricatures of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Al Jolson perform snippets of the blackface tunes "Old Folks at Home" and "I Love to Singa". However, the short's major number is "Swing for Sale", performed by caricatures of popular black jazz performers. The short ends with a jazzed-up version of James A. Bland's minstrel spiritual "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers".

The short follows a cruise ship's trip from New York to the island, presumably located in the South Seas. The ship sails past the Statue of Liberty, who acts as a traffic cop, past the "Canary Islands" and "Sandwich Islands".

The cartoon revolves around themes of jazz and primitivism, and is set on a remote island. The central character is an early version of Elmer Fudd known as Elmer, and most of the cartoon consists of travelogue-type narration and blackout gags, many including Elmer. The inhabitants of Pingo-Pongo are mostly tall, black, and have big feet and lips. Like other cartoons at this time, the native inhabitants resemble animals and reflect stereotypes of the time. The natives are at first playing drums, then break into a jazz beat, still described as a "primitive savage rhythm," which leads the audience to connect the savage jungle to modern jazz music.

There is a running gag with the Elmer where he says, "Now Boss?", but the narrator keeps saying "Not now." That is, until the end, where the sun fails to set when he says "as the sun sinks slowly into the West". Elmer reappears and says "Now Boss?" The boss says "Yeah, now!" Elmer shoots the sun, making it sink into the West and ending the film.

The cartoon opens with a cat who resembles a Fats Waller caricature going out for a night on the town. He is about to go into a club when a street preacher warns him that he will be tempted with "wine, women and song" if he goes in. This, however, only excites the cat ("Wine women an' song? What's de motor wid ''dat''?") who immediately runs in. At first, he enjoys the club, but he becomes so immersed in the music that he is carried "out-of-this-world" to a manic fantasy realm filled with surreal imagery (including caricatures of Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo and Joseph Stalin). This world frightens him so much that, when he wakes up, he gives up his partying ways and joins the Salvation Army-style religious music group singing outside, much to their surprise.

The Three Bears, a jazz trio, are enjoying a hot jam session when their instruments catch fire. After consulting a storybook, they find that they must go out for a walk to let the instruments cool off.

Across the street (in a house with a neon sign saying "GRANMA'S"), the Big Bad Wolf is expecting Red Riding Hood's arrival. Instead, he receives a telegram that says Red Riding Hood will be late because she is "working at Lockheed as a riveter." The frustrated wolf looks out the window and sees Goldilocks entering the Three Bears' house. (Unlike the other characters, Goldilocks is drawn as an attractive young woman.) Because there is a "food shortage" going on, the wolf decides to pursue Goldilocks.

Inside the Three Bears' house, Goldilocks tries all the beds and lies down in the best one, only to find the wolf in bed with her. The wolf chases Goldilocks through the house until the Three Bears return. Finding Goldilocks and the wolf struggling in the living room, they shout "Jitterbugs!" and begin playing a dance tune. The wolf and Goldilocks dance the jitterbug until the wolf is exhausted and flees to Grandma's house.

Red Riding Hood returns to find the wolf in Grandma's bed, but the wolf is too tired to eat her. So he attempts to make Red leave, claiming she came too late for their segment and his feet are sore from the dance. However The Three Bears rush in, shout "Dere's dat jitterbug!" and resume playing. This causes Grandma to burst out of a cupboard and jitterbug with the wolf, who turns to the audience and says, in a Jimmy Durante voice, "''Everybody'' wants to get into the act!"

A young African-American boy (drawn in blackface style) carries a sack to a river and laments that he has agreed to drown a cat. While the boy stares at the water, the cat slips out of the sack and fills it with bricks. When the boy says that he can't go through with the task, the hidden cat, pretending to be the boy's conscience, says, "Go ahead, Sambo, go ahead, boy," and reminds him that he has been paid "four bits" to do the job. Sambo reluctantly drops the bag in the river rather than return the money.

The cat then disguises itself as its own ghost, painting itself white and donning wings and a halo, and proceeds to "haunt" Sambo by repeatedly sneaking up on him and whispering "boo." Sambo runs away, but the cat rattles a pair of dice, causing Sambo to fall into a trance and sleepwalk back to the cat.

The hauntings continue until Sambo and the cat fall in a pond, washing off the cat's paint. When Sambo realizes that he has been tricked, he kills the cat with a shotgun blast. Immediately afterward, a line of nine ghost cats (representing a cat's nine lives) marches toward Sambo, saying, "And this time, brother, us ain't kiddin'."

The plot of ''Neanderthal'' revolves around two rival scientists, Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot, who are sent by the United States government to search for missing Harvard anthropologist James Kellicut. Their only clue is the skull of a Neanderthal. Carbon dating shows that the skull, which should be 40,000 years old, is suspiciously only 25 years old.

The Russian and American governments are competing to study the surviving Neanderthals in Tajikistan in order to learn more about their "remote viewing" capabilities. The Neanderthals are split into two tribes, a peaceful valley tribe and a cannibalistic and violent mountain tribe. Soon, the protagonists are captured by Neanderthals and must try to escape from the cannibals. They hope to do so without jeopardizing the safety of the peaceful tribe. It eventually, however, becomes necessary to train the peaceful tribe for war. The novel explains that a completely peaceful society like that was doomed in any case, and would have been destroyed soon by the mountain tribe.

Alice Vavasor, a young woman of twenty-four, is engaged to the wealthy, respectable, dependable if unambitious and bland, John Grey. She had previously been engaged to her cousin George, but she broke it off after he went through a wild period. John, trusting in his love, makes only the slightest protest of Alice’s planned tour of Switzerland with her cousin Kate, George's sister, even when he learns George is to go with them as their male protector. Influenced by the romance of Switzerland, Kate's contriving to restore George to Alice's favour, and her own misgivings with John's shortcomings, Alice jilts her second fiancé.

Alice's noble but despised relations are shocked, but their protests only strengthen Alice's resolve, and she eventually renews her engagement to George, who seems charismatic, ambitious and alluring, in contrast to John. She respects his honesty in acknowledging in his letter proposing their marriage that her money would support his parliamentary ambitions, and she tells him that he can draw on her funds even before they marry. Ever attentive to Alice's welfare, John secretly pays the money instead.

George wins his first election, but loses his second. Now desperate, his darker side becomes increasingly visible. He has fantasies about murdering his grandfather, and breaks Kate's arm when the old man dies of natural causes having denied George his inheritance. In despair, and after learning of John's interference in his campaign and engagement, he almost murders John before escaping to America.

A second story involves the comic rivalry between the wealthy farmer Cheesacre and the pauper soldier Captain Bellfield for the affections (and substantial inheritance) of the widow Mrs Greenow. Mrs Greenow, the aunt of Alice, George, and Kate, had married young to a very rich older man who had recently died. Still in mourning, which for her involves a great deal of performance, she also enjoys basking in the attentions of her beaux and pitting them against each other. Finally she decides to marry the more attractive Captain Bellfield, knowing that she can keep him under control.

The third story deals with the marriage of the extremely rich Plantagenet Palliser to the even wealthier heiress, Lady Glencora M'Cluskie. They are not very well suited. He is a stiff-necked, hardworking politician in line to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, while she has a lively, fun-loving personality and a well-developed sense of humour. She is outspoken and often shocks Alice by her frankness. The marital situation is made more tense by Glencora's failure to conceive a child. Previously, she had been engaged to Burgo Fitzgerald, an aristocratic wastrel, but the same noble relations that protested Alice's jilt had successfully pressured Glencora to abandon Burgo to marry Plantagenet. But Glencora is still passionately in love with Burgo, who plots to elope with her. To Alice's dismay, Glencora argues that it would be for the best if she eloped with Burgo as then Plantagenet could divorce her and marry someone else who could give him children. She publicly dances with Burgo at a ball and nearly agrees to go with him, even at the risk of her fortune and reputation.

Plantagenet sacrifices his political ambitions to save his marriage by taking Glencora on a European tour with Alice accompanying. After some rancorous travelling, Glencora finds that she is pregnant, which solidifies her marriage and fulfills Plantagenet's life, though it is clear that Glencora does not love him. John Grey pursues Alice to Switzerland to renew his courtship and eventually wins her over again. Although Alice loves him, her acceptance of him is not whole-hearted and is described in terms of a surrender. Having jilted him before, she struggles to forgive herself and feels she is unworthy of him. She finally relents, noting that he had "left her no alternative but to be happy." They become engaged and Plantagenet persuades his new friend to run for Parliament. Alice is somewhat pleased by this as she had been dissatisfied with John's earlier lack of ambition.

Back in England, Mrs Greenow marries Bellfield, Glencora gives birth to a son, and Alice finally marries John. Alice’s happiness is temporarily alloyed by sense of defeat at having her wedding turned into a formal social event where she endures the reproachful lectures of high-ranking relatives she had sought to avoid. Trollope suggests that she is fortunate not to have suffered more by trying to defy social convention.

The film is set in 1970 at the height of the FLQ bombings in Montreal, known as the October Crisis. During the Crisis, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau instituted the War Measures Act, which resulted in martial law on the streets of Montreal. The central character, Sophie (Anne-Marie Cadieux), is an actress working in Osaka (Japan) at Expo '70, while her boyfriend, Michel (Alexis Martin), is an FLQ sympathizer. Sophie discovers that she is pregnant and phones Michel, but before she can tell him, two FLQ friends suddenly turn up at his apartment looking for a place to hide, and Michel has to hang up. Sophie, who is unaware of the crises happening in Montreal, is upset by Michel apparently not wanting to talk to her, and isn't even sure if he is the father. She has to decide whether to stay and get an abortion in Japan, where abortion is legal, or keep the baby and return to Montreal the next day as planned. Meanwhile, she has to avoid the advances of fellow actor François-Xavier (Éric Bernier) and survive a dinner with Canadian ambassador Walter (Richard Fréchette) and his difficult wife Patricia (Marie Gignac). Sophie's interpreter friend Hanako (Marie Brassard), a Japanese woman blinded by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, is preparing to move to Vancouver (British Columbia) with her Canadian interpreter boyfriend. In the meantime, in Montreal, Michel's two friends are plotting to set off a bomb, but they end up blowing up Michel's apartment by mistake.

Although the game contains characters from the Shannara novels, it is not an adaptation but an original story set after ''The Sword of Shannara'' and before ''The Elfstones of Shannara''. Players take on the role of Jak Ohmsford, son of Shea. In Shady Vale, Jak meets Allanon. He tells Jak of the horrible Warlock Lord's return. Jak sets off into the Land of Shannara.

The film is set in a small rural town that is haunted by the undead. Only one man seems to be able to stop them, and that is Lúcio, a worker whose wife recently turned into a zombie, forcing him to keep her locked in the basement. In a local tavern he finds a second shot at true love, but this blooming romance is threatened by the situation plaguing the town.

The plot starts in Naples, Italy in the 18th century, in the church of Santa Maria del Pianto, where an English traveller is speaking with an Italian friar. The Englishman notices a man of extraordinary appearance in a shadowy area of the church, who is an assassin, according to the friar. When the Englishman asks why this assassin is protected in the church, an Italian friend travelling with him directs his attention to a famous confessional in the church, which was the scene of a particularly startling confession. He offers to send him a narrative relating this former assassin's confession, and the problems that attended it, to his hotel, and the two retire from the church and go their separate ways. The Englishman reads the story in his hotel room as follows:

It is 1758 in the church of San Lorenzo in Naples where Vincentio di Vivaldi sees the beautiful Ellena di Rosalba with her aunt, Signora Bianchi. Vivaldi is struck with her beauty, and intends to court her, with the hopes that they will end up married. When Vivaldi’s mother, the proud Marchesa, hears about his love for a poor orphan, she appeals to her ambitious and cunning confessor, Father Schedoni, to prevent the marriage, with a promise that she will help him obtain promotion in his order. As Vivaldi continues to visit Signora Bianchi at Villa Altieri, he is approached by a monk, who seems to be an apparition, threatening him to keep away from the villa and Ellena. After each encounter, Vivaldi tries in vain to capture the strange monk, with the help of his friend Bonarmo and his faithful servant Paulo. Vivaldi suspects that the monk is Father Schedoni, and is determined to know why his courtship of Ellena is discouraged. After being promised the hand of Ellena and appointed her guardian by Signora Bianchi before her sudden mysterious death, Vivaldi finds that Ellena has been kidnapped from the villa, and immediately deduces it is by the hand of the Marchesa and Schedoni. Leaving Naples secretly in pursuit of her abductors, Vivaldi and Paulo eventually find Ellena held at the remote convent of San Stefano, at the mercy of a cruel Lady Abbess, and Vivaldi infiltrates the convent disguised as a religious pilgrim to rescue her. In the convent, Ellena befriends a lovely but melancholy nun, Sister Olivia, who helps her escape from the convent into the care of Vivaldi.

While riding towards Naples after the escape, Vivaldi presses Ellena for an immediate marriage, and she finally consents. But moments before they are to take their vows before a priest at a church, agents claiming to work for the Inquisition, informed by Schedoni, interrupt and arrest Vivaldi on the false charge of abducting a nun from a convent. Vivaldi and Paulo are taken to the prisons of the Inquisition in Rome to be questioned and put to trial. They are confused about the circumstances behind their confinement, which their captors will not reveal. Ellena, however, is sent by order of Schedoni to a lone house on the seashore, inhabited only by the villain Spalatro, Schedoni's accomplice in previous crimes, to be murdered. Schedoni comes to the house to assassinate Ellena personally, but becomes convinced from a portrait on her person that she is his daughter. Schedoni has a change of heart, and decides to take Ellena personally back to Naples to hide her from the Marchesa. While on their journey, they once again encounter the dismissed Spalatro, who had followed them with designs of extorting money from Schedoni, but Spalatro is shot in a scuffle and left behind (and shortly after dies of fever). Schedoni and Ellena arrive in Naples, where Schedoni places Ellena in the convent of Santa Maria del Pianto until Vivaldi can be freed. Schedoni returns to the Marchesa, keeping secret his endorsement of the marriage of the Marchesa's son and his daughter, but distracts the Marchesa temporarily with information that Ellena comes from a noble lineage, so a marriage would at least be proper, if not lucrative. Meanwhile, in the prison of the Inquisition, the mysterious monk who had previously eluded Vivaldi, now known to be Nicola di Zampari, appears and narrates to him the guilty crimes of Father Schedoni before he became a monk, and convinces him to formally call Schedoni and Father Ansaldo, to whom Schedoni had previously disclosed his deeds in a confessional booth, to the trial as the accused and witness, respectively, in the crimes. Both are made to appear before the tribunal, where Schedoni is convicted from their testimony of murdering his brother, as well as marrying and later stabbing his brother's wife in a jealous rage, in his former life as the dissolute Count di Bruno, or Count di Marinella. Schedoni is sentenced to death, and before he is led away into confinement, tells Vivaldi his relationship to Ellena and her whereabouts. Vivaldi is also escorted back to his cell, with the knowledge that the charges against him will be dropped. Meanwhile, Paulo (Vivaldi's servant) escapes the prison and notifies the Marchese of Vivaldi's situation, who hurries to Rome to secure his son's release. Schedoni, on his deathbed, in the presence of the tribunal, further reveals that he had already fatally poisoned both himself and his betrayer Nicola with poison concealed in his vest.

Back at the convent, Ellena distinguishes a voice all too familiar, and sees her dearly loved Sister Olivia in the convent courtyard. While the two recount each other's experiences since they last parted, Ellena’s servant Beatrice comes to report the sudden death of the Marchesa from a long-dormant but natural illness (having Confessed, the Marchesa has also exacted a promise from her husband that he should sanction the marriage of Ellena and Vivaldi). Beatrice and Olivia recognize each other, and elate Ellena with the news that she is the daughter of Olivia, who is revealed to be the Countess di Bruno, whom Schedoni had stabbed in jealous rage and left for dead. This leads Ellena to realize that she is actually not Schedoni’s daughter, but his niece. Since they are of the same lineage, Ellena is still from a noble family, which would allow her to marry Vivaldi with honour. Once it is revealed that Ellena is from an aristocratic family, it is determined that she has the royal blood that allows her to be worthy of marrying Vivaldi.

The ending of the novel is a happy one; Vivaldi and Paulo are released from prison, Ellena is reunited with her mother, and Vivaldi and Ellena are joined in marriage, and all the villains have died. The Marchesa dies shortly before finding out that her son has been freed from prison. Father Schedoni, condemned to die, poisons himself and Nicola di Zampari, and calls a tribunal including the Marchese and Vivaldi to witness their final confessions at his deathbed.

The story involves a kindly small-town physician Doctor Lloyd Clayton (Zucco), who has secretly murdered his twin brother Elwyn, because of Elwyn's deep involvement in satanic occult practices. Only Elwyn's hunchback assistant Zolarr (Frye) suspects the good doctor of doing away with his master and confronts him on this matter, but the doctor maintains that he only acted in self-defense when his brother had become a danger to society.

Meanwhile, because Elwyn has gone far with his study of the dark arts before his demise, he returns to life as an evil supernatural being who begins murdering the villagers by draining them of their blood. The doctor and his beautiful young niece, Gayle Clayton (Carlisle), and her fiancé, soon discover that Elwyn still lives, and are in peril of their lives for this knowledge.

Dr. Clayton realizes the only way he can help his niece now is to again kill Elwyn, and plans to conquer him with fire. Clayton, unfortunately, becomes also trapped in the resulting conflagration, and along with Elwyn and Zolarr perishes in the flames of Elwyn's accursed library.

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, formerly a high school basketball star, is now 26, and has a job selling a kitchen gadget named MagiPeeler. He is married to Janice, who was a salesgirl at the store where he once worked, and who is now pregnant. They live in Mount Judge, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Brewer, and have a two-year-old son named Nelson. Harry finds middle-class family life unsatisfying, and on the spur of the moment, leaves his family and drives south in an attempt to "escape". After getting lost, he returns to his home town, but not wanting to return to his family, he instead visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero.

That night, Harry has dinner with Tothero and two girls, one of whom, Ruth Leonard, is a part-time prostitute. Harry and Ruth begin a two-month affair and he moves into her apartment. Meanwhile, Janice moves back in with her parents. The local Episcopal priest, Jack Eccles, tries to persuade Harry to reconcile with his wife. But Harry stays with Ruth until he learns she had a fling with his high school nemesis, Ronnie Harrison. Enraged, Harry coaxes Ruth into performing fellatio on him. The same night, Harry learns that Janice is in labor, and he leaves Ruth to visit his wife at the hospital.

Reconciled with Janice, Harry moves back into their home where their daughter, Rebecca June, awaits them. Harry attends church one morning and, after walking the minister's wife Lucy home, interprets her invitation to come in for coffee as a sexual advance. When he declines the invitation for coffee, stating that he has a wife, she angrily slams the door on him. Harry returns to his apartment, and, happy about the birth of his daughter, tries to reconcile with Janice. He encourages her to have a whiskey, then, misreading her mood, pressures her to have sex despite her postnatal condition. When she refuses and accuses him of treating her like a prostitute, Harry masturbates onto her and then leaves in an attempt to resume his relationship with Ruth. Finding her apartment empty, he spends the night at a hotel.

The next morning, still distraught at Harry's treatment of her, Janice gets drunk and accidentally drowns Rebecca June in the bathtub. The other main characters in the book except Harry soon learn of the accident and gather at Janice's parents' home. Later in the day, unaware of what has happened, Harry calls Reverend Eccles to see how his return home would be received. Reverend Eccles shares the news of his daughter's death, and Harry returns home. Tothero later visits Harry and suggests that the thing he is looking for probably does not exist. At Rebecca June's funeral, Harry's internal and external conflicts result in a sudden proclamation of his innocence in the baby's death. He then runs from the graveyard, pursued by Jack Eccles, until he becomes lost.

Harry returns to Ruth and learns that she is pregnant. Though Harry is relieved to discover she has not had an abortion, he is unwilling to divorce Janice. In Rabbit’s apparent final attempt to salvage his relationship with Ruth, he decides to find her and make empty promises.

Harry abandons Ruth, still missing the feeling he has attempted to grasp during the course of the novel; his fate is uncertain as the novel concludes.

In a small town bordering a swampy region, unexplained murders and rumors of mysterious happenings surround the swamp-based home of the reclusive but respected Curt Ingston (Morgan). Ingston uses a wheelchair and has invited to his home the three doctors who were trying to cure him when his paralysis set in. Already in the household are his grim-humored butler Rolf; a lecherous chauffeur, Lawrie; a mannish housekeeper, Miss Judd; an Eastern mystic, Agar Singh; and Ingston's allegedly mentally ill sister, Margaret. Outside, the gate is watched by a shrivelled old hunchback called Torque.

Coincident with the arrival of the three male physicians is the appearance of a lady psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn Harper, summoned secretly by Margaret to prove she is not insane and help her secure freedom from the control of Ingston and Miss Judd. She arrives accompanied by a neighbor: mystery-writer Dick Baldwin, who rescued her after her car broke down in the swamp. Neither Ingston nor Miss Judd welcome her presence, but must contend with keeping her overnight until her car can be repaired.

Following dinner, at which Ingston's conviction that the three doctors are directly responsible for his current condition becomes evident, the party witnesses an exhibition of materialization of an Egyptian skeleton by Agar Singh. Dr. Harper is forbidden to meet with Margaret. Then, one by one, the doctors are frightfully killed as they prepare for bed. Suspecting Ingston, Dick and Police Captain Beggs confront him in his room, but discover he is not paralyzed but a quadruple amputee. Suspicion then falls on Lawrie, who was last seen driving a murdered ex-employee of the household back to town, but he, too, winds up dead.

Ultimately, Dick confronts the killer outside the estate as he menaces Lynn, and discovers it is Ingston after all: by studying under Agar Singh, he has learned how to materialize arms and legs, hands and feet for himself, long enough to accomplish his evil deeds. As Dick struggles with him to the death, Margaret sets fire to the unholy house, committing suicide while taking the malevolent Miss Judd with her. As the house burns to the ground, Dick and Lynn are saved by Agar Singh, when Singh shoots Ingston.

Henry Wilt is a demoralised and professionally under-rated assistant lecturer at a community college in Mid Anglia who is dominated by his psychologically immature wife Eva and thus fantasises about murdering her. During a night walk to relieve his frustrations, he accidentally busts an undercover operation by Scotland Yard Inspector Flint, earning him the latter's undivided attention.

Three weeks afterwards, something that looks like a body is found in a construction foundation on the college grounds. Since its appearance coincides with Eva Wilt's mysterious disappearance the night before, and with the Wilts' abandoned car found nearby, Henry is quickly suspected and investigated for murder by Flint. Pleading innocence, Henry relates that the night before, he and Eva had attended a party hosted by their wealthy friends, Hugh and his glamorous wife Sally. Sally, who has grown tired of Hugh and has turned lesbian, wished to win Eva over to her side; when Henry caught her attempting to seduce his unsuspecting wife and confronted her in private, he ended up accidentally knocking himself out. Exploiting this opportunity, Sally stripped Henry down and tied an inflatable sex doll to him. When Eva saw him trying to wrest himself free, she was scandalised and fled to Sally, who subsequently (and unknown to the rest of Eva's social environment) invited her to a yacht trip on the local river. After being liberated, the humiliated Henry dumped the doll into the wet foundations at the building site.

Even though the evidence and the witness testimonies are ambiguous at best, Flint becomes obsessively fixated on the idea that Henry is the dangerous mass murderer currently wanted by the police. That attitude is exacerbated even when the doll is recovered from the construction site, since Flint believes it to be a decoy set up by Henry and Eva's body was disposed of elsewhere. Wilt unexpectedly incriminates himself as a result of a recording of his "fantasy musings" from a wire-tap, that fell off Flint on his way to the "undercover bust" earlier. Wilt then confesses to having returned to the scene of the party and to have carried out a triple murder, disposing of the bodies at the local sausage factory. When it is pointed out to Flint that the signed confession is in the name of "Sweeney Todd", Wilt is released, due to a lack of solid evidence. Even though Henry has been cleared, Flint continues shadowing him.

In the meantime, Eva learns from Hugh about Sally's designs on her and her set-up of Henry. Fleeing the boat, she calls Henry from a church and apologises to him, asking him to pick her up. Unbeknownst to her, the church's priest is actually the wanted mass murderer. As he prepares to kill Eva, Henry tries to come to her aid, only to be hindered by Flint. After they fight off the mad priest, Flint holds Henry and Eva at gunpoint but his wild murder accusations are quickly deflated by Henry's alleged victims turning up alive at the scene, and the priest is arrested by an undercover officer. Reconciled with his wife, Henry joins Eva's tai chi class for neurosis therapy, where he finds Flint, who has left the police and now works for a private security firm, as a new member to sort out his own psychological issues.

Diverging from the storyline of the comics, the series set Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov in the year 3203. As agents of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation, the team travels the galaxy in their ship the ''Sky Flash'', battling cosmic villains under the order of Commander Paul Richards.

The series proved popular with American audiences and critical response, though sparse, was positive. ''Flash Gordon'' has garnered little modern critical attention. What little there is generally dismisses the series, although there has been some critical thought devoted to its presentation of Cold War and capitalist themes.

Joanna Dane (Maureen O'Hara) is sent to Tangiers to get information on, and close down, an international smuggling ring. Dane is adept at jiu jitsu, firearms, and wisecracks that she uses on anyone who tangles with her. Her beauty, attractive outfits and skill with playing cards get her a position as a croupier at a smuggler's hangout called Frisco's, run by the hard blonde Frisco (Binnie Barnes). Joanna also is pursued by smuggler Van Logan (MacDonald Carey), who she uses by having him take her to Ali Baba's, a parfumerie run by the suspicious Mustapha (Ferdy Mayne).

During her work at Frisco's, Joanna is pestered by Danny Boy (James Lilburn), Logan's Irish assistant, who ignores her insults and warnings to let her alone. When the embarrassed Danny Boy threatens Joanna, she grabs him and throws him to the floor. Augie (Harry Lane) – another target of Joanna's surveillance—beats Danny Boy's head with his cane, knocking him unconscious. Logan fights with Augie, revealing he carries a sword cane by tossing the blade at Logan.

Joanna accompanies Logan, Danny Boy and his crew on their boat the ''Banshee'' to smuggle goods into Spain where they are hijacked by a boat led by Augie. The ''Banshee'' manages to escape but without their cargo. Logan is arrested by the Civil Guard but manages to escape with Augie unsuccessfully attempting to assassinate Joanna. Joanna tracks down the smuggling ring, shooting Logan and discovers the real head of the smuggling ring whom she has eliminated by the Civil Guard.

Wallace Ritchie flies from Des Moines, Iowa, to London, United Kingdom, to spend his birthday with his brother, James. James is not expecting the visit and is hosting a business dinner that night; to keep Wallace entertained, he sets him up with an interactive improv theatre business, the "Theatre of Life", which promises to treat the participant as a character in a crime drama. Before the night begins, James hands Wallace a pair of Ambassador cigars, promising to "fire them up" before midnight in celebration of Wally's birthday. Wallace answers a phone call intended for a hitman at the same payphone that the Theatre of Life uses for its act.

The contact, Sir Roger Daggenhurst, mistakes Wallace for Spencer, the hitman he has hired and Wallace assumes the identity. The real Spencer picks up the phone call meant for Wallace and murders one of the actors, prompting a police investigation. Daggenhurst, his assistant Hawkins, British Defense Minister Gilbert Embleton, and Russian intelligence agent Sergei plan to detonate an explosive device (hidden in a Matryoshka doll) during a dinner between British and Russian dignitaries, in order to rekindle the Cold War and replace their aging technology.

Still believing he's acting with the Theatre of Life, Wally meets Lori, Embleton's call-girl. Lori plans to blackmail Embleton for a substantial amount of money using letters that detail the plot. Spencer was hired to eliminate her and destroy the letters. Wallace scares off Embleton when he arrives to look for them and drives off Spencer. Fearing their plot will be revealed, Daggenhurst hires two more hitmen, while Sergei hires now-inactive spy Boris "The Butcher" Blavasky to eliminate "Spencer". Boris succeeds in killing the real Spencer, but Wallace and Lori return, retrieving the letters.

Using Spencer's communicator, Wallace mentions lighting up some "big Ambassadors, at 11:59," referring to James' cigars. Thinking the words refer to the assassination plot, both sides believe he is an American spy who has caught on to their scheme. Daggenhurst offers Wallace and Lori 3 million British pounds in return for the letters, to be exchanged at the same hotel where the dinner is taking place. This is a ruse to capture and kill them both. All the while Wallace gets close to his "co-star" Lori, who confesses she'd love to study acting once they're paid.

Wallace contacts James and tells him to meet him at the hotel – soon after, James sees an evening news report that Wallace has murdered an actor and police are searching for him, prompting James to abandon the business dinner. Wallace and Lori are caught and held captive. Boris opts for torture by Dr. Ludmilla Kropotkin, but Wallace and Lori separate and escape before she arrives. James is captured and sent to be tortured by Dr Kropotkin. Wallace evades the hitmen and finds himself part of a group of Russian folk dancers performing for the ambassadors. During the routine, he sees the Matryoshka doll bomb, unwittingly disarms it seconds before it goes off, blocks a poison dart from Boris with it, and steals the show with his improvised dancing.

Realizing their plot has failed when the bomb fails to go off, Sergei and Daggenhurst bring out two bags containing the promised £3 million for Wallace and Lori and release James, who is exhausted but otherwise fine after his torture session. Boris congratulates Wallace for his impressive covert skills and gives him a souvenir pistol, telling Wallace he will continue his butcher shop business. Sergei and Daggenhurst attempt to escape with half the money and discover Wallace's doll, which they believe is only a normal one he picked out for himself. They are proven wrong when they realign the doll, reactivating the bomb and blowing them up, just as Wallace and Lori share a kiss.

Some time later, on an exotic beach, Wally unwittingly incapacitates a spy, passing a test by an unknown American espionage group. Believing he is capable of being a top agent, they offer him a position on "the team". Thinking that they wish to make him a movie star, Wallace accepts their offer.

The film opens with a funeral for Dawn Wiener (the protagonist from Solondz's ''Welcome to the Dollhouse''), who went to college, gained a lot of weight and acne, and committed suicide at age 20 after she became pregnant from date rape. Her older brother Mark (Matthew Faber, reprising his role) reads the eulogy while Dawn's tearful parents (Angela Pietropinto and Bill Buell, also reprising their roles) sit in the audience and seem to finally show remorse over the way they mistreated her as a child. Dawn's younger sister whom she was estranged from, Missy, does not attend the funeral. One of the attendees is Aviva, Dawn's cousin.

A few years later, Aviva desires to have a child. She has sex with Judah (Robert Agri), a family friend, and becomes pregnant. Aviva's parents are horrified and demand that she get an abortion. While the abortion is technically successful, it is implied via a fractured, emotional conversation with the doctor (Stephen Singer) that Aviva can no longer have children. Not fully conscious, Aviva is unaware of this, and her parents, already fragile, lead her to believe all is well when she awakens, afraid to upset Aviva.

Aviva runs away from home. She befriends a trucker (Stephen Adly Guirgis) and has sex with him; however, the trucker abandons her at a motel. She is eventually found by the Sunshine Family, a Christian fundamentalist foster home that cares for disordered orphans and runaways. She tells them her name is Henrietta — the name she picked for the baby she was persuaded to abort. While at the Sunshine Family home, she discovers a dark side to the foster father; he assassinates abortion providers. His next target is the doctor who performed Aviva's abortion. The hitman whom the foster father uses is the same trucker Aviva previously befriended and had sex with.

Convinced she is in love with the truck driver, Aviva flees the Sunshine Family to join him on his assignment. The murder does not go as planned as, in addition to the doctor himself, the trucker (whose name is revealed to be Bob) ends up accidentally shooting the doctor's young daughter when she steps in front of the first shot. The police find Bob and Aviva both in a motel room, and a guilt-ridden Bob commits suicide by cop.

The film then skips ahead several months later to Aviva back home with her parents, planning her next birthday party. During the party, she talks to her cousin, Mark, who has recently been arrested and accused of molesting his sister Missy's baby (although he denies having done it and it is loosely implied that Missy might have made it up for attention). Mark tells Aviva that there is no such thing as free will; people are what they were genetically “programmed” to be, and can never truly change. The film skips ahead to Aviva's meeting Judah, who now calls himself Otto, and they have sex again. Afterward, Aviva happily exclaims that she has a feeling that, this time, she is going to be a mother.

On his way to leave for a vacation with his wife Keiko, Miles O'Brien runs into an old Starfleet crewmate, Raymond Boone, who served with him years earlier in the battle of Setlik III. The two old comrades chat briefly and part ways. Shortly after their departure, the O'Briens' runabout is stopped by Cardassians, who search the ship and arrest Miles.

He is taken to a prison on Cardassia Prime and "processed"; his clothes are torn off and he is injured while resisting the guards. He meets his appointed advocate, Kovat, whose job is not to secure an acquittal but to engineer O'Brien's cooperation so that the people of Cardassia can perceive that justice is being done. No one will tell O'Brien what the charges against him are.

Back on Deep Space Nine, Keiko and Commander Sisko are informed that Miles has been declared guilty and sentenced to death, and will have a ceremonial "trial" in which the verdict is read. DS9's security chief Odo uses a legal technicality to get himself appointed to the team representing Chief O'Brien. He and Keiko depart for Cardassia.

Meanwhile, the crew of Deep Space Nine discovers that a number of warheads have been stolen and have probably ended up in the possession of the Maquis, a faction that has been attacking the Cardassians. Major Kira finds a recording of O'Brien's voice requesting access to the warheads, but Lt. Dax finds evidence that the recording is a fabrication. When Odo offers to produce this evidence, the judge refuses to accept it.

The senior officers, working under the assumption that the Maquis stole the warheads, identify Raymond Boone as the person Chief O'Brien spoke to prior to departing the station. A shadowy figure tells Dr. Bashir that Boone is not a Maquis agent and that the Maquis had nothing to do with the warheads. The crew finds evidence that Boone exhibited a major personality change about eight years ago. When Bashir examines him, he finds that the man is not the real Boone but a Cardassian surgically altered to look like him; they theorize that he was sent to fabricate evidence that Starfleet is aiding the Maquis. With little time left before the end of the ceremonial trial, Sisko arrives in the courtroom with "Boone". The judge sees that the game is up, and releases O'Brien, who is finally able to leave for his vacation.

The story takes place in the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s. During the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in May 1935, the entire British Royal Family is killed in a freak accident after the explosion of a large dirigible (similar to the ''Hindenburg'' disaster), and the search is on to find a surviving heir of British blood. After an extensive search, the choice falls on Jack Green, a 24-year-old stage actor who, unbeknownst to him, is the grandson of the philandering Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, George V's elder brother, and the nearest living heir. He is virtually kidnapped and brought to Buckingham Palace, where he is placed in the care of William Millingham (known as Willie) who is to be his Private Secretary. Millingham assists the new king during a period of adjustment to his new status. He is duly installed as King John II.

After the new king refuses to marry any of several potential queens offered to him, and also makes a speech drawing attention to the problem of unemployment, which is considered highly radical by "The Powers That Be," a plot is discovered to discredit him. At the same time, the King begins to chafe at the rigid, ceremonial routine of royal life and the limitations inevitably placed upon his freedom. He also misses his girlfriend Kathy, who is deeply uncomfortable with him in his new role.

The king decides to try to do some good from the throne. After trying to assert his new-found authority, conservatives led by Cabinet Secretary Sir Godwin Rodd (known as "Sir God"), "suggest" that he abdicate. It is then revealed to him that "Willie" is also a direct descendant of British Royalty, but that he refused the position, deferring to Green. After much soul-searching, Jack decides to abdicate, leaving Willie to take the throne as King William V. Jack leaves the palace, his reign of just over 200 days at an end, to be happily reunited with his girlfriend Kathy and go into seclusion in Mexico. Later, he returns to England and writes his memoirs - this book.

The movie is the one-day story of a famous writer, touched with paralysis, whose faith cannot help him overcome his frustrations, and mostly the jealousy aroused by a woman too young and beautiful to be his wife.

The book begins with the Baudelaire orphans and Count Olaf on a boat heading away from the burning Hotel Denouement. After a storm, the Baudelaires arrive and are welcomed on an island by a young girl named Friday. Count Olaf, however, is not welcomed due to his snobby attitude and death threat to Friday.

Later, the pregnant Kit Snicket (who first appeared in "The Penultimate Peril") and a friendly snake known as the "incredibly deadly viper (a misnomer)" (which first appeared in ''The Reptile Room'') are shipwrecked on the island. Count Olaf disguises himself as Kit, but for the first time in the series, Olaf's disguise fools nobody, and the Islanders, led by a man called Ishmael (who, multiple times, says that 'he won't force them' to do what he wants), capture him and shun the Baudelaires for possessing forbidden items.

That night, two of the islanders sneak out to feed the children, asking them to join a mutiny. Agreeing, the Baudelaires go to the arboretum to collect weapons, where they discover a hidden room with a book that chronicles the history of the island. Ishmael arrives, explaining to the children that their parents were once the island's leaders and were responsible for many improvements in island life, but were eventually overthrown by Ishmael, who brought the island back to a simple and austere way of life while hoarding comforts for himself.

The Baudelaires and Ishmael go back to the other side of the island, where the mutiny is already underway. Ishmael harpoons Olaf in the stomach, inadvertently shattering the helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium, a deadly fungus, infecting the island's entire population. The Baudelaires run back to the arboretum to find horseradish, a cure for the fungus. While reading through the book left by their parents to find where the horseradish is hidden, the three continue to be affected by the fungus and, after some deliberation, accept their deaths. They eventually find that the cure is in the hybridized apples on a tree in the arboretum. They gather apples for the other islanders, only to discover that the island people have abandoned the mutiny and boarded their outrigger canoe, preparing to leave the island. Ishmael promises that he will save the islanders by sailing to a horseradish factory, but refuses to give them the apples, despite having already consumed one himself. The Baudelaires manage to toss an apple to Friday before the canoe departs.

At this point, Kit is about to go into labor. Though she is succumbing to the fungus, she cannot eat the bitter apple due to its unhealthy effects on unborn babies. When the dying Olaf hears that she is still alive, he uses his last effort to get her safely down onto the beach, where he kisses Kit and dies soon after.

The Baudelaires help Kit give birth to a baby girl. Kit then dies after requesting that the orphans name the baby after their mother Beatrice. The Baudelaires spend the next year taking care of Kit's daughter, occasionally visiting the graves of Kit and Olaf.

After reading an entry from the history book written by their parents, the Baudelaires decide to leave the island with Beatrice in order to honor their parents' wishes. Despite their fears about the outside world, the children prepare a boat and supplies for their journey back to the mainland and Beatrice says her first word, which is "Beatrice".

The Federation starship ''Enterprise'', commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), is set to take aboard Riva (Howie Seago), a renowned and successful negotiator, to help resolve a centuries-old war between two tribes on planet Solais V. Riva is Deaf due to a hereditary lack of the gene for hearing in the royal family, using sign language and lipreading, but travels with a "chorus" (Marnie Mosiman, Thomas Oglesby, and Leo Damian), an entourage of three people in telepathic communication with him, who are able to enunciate his thoughts. Riva dismisses the ''Enterprise'' crew's briefing on the history of the conflict, explaining that the dispute has long since become personal, regardless of whatever tangible concerns that may have started it. When Riva, his chorus, and several ''Enterprise'' officers beam down for the meeting, one tribal delegate fires upon them, killing the chorus. The tribe's leader immediately brands him a traitor and executes him, begging for the talks to continue, but the away team has already begun emergency transport back to the ''Enterprise'' amid the chaos.

Riva, frustrated and agitated, struggles to communicate with the crew, so Picard orders Commander Data (Brent Spiner) to find and learn Riva's sign language in order to act as a translator. Picard offers to take Riva's place at the mediation, but Riva believes the Solaian tribes will only cooperate with him. Riva is prepared to abandon the peace process and return to his home planet, accepting his failure, but Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) inspires him to stay, suggesting that he turn his disadvantage into an advantage, recalling Riva's own negotiating tactic.

Riva returns to the meeting spot on the planet, and to the crew's surprise, tells them that they should leave, and he will signal Starfleet when the negotiations are complete, as they may take several months. In order for the tribes to work with Riva, they will both be forced to learn sign language from Riva, which will create a shared experience between them. Thus, Riva is turning his disadvantage of being unable to communicate into an advantage. The crew leaves Riva to await the tribe representatives.

The Federation starship ''Enterprise'', under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is en route to provide medical care for the reclusive but respected scientist Dr. Ira Graves, who lives with only his assistant, Kareen Brianon, on a remote planet. When the crew receives an emergency distress call from a nearby transport ship, Captain Picard elects to send an away team composed of Data, Counselor Troi, Lt. Worf, and Dr. Selar to see to Dr. Graves while Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pulaski stays aboard the Enterprise, which leaves to attend to the transport.

The away team finds that the request for medical assistance was made by Kareen without Graves' knowledge, and though resentful, he allows Selar to examine him. Selar determines that Graves has Darnay's disease, an incurable terminal disease and has only three weeks to live, so the team begins to collect Graves' research and records to preserve them after his death. Graves recognizes Data as Noonien Soong's creation, and claims he taught Soong everything he knew, which he asserts that if Soong is considered Data's "father" would make Graves his "grandfather". Graves and Data begin to spend significant time alone together, during which Graves reveals that he has developed a method to transfer his consciousness to a computer, allowing him to live indefinitely. Data in turn reveals that he has a shut-off switch, which he says could be used to precipitate his own version of death.

Later, Data reports to the away team that Graves has died. The ''Enterprise'' returns and retrieves the away team along with Kareen and Graves' body, and Graves is given a funeral ceremony. Data delivers a grandiose glowing eulogy, surprising the crew. When he later whistles "If I Only Had a Heart", echoing a habit of Graves' (who had told Data he resembled the Tin Woodman), when entering a turbolift, Picard decides that his uncharacteristic behavior warrants an examination. Although no physical anomalies are detected, Troi's psychotronic stability tests suggest there are two personalities within Data, his original one, and one that is foreign and dominant, and threatens to replace Data's original personality entirely. Picard realizes that Graves has transferred his mind into Data; meanwhile, Graves, in Data, reveals the truth to Kareen, and while passionately proposing that she do the same so they can spend eternity together, accidentally breaks two bones in her hand due to Data's superhuman strength. Picard tries to persuade Graves to give up Data's body voluntarily, noting the harm he is causing to those he loves. Graves knocks the captain unconscious. When Picard awakens, he and a security team find Data in his quarters. Data is back to his old self, and Kareen finds that Graves has transferred himself out of Data and into the Enterprise's computer, but only his knowledge, not his consciousness — the "human" part of Dr. Graves has been lost.

The game starts out with an evil demon ruling over the world and its inhabitants, who live in fear of it. However, a man named Victar, who comes from a small village, has a sword that can destroy the demon. The blade had previously been split up into pieces, though, and Victar must travel through three worlds to get back the three broken pieces in order to restore the sword to defeat the demon.

Mike is obsessed with his new six-wheel drive car and happily insists on showing it off to Sulley, who is confused about what happened to his old car, but Mike likes his new car. Unfortunately for Mike, anything that can go wrong does go wrong. Sulley plays with the adjustable power seat until an annoyed Mike snaps at him to stop. Mike starts the engine and hears the seatbelt reminder tone sound chiming.

Although Sulley manages to get his seatbelt on easily, Mike finds his seatbelt stuck and accidentally locks himself out of the car while falling out in an attempt to unstick it. Mike instructs Sulley to push a button so he can get back in. Sulley, confused by the massive amount of buttons on the dashboard, pushes the one that opens the hood. When Mike goes over to close it, he is unable to reach it. Sulley helps him close the hood but accidentally closes it on Mike's fingers causing him to scream in pain. Sulley helps Mike get free only to trap him in the engine compartment completely.

Mike calls Sulley on his cell phone and instructs him to open the hood again. When he does this, Mike manages to escape. When he reenters the car, he is annoyed by the continuous seatbelt reminder tone still chiming. Mike manages to put his seat-belt on, but the windshield wipers randomly turn on, annoying him even more. As Sulley tries to help, Mike tells him not to touch anything and decides to do it himself. Mike pushes a button that launches the entire car into chaotic malfunction, including conga music playing loudly on the car's stereo system. Jerry Slugworth appears looking at the car and then running away.

However, Mike finally ends the chaos by pulling the key out of the ignition, and Sulley adds insult to injury by accidentally breaking the rearview mirror in an attempt to realign it. Now at his wit's end, Mike forces Sulley out of the car and speeds away, resulting in the car's destruction. Sulley says: "Huh, that's weird. The airbag didn't go off." Right after he finishes saying this, the airbag immediately inflates and its force sends Mike flying back up the street. Sulley catches Mike, who confesses to him that Mike says: "I miss my old car." Following this, Mike reminisces about his old car before agreeing to walk to work as the end credits are displayed.

An American pulp novelist, Mark Kendrick (Nicol), meets his rich neighbours across the lake and is soon seduced by beautiful blonde Carol (Brooke), the wife of Beverly Forrest (James), despite Beverly treating him as a friend. When Beverly is badly injured by a fall on his boat, Carol fails to persuade Mark to throw him overboard, so Carol does it.

After first refusing to go along with her plan to call it an accident, Mark agrees when Carol tells him that they will meet up again later and live off her dead husband's money. However, after the coroner rules the death an accident, Mark does not hear from her, but the still suspicious CID inspector on the case arranges for Mark to find out that Carol has secretly married another old flame and changed residences. Mark angrily confronts her, but she sneers that she only used him and that there is nothing he can do about it without implicating himself. Mark decides to confess, thinking that, although it will probably mean a prison sentence for him, it will mean the rope for Carol.

A Scotsman, Gerald MacTeam (Richard Carlson), abruptly breaks off his engagement to pretty Kitty (Veronica Hurst) after receiving word of his uncle's death. He inherits a mysterious castle in the Scottish highlands and moves there to live with the castle servants. Kitty refuses to accept the broken engagement and travels there with her aunt (Katherine Emery). When they arrive, they discover Gerald has suddenly aged and his manner has changed significantly.

After a series of mysterious events in the castle and its hedge maze, they invite a group of friends there, including a doctor, hoping they can help Gerald with whatever ails him. Although the friends are equally concerned by Gerald's behavior, they are at a loss as to its cause. One night, Kitty and her aunt steal a key to their bedroom door (which is always locked from the outside) and sneak out into the mysterious maze. There they find Gerald and his servants tending to a frog-like monster. The monster panics upon seeing the strangers and runs back to the castle, hurling itself from a top-story balcony to its death.

Gerald explains that the amphibious creature was the actual master of the castle, Sir Roger MacTeam, and that he and his ancestors were merely its servants. The death of Sir Roger releases Gerald from his obligation and he can return to a normal life.

''Pikachu's Vacation''

The Pokémon of Ash Ketchum, Misty, and Brock are sent to spend a day at a theme park built for Pokémon. Pikachu, Togepi, Psyduck, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle cross paths with a group of bullies consisting of a Raichu, Cubone, Marill, and Snubbull. The two groups compete against each other, but it leads to Ash's Charizard getting its head stuck in a pipe. Pikachu, his friends, and the bullies work together and successfully free Charizard and rebuild the park, spending the rest of the day playing before parting ways when their trainers return.

''Mewtwo Strikes Back''

Scientist Dr. Fuji is hired by Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket, to utilize his expertise in cloning in order to create a living weapon based on an eyelash from mythical Pokémon Mew. Fuji is revealed to be allying with Giovanni as a means to fund his side project: the resurrection of his deceased daughter Amber. In a laboratory, the weapon eventually gains sentience and is named Mewtwo. Mewtwo befriends the salvaged consciousness of Amber, named Ambertwo, as well as the clones of other Pokémon in the laboratory. However, Mewtwo is left deeply traumatized after Ambertwo and the rest of the clones decompose and die. In order to stabilize him, Fuji tranquilizes Mewtwo, causing him to forget the time he spent with his friends.

After Mewtwo fully matures and awakens from a long slumber in a laboratory on New Island, he learns of his origin as Mew's clone from Dr. Fuji. Infuriated that Fuji and his colleagues see him as nothing more than an experiment, he unleashes his incredibly strong psychic abilities and telekinetically destroys the laboratory, killing Fuji and the rest of the scientists. Giovanni, witnessing the carnage afar, approaches and convinces Mewtwo to work with him to further develop and perfect his mental abilities. However, after Mewtwo learns of his purpose to be a weapon for Giovanni's benefit, he escapes back to New Island where he plots revenge against humanity and Pokémon alike.

After Mewtwo rebuilds the laboratory and establishes a base there, he invites several trainers with hologram messages to battle the world's greatest Pokémon trainer at New Island. Ash, Misty, and Brock receive a message and accept the invitation, but when they arrive at the port city, Old Shore Wharf, Mewtwo creates a storm, causing the boats on the wharf to be closed off for safety. As a result, Ash's group are picked up by Team Rocket disguised as Vikings on a boat. After the storm sinks their vessel in the middle of the ocean, Ash and his friends use their Pokémon instead to reach New Island.

Escorted into the island's palace by the woman who appeared on the hologram, Ash and the other trainers who were able to reach the island encounter Mewtwo. The woman is revealed to be a brainwashed Nurse Joy after she is released from Mewtwo's mind control. Mewtwo challenges the trainers using cloned Pokémon coincidentally modeled after the deceased friends from his childhood. Meanwhile, Team Rocket also reach New Island and explore its inner sanctum with a Mew innocuously following them. After Mewtwo's clones effortlessly defeat the challengers' Pokémon, he confiscates them and expands his clone army. Ash chases after his captured Pikachu down the cloning lab, where Team Rocket's Meowth is also cloned. Ash destroys the cloning machine, frees the captured Pokémon, and leads them to confront Mewtwo and his clones. Mew then reveals itself and Mewtwo challenges it in order to prove his superiority.

All of the Pokémon originals battle their clones save for a defiant Pikachu and Meowth, who makes peace with his own clone after realizing the senselessness of their fighting. Horrified at the pain and anguish felt on both sides of the battle, Ash puts himself in between a psychic blast caused by Mewtwo and Mew's fighting, leading to Ash to become petrified. Pikachu tries to revive Ash with his electricity but fails. However, the tears of the Pokémon are able to heal and revive Ash. Moved by Ash's sacrifice, Mewtwo realizes that he should not have to be judged by his origins but rather his choices in life. Departing with Mew and the clones, Mewtwo turns back time to just before the trainers leave Old Shore Wharf, and erases everyone's memories of the event.

Back in Old Shore Wharf, the now-restored Nurse Joy has returned to reopen the Pokémon Center to shelter the trainers. The storm outside clears up, Ash spotting Mew flying through the clouds and tells his friends of how he saw another legendary Pokémon the day he left Pallet Town. Meanwhile, Team Rocket find themselves stranded on New Island, unable to remember how they got there, but enjoy their time nonetheless.

After the credits, a brief scene shows Mew flying towards the mountains.

Twin sisters, Shane (Mary-Kate Olsen) and Elizabeth Dalton (Ashley Olsen), live separately from one another on opposite ends of the country after their parents divorced years earlier. Shane, who lives with their mom in Los Angeles, is a chilled out, tree-hugging vegetarian who is very into nature and spiritual beliefs, while her estranged sister Lizzie, who lives with their dad in Washington, D.C. is a level-headed grade A student with a driven personality. However, unknown to each other, they both apply to be contestants on a reality game show filmed in Mexico called ''The Challenge'', which tests contestants strength and survival skills in various challenges as they work as part of a team in order to win college scholarships.

Marcus, (Brian Skala), the head intern at "The Challenge", informs the show's producer, Max (Joe Michael Burke), of their distant relationship. Knowing they dislike each other, Marcus puts both girls on the same team, Team Mayan, as part of a scheme to boost the show's ratings. Backstage, Shane meets and becomes close to Adam (Lukas Behnken), a laid-back jock who is put on the opposite team, Team Aztec. Team Aztec also includes Kelly (Sarah Bastian), an overly-competitive swimmer, JJ (Diana Carreno), a ditzy "triple threat" with dreams of stardom, and Charles (Ty Hodges), a calm and intuitive city boy who plans to study psychotherapy. Along with Shane and Lizzie, Team Mayan also includes Anthony (Theo Rossi), an Italian-American food enthusiast, and Justin (Zakk Moore), a surfer and skater from sunny Florida. At their first meeting, Max informs the group of the rules, which include a prohibition on romantic entanglements between contestants, as it can result in disqualification from a challenge.

During the first challenge, Shane and Lizzie's bickering prevents them from working together, and Team Aztec wins the points. When Anthony and Justin make them realize that they'll need to pull together, they start putting aside their differences for the sake of the team. Over the first few days, Shane and Adam become more and more close, and Kelly suspects something is going on. At the same time, Lizzie starts hanging out behind the scenes with Marcus, although he is still being asked by Max to spy on the girls. Marcus finds out that Shane hates heights and that Lizzie is afraid of snakes, information which Max plans to use later on. Team Mayan win the fourth and fifth challenges, making the score 3-2 to Team Aztec, and Shane and Lizzie both start to respect what the other knows.

One night, the girls sneak out to meet Marcus and Adam; but they're followed by Max who fails to get video footage of their meeting. However, Kelly manages to take a picture of Adam and Shane kissing and shows it to Max. He disqualifies both of them from the next round, which Team Mayan eventually win, tying the score of the teams involved in "The Challenge". Team Mayan is given a boat party as reward for their victory, which Team Aztec have to cater for in costume. At the party, Marcus tells Lizzie that he's been behind Max's troublemaking, and she dumps him. Later on, Shane and Lizzie manage to patch things up with each other for good after realizing that they're not all that different from each other.

The final challenge will decide the winners of "The Challenge". It is an assault course featuring various challenges including walking harnessed on a bridge high over a canyon (incorporating knowledge about Shane's established fear) and then walking on narrow planks over a pit of snakes (reflecting Max's knowledge of Lizzie's fear). The girls help each other out and Team Mayan reaches the totem before the others, making them the winners. All of the contestants receive college scholarships. With the experience coming to a close, Kelly apologizes for the mistakes, Lizzie makes up with Marcus, and then the girls retaliate against Max by tipping slime on him while taking a picture.

''The Challenge'' was Mary-Kate and Ashley's last direct to video production, so in a short scene at the end of the movie, some of the twins' boyfriends from past movies and TV-shows show up and begin arguing over who the girls loved more. This leads to the girls leaving together while saying, "Boys may come and go, but we'll always have each other—and that's ''not'' just in the movies."

Lois has booked Cheesie Charlie's for Stewie's upcoming first birthday party and sends Peter, along with Chris, to drop off the deposit check at the restaurant. However, once they arrive, they seek the opportunity to play with all the machines, causing Peter to lose his watch in a claw machine. A little boy wins his watch, which causes Peter to become angry and tries to force the watch off the child. Five minutes later, the manager sees this and asks Peter to leave. But once Peter shows the deposit check, he immediately apologizes and exclaims how they are very excited to host Stewie's birthday party. Peter, angered by how he was treated, states that they will not be celebrating Stewie's party there, which causes a crowd of people to circle around the manager shouting for the reservation. Peter, realizing what he has just done, immediately returns home with a poorly crafted lie in an attempt to evade Lois' aggravation which involves him saying that they are Nazis who torture, kill and kidnap people. He pretends that he is already planned an extravagant party at home so that Lois does not have do any work.

Meanwhile, Stewie misinterprets the meaning of his birthday and assumes that the same mysterious "Man in White" who delivered him as an infant will be returning to force Stewie back into Lois' womb from which he escaped just one year ago. Meg cries all the way home to Peter from cheerleading practice, and has been having trouble fitting in at school. Later, she discovers a new friend named Jennifer. Meanwhile, Stewie makes it all the way to the airport looking for tickets but then is stopped by a member of staff. The man then gives Stewie some advice saying that running from your problems never solves anything. Stewie then reflects on this, deciding to finally face "The Man in White". But before he leaves, he wishes the man luck before freezing him in carbonite. Peter tries desperately, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to put together a party in time for Stewie's birthday. He finally reroutes a circus into the Griffins' backyard, saving the day - that is, until he reveals to Lois that he gave Meg permission to go to a party at her friend's house. Lois, who wanted the whole family together for Stewie's party, is upset with Peter for letting Meg go. What Peter and Lois do not realize is that Meg's "party" is actually a cult meeting where all the members are about to commit group suicide.

Peter goes to retrieve Meg from her "party" and asks Meg to come as Lois wants her there. Meg just says it is just a birthday party and asks who would remember if she was not there. Peter says that Lois would as she remembers everything and that her best memories are of when Meg and her brothers were born. He then has an epiphany: having the entire family at the party is more for Lois than Stewie. Realizing how terrible she has been, Meg agrees to come home and the cult members agree as well. Peter makes a toast, then looks at his watch before he can drink the poisoned punch and pulls Meg out before she can drink hers, oblivious to the fact that he is saving her life in the process while the cult members all die. The cult leader chases after them while wearing his ceremonial white robe and is mistaken by Stewie as "The Man in White." Stewie does away with him and, feeling victorious, joins the others to enjoy his party.

The film begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. In an effort to escape the law, two small-time thieves, Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman), hide among the crowds of female workers heading to the rice paddies in the Province of Vercelli in the upper reaches of Piedmont in the Po Valley. While attempting to board the train for the fields, the pair runs into Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a peasant rice worker. Francesca boards the train with Silvana, who introduces her to the planters' way of life. Francesca does not have a work permit, and struggles with the other "illegals" to find a place on the rice fields. After initial resistance from documented workers and bosses, the illegals are allowed a place in the fields. At work in the fields, Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvana's interest.

Toward the end of the working season, Walter arrives at the rice farm and becomes involved in a plot to steal a large quantity of rice. Excited by his criminal lifestyle, Silvana becomes attracted to Walter. She causes a diversion to help him carry out the heist, but Francesca and Marco manage to stop Walter and his accomplices. Francesca and Silvana face each other, armed with hand-guns. Francesca confronts Silvana and explains that she has been heartlessly manipulated by Walter. In response, Silvana turns her gun on Walter and kills him. Soon afterwards, her guilt leads her to commit suicide. As the other rice workers depart, they pay tribute to her by sprinkling rice upon her body.

''Voyager'' is suddenly rocked by a distant explosion. Although ship systems appear undamaged, all information and control screens are suddenly locked and display an ominous omega symbol. Captain Janeway arrives on the bridge and instructs the crew not to worry. She orders the ship's computer to override the lockout and transfer all sensor data to her ready room, but leaves without explaining to her bemused crew what happened. After locking herself in her office she asks the computer to brief her on the detection of an object referred to as “Omega.” Janeway also summons Seven of Nine, an ex-Borg member of the crew, to her ready room, as the Borg have their own knowledge of “Omega.”

Because ''Voyager'' has been separated from Starfleet, the Omega Team (a specially trained group which would normally be tasked with handling situations involving "Omega") cannot be brought in to deal with the problem. Janeway decides to break the code of silence involving the symbol and share information with her senior officers. She announces that a molecule hazardous to relativistic space travel, the Omega Particle, has been detected and she intends to follow the “Omega Directive,” an order that requires Starfleet captains to destroy Omega at all costs—even the Prime Directive is null and void under such circumstances. As Janeway explains, Omega is unstable and even the explosion of one particle out in space can nullify subspace for many light years around it, rendering faster-than-light travel impossible within that area.

Moving to the coordinates of the explosion they encounter the planet and its resident alien race that created it. The society is on the brink of economic failure and is making Omega particles to “give their children a chance at a future.” Seven of Nine displays an interest in the scientists' methods, however, hoping to save the Omega particles and harness them because she believes them to be perfection—infinite parts working together as one (like the Borg)—despite ample Starfleet and Borg evidence of their incredible danger: The Borg, referring to the Omega particle as “Particle 010,” are expected to assimilate it at all costs, even though they have experienced the loss of a large quantity of Borg vessels to Omega particle explosions while trying to harness the power of the substance. Seven notes, furthermore, that the ability to harness Omega would make the Borg a nigh-unstoppable force; this remark only strengthens the urgency and motivates Janeway to wipe out all Omega particles, at any cost, as determined by the Omega Directive.

Eventually and through a series of issues and difficulties, all the particles are safely gathered together and detonated a safe distance from the alien planet. Just before they are destroyed, they inexplicably stabilize, and Seven is able to view perfection for 3.2 seconds, “an eternity worth.”

Annabeth Chase is a criminal prosecutor with a near perfect conviction record. Throughout the series, she lost only three cases. In Season 1, Episode 21 "David and Goliath", Chase tried a case against a professional baseball player, who killed his pregnant girlfriend. His not guilty verdict was attributed to his fame. Chase lost the case of a man prosecuted for a rape he committed 11 years prior, in Season 2, Episode 18, "Making Amends." In this case the victim was unable to recall the assault, as she unknowingly ingested Rohypnol, known as "The Date Rape Drug", which causes amnesia. In Season 2, Episode 21, "Drink the Cup", Chase was unable to convict a corrupt cop named Veeder of the murder of a fellow police officer. In the following episode she successfully tried Veeder for the murder of a young girl he exploited.

She is married to a construction worker, Jack Chase (Christian Kane), and has an infant daughter, Hailey Chase. The show revolves around her balancing her career and family life, as a prosecutor in the city of Indianapolis.

First season

In the pilot episode, Chase returns from a 12-week maternity leave to find herself with a new boss, Maureen Scofield (Kimberly Elise), who has been promoted instead of her. Maureen is a no-nonsense, workaholic woman who admires Chase's dedication to her family and her personal life. Above her is County Prosecutor Steve Sharpe (John Carroll Lynch). Chase wins the first case she prosecutes upon her return to work: an abusive husband who is sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole.

Second season

Annabeth returns to work four months after her husband was killed by a drunk driver in the first-season finale. Annabeth's coming to terms with her husband's death, her grief, and her struggle to return to normalcy, coupled with the guilt and trials of being a single parent, are recurring themes throughout the season.

Annabeth and Maureen also face a new boss, Chief Deputy Prosecutor James Conlon (David James Elliott), who has just arrived from New York, and whose methods appear to the two prosecutors to be too forceful and sometimes unethical.

Near the end of the season, Conlon attempts an attorney general campaign which is derailed as police corruption is discovered, resulting in several prosecutions. Scofield is assassinated as a result of these prosecutions. The season (and series) ends with Chase successfully prosecuting Scofield's assassin.

Sir James Bond 007, a legendary British spy who retired from the secret service 20 years previously, is visited by the head of British MI6, M; CIA representative Ransome; KGB representative Smernov; and Deuxième Bureau representative Le Grand. All implore Bond to come out of retirement to deal with SMERSH, who have been eliminating agents; Bond spurns all their pleas. When Bond continues to stand firm, his mansion is destroyed by a mortar attack at the orders of M (who is, however, killed in the explosion).

Bond travels to Scotland to return M's remains to his grieving widow, Lady Fiona McTarry. However, the real Lady Fiona has been replaced by SMERSH's Agent Mimi. The rest of the household have been likewise replaced, with SMERSH's aim to discredit Bond by destroying his "celibate image". Attempts by a bevy of beauties to seduce Bond fail, but Mimi/Lady Fiona becomes so impressed with Bond that she changes loyalties and helps Bond to foil the plot against him. On his way back to London, Bond survives another attempt on his life.

Bond is promoted to the head of MI6. He learns that many British agents around the world have been eliminated by enemy spies because of their inability to resist sex. Bond is also told that the "sex maniac" who was given the name of "James Bond" when the original Bond retired has gone to work in television. He then orders that all remaining MI6 agents will be named "James Bond 007", to confuse SMERSH. He also creates a rigorous programme to train male agents to ignore the charms of women. Moneypenny recruits Coop, a karate expert who begins training to resist seductive women: he also meets an exotic agent known as the Detainer.

Bond then hires Vesper Lynd, a retired agent turned millionaire, to recruit baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble, whom he intends to use to beat SMERSH agent Le Chiffre. Having embezzled SMERSH's money, Le Chiffre is desperate for money to cover up his theft before he is executed.

Following up a clue from agent Mimi, Bond persuades his estranged daughter Mata Bond to travel to West Berlin to infiltrate International Mothers' Help, an au pair service that is a cover for a SMERSH training center. Mata uncovers a plan to sell compromising photographs of military leaders from the US, USSR, China and Great Britain at an "art auction", another scheme Le Chiffre hopes to use to raise money. Mata destroys the photos. Le Chiffre's only remaining option is to raise the money by playing baccarat.

Tremble arrives at the Casino Royale accompanied by Lynd, who foils an attempt to disable him by seductive SMERSH agent Miss Goodthighs. Later that night, Tremble observes Le Chiffre playing at the casino and realises that he is using infrared sunglasses to cheat. Lynd steals the sunglasses, allowing Evelyn to eventually beat Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat. Lynd is apparently abducted outside the casino, and Tremble is also kidnapped while pursuing her. Le Chiffre, desperate for the winning cheque, hallucinogenically tortures Tremble. Lynd rescues Tremble, only to subsequently kill him. Meanwhile, SMERSH agents raid Le Chiffre's base and kill him.

In London, Mata is kidnapped by SMERSH in a giant flying saucer, and Sir James and Moneypenny travel to Casino Royale to rescue her. They discover that the casino is located atop a giant underground headquarters run by the evil Dr. Noah, secretly Sir James's nephew Jimmy Bond, a former MI6 agent who defected to SMERSH to spite his famous uncle. Jimmy reveals that he plans to use biological warfare to make all women beautiful and kill all men over tall, leaving him as the "big man" who gets all the girls. Jimmy has already captured The Detainer, and he tries to persuade her to be his partner; she agrees, but only to dupe him into swallowing one of his atomic time pills, turning him into a walking atomic bomb.

Sir James, Moneypenny, Mata and Coop manage to escape from their cell and fight their way back to the casino director's office where Sir James establishes Lynd is a double agent. The casino is then overrun by secret agents and a battle ensues. American and French support arrive, but just add to the chaos. Jimmy counts down a series of hiccups, each bringing him closer to doom. Eventually the atomic pill explodes, destroying Casino Royale with everyone inside. Sir James and all of his agents then appear in heaven, and Jimmy Bond is shown descending to hell.

Picard and Data leave the ''Enterprise'' in a shuttlecraft to retrieve a photon torpedo that has veered off course during a weapons exercise. Before departing, Data leaves his pregnant cat, Spot, with Lieutenant Barclay. Convinced that he is suffering from a devastating illness, the hypochondriac Barclay visits Dr. Crusher, who diagnoses a mild case of the flu and injects him with a synthetic T-cell to activate one of his dormant genes that confers immunity. Shortly afterward, crew members begin to experience strange symptoms; Counselor Troi feels cold and develops an uncontrollable thirst, while Riker has trouble concentrating and Barclay becomes fidgety and overly energetic.Okuda, p. 33-34. Worf feels hot and becomes aggressive, trying to stay near Troi and eventually biting her on the cheek. Both are taken to sickbay for treatment; when Crusher examines Worf and finds a venom sac growing on his neck, he spits acidic poison in her face. A severely injured Crusher is placed in stasis, while Worf escapes. Nurse Ogawa warns the senior staff that everyone on the ship is in danger.

Picard and Data return after three days, having retrieved the wayward torpedo, but find the ship adrift and its main power offline. One of the bridge officers is dead, torn open in his seat, and most of the crew are de-evolving. Worf has reverted into an aggressive predator attempting to mate with Troi; Riker an Australopithecine (Caveman); Troi an amphibian; and Barclay a spider. Data discovers that a synthetic T-cell has invaded the crew members' genetic code and activated their introns at random, causing them to de-evolve. Picard is soon overcome by irrational emotions of fear and anxiety, indicating that he has been infected, and Data suggests he might soon become a primate similar to a lemur or marmoset. Picard and Data return to Data's quarters and find Spot and her kittens. Spot herself has changed into an iguana; however, the kittens are normal. Data recommends that they locate Ogawa, who is also pregnant, on the theory that antibodies in amniotic fluid can prevent the infection from spreading.

The two find Ogawa and bring her and Troi to sickbay so Data can begin working on a cure. As Worf attempts to break through the doors in search of Troi, Data formulates a pheromone spray from her gland secretions. Picard slips out and uses the spray to lure Worf away for Data's safety. Worf corners Picard in a Jefferies tube, but Picard rips out a power cable and uses it to shock Worf into unconsciousness. Data formulates an effective retrovirus and releases it into the ship's ventilation system, causing everyone to return to normal.

Crusher discovers that due to an anomaly in Barclay's genes, the T-cells in the injection she gave him mutated, activating all of his dormant genes and becoming transmissible from one person to another. She decides to name the condition "Barclay's protomorphosis syndrome" after its first confirmed patient.

M, the Head of the British Secret Service, assigns James Bond, 007, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond's cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S (Soviet Union). The CIA and the French Deuxième Bureau also send agents as observers. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre wins the first round, cleaning Bond out of his funds. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, the CIA agent, Felix Leiter, gives him an envelope of money and a note: "Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA." The game continues, despite the attempts of one of Le Chiffre's minders to kill Bond. Bond eventually wins, taking from Le Chiffre eighty million francs belonging to SMERSH.

Desperate to recover the money, Le Chiffre kidnaps Lynd and tortures Bond, threatening to kill them both if he does not get the money back. During the torture, a SMERSH assassin enters and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for losing the money. The agent does not kill Bond, saying that he has no orders to do so, but cuts a Cyrillic 'Ш' for ''шпион'' (''shpión'', Russian for spy) into Bond's hand so that future SMERSH agents will be able to identify him as such.

Lynd visits Bond every day as he recuperates in hospital, and he gradually realises that he loves her; he even contemplates leaving the Secret Service to settle down with her. When he is released from hospital they spend time together at a quiet guest house and eventually become lovers. One day they see a mysterious man named Gettler tracking their movements, which greatly distresses Lynd. The following morning, Bond finds that she has committed suicide. She leaves behind a note explaining that she had been working as an unwilling double agent for the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. SMERSH had kidnapped her lover, a Polish Royal Air Force pilot, who had revealed information about her under torture; SMERSH then used that information to blackmail her into helping them undermine Bond's mission, including her own faked kidnapping. She had tried to start a new life with Bond, but upon seeing Gettler—a SMERSH agent—she realised that she would never be free of her tormentors, and that staying with Bond would only put him in danger. Bond informs his service of Lynd's duplicity, coldly telling his contact, "The bitch is dead now."

Stewie is in terrible pain from teething and cannot find comfort anywhere. When his mother Lois tells him that his pain will ultimately pass, it gives him the idea to build a machine that will move time forward to the point where his teething will have already stopped. Meanwhile, Lois tells Peter to drive their son Chris to his soccer match, then come right back to look after Stewie. However, Peter's friend Quagmire is there, and has brought beer, so Peter decides to ignore Lois and stay at the game. While there, another member of the crowd insults Chris. Enraged, Peter punches the individual in the face, only to discover that it is a pregnant woman who looks and sounds like a man.

Peter is put under house arrest for assault and soon begins to miss his friends. Peter has a vision of the Pawtucket Patriot, a fictional ale mascot, from his ale can label and on his advice opens a bar in his basement so that his friends can come to visit. The basement bar soon becomes a local hotspot. Lois is upset about this, until she gets a chance to sing on stage before an appreciative crowd. As she savors the spotlight over the next few days, Peter becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the attention she is getting, especially from the male patrons. Peter demands that she quit singing, but she refuses.

After his house arrest term ends, Peter is soon cornered by the neglected wives of his bar's patrons, and invites them to drag their husbands out from his bar. Meanwhile, Stewie’s time machine plans are accidentally discovered by Lois, who shows them around to the bar's patrons. Angered and upset that his plans have been discovered, Stewie runs upstairs. Soon after, the wives storm the bar and Lois tells them that she only wants to feel appreciated and special, something to which all the other women relate. Meanwhile, Quagmire accidentally starts a fire.

Upstairs, Stewie takes drastic measures to protect his plans, programming the machine to go back in time before he drew them up. In the bar, Peter and Lois have a heart-to-heart conversation, and they do not immediately notice that the bar is burning. When they try to escape, the stairs become blocked and they are trapped. Stewie reverses time just as Peter is having an epiphany about how poorly he treats Lois, and seconds before the basement bar goes up in flames. They all travel back in time, to when Lois asked Peter to take Chris to the game. While he is getting ready, Peter trips on Stewie's time machine, destroying it and injuring his leg, thus preventing him from taking Chris to his soccer match, while Stewie is left to suffer with more teething pain.

Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are a husband and wife living in Ohio — far from the surf and sand of their earlier lives together. Frankie is a stressed out car salesman and former "Big Kahuna" of the surf scene in California while Annette bottles her own sense of angst up in a bevy of shopping. Together they are raising a son, Bobby, who is in the throes of rebellion against his seemingly square folks.

One day, the family decides to take a vacation to Hawaii. Deciding to stop in California to visit their daughter Sandi (Lori Loughlin), Frankie and Annette are appalled to learn that she has been living with surfer Michael (Tommy Hinkley). The family misses their flight to Hawaii, and ultimately end up staying in California, much to the chagrin of Frankie. Frankie and Annette get caught up with the lives of their old friends and their old beach, and thus their last beach adventure begins.

Along the way, Frankie must work together with a new generation of younger surfers while nearly ruining his marriage by dallying with Connie Stevens — one of several pop-culture icons appearing in the film, including Fishbone, Don Adams, Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Edd Byrnes, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley, Dick Dale, Stevie Ray Vaughan, O. J. Simpson, and Pee-wee Herman. In the end ''The Big Kahuna'' overcomes his own fears and proves that he is still the king of the surfers, as he takes back his title and saves the beach from a gang of beach punks led by Zed (Joe Holland).

Needing extra money, Chris decides to get a newspaper route, to help pay for a birthday gift for a girl he likes. Among those on his paper route is an old man named Herbert who is sexually attracted to Chris. Chris later gives his crush a present, but his clumsiness and over-eagerness scares her off. Nevertheless, he decides to retain the paper route. Shortly thereafter, however, Chris witnesses a robbery at a convenience store, and his bike ends up being stolen by the burglar as a getaway vehicle (even though he takes the bike but runs on foot). Later, at the police station, Chris identifies the thief from a police lineup. However, Peter shows up and tells the thief (unknowingly) that he is here to pick up Chris who was going to "finger the guy who held up the convenience store" and then proceeds to give the thief a picture of Chris, along with various other personal information. When the thief escapes and swears vengeance on Chris, the family is placed in the Witness Protection Program where they are relocated to Bumblescum, a tiny town in the deep South, to which Meg complains, although Lois remains somewhat optimistic.

Deciding to embrace the South, Peter decorates his car like the General Lee, though he fails to roll the passenger window down for Brian when beckoning him to enter. He then becomes sheriff with Brian as his deputy, although the two neglect their responsibilities in order to drink. Stewie joins a hillbilly jug band, Meg becomes the most successful and popular student among her classmates (besting Oinky the Pig), and Chris makes a new friend named Sam.

Later, when Peter interferes with a Civil War reenactment, claiming the North won the war, despite how they were being portrayed in the play, Sam's dad says Chris and Sam can no longer be friends and Peter and Brian have to answer to the civil war survivors. Not knowing of this, Sam unexpectedly kisses Chris, and Chris assumes Sam is gay. As Chris writes in a journal about what happened with Sam, Brian hears the story (as Chris was speaking out what he wrote), and he explains that kissing Sam seemingly felt right.

When the two meet again, Chris explains to Sam that even though he is flattered that Sam likes him, he is not interested in a romantic relationship and feels that they are probably better off as just friends. Just before the two go swimming, Chris finds out that Sam is a girl, and due to his bad experiences around girls, Chris now feels awkward around Sam. At a party that is held that night, Sam explains to Chris that he had no problem talking to her, when he thought she was a guy, so she tells Chris to think of her as a boy who he can make out with.

After the FBI agents who were hired to look over the Griffins home in Quahog accidentally reveal the location of the family (telling the criminal where ''Meg'' was, but not Chris), the criminal tracks the family down in Bumblescum, and attempts to kill Chris. During the confrontation, however, the criminal is shot and killed by Sam's father.

With the criminal gone, the Griffins return to Quahog with Chris having to leave Sam behind. Once they are home, they realize that someone had left 113 messages on their answering machine, all of which turn out to be from Herbert, who is looking for Chris.

Joanna Eberhart is a young wife and aspiring photographer who moves with her husband Walter and their two daughters from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut. She finds that the women in town all look flawless and are obsessed with housework, but lack intellectual interests. The men all belong to the exclusionary Men's Association, which Walter joins to Joanna's dismay. Joanna is also bewildered by her neighbor Carol Van Sant's sexual submissiveness to her husband Ted, and her odd, repetitive behavior after a car accident.

Joanna subsequently befriends Bobbie Markowe, with whom she finds common interests and shared ideas. Along with trophy wife Charmaine Wimperis, the three organize a women's liberation meeting, but the gathering is a failure when the other wives continually divert the discussion to cleaning products. Joanna is also unimpressed by the boorish Men's Association members, including the intimidating president Dale “Diz” Coba. Stealthily, the Men's Association collects information on Joanna including her picture, her voice, and other personal details. When Charmaine returns from a weekend trip with her husband as a devoted wife who has fired her maid and destroyed her tennis court, Joanna and Bobbie start investigating, with ever-increasing concern, the reason behind the submissive and bland behavior of the other wives. Their fear reaches its pinnacle when they discover that all the women were once strong, assertive, independent, and staunch advocates of liberal social policies. Joanna speculates that industries in or nearby Stepford are contaminating the local water to make the women submissive, which is later disproven.

Bobbie and Joanna start house hunting in other towns. Later, Joanna wins a prestigious contract with a photo gallery and tells Bobbie the good news. Joanna is shocked to find that the former has abruptly become another clean conformist housewife with no intention of moving. She panics and visits a psychiatrist, to whom she voices her belief that the men in the town are in a conspiracy that involves altering the psyches of the women. The psychiatrist recommends that she leave town until she feels safe. After leaving the psychiatrist's office, Joanna returns home to pick up her children only to find out that her children are missing and Walter is evasive about their whereabouts. The two get in a physical scuffle when she refuses her husband’s demands to lie down in her bed. Joanna locks herself in the bedroom, then sneaks out to Bobbie's house after Walter leaves her alone, but grows frustrated when Bobbie refuses to engage with her in a meaningful way. Desperate and disturbed, Joanna stabs Bobbie with a kitchen knife. Bobbie does not bleed, but is revealed to have been replaced by a robot.

Joanna later returns home and bludgeons Walter with a firepoker, demanding to know where their children were taken. He tells Joanna that the kids are at the Men's Association, after which Walter loses consciousness. Despite sensing that she will be the latest victim, Joanna sneaks into the mansion that houses the Men's Association, in hopes of finding her children. However, she is confronted by Coba, the operation’s mastermind. Coba tells Joanna that her children are really with Charmaine. He remotely locks the front door and asks her if she desires a flawless robotic husband, explaining that the men of Stepford replace their wives because they "can". Dale then takes the poker away from her, at which point she screams and flees, eventually coming upon her own unfinished robot replica. Joanna is shocked into near paralysis when she witnesses its black, soulless, empty eyes. The Joanna-replica brandishes a nylon stocking and smilingly approaches Joanna to strangle her as Coba looks on.

Some time later, the artificial Joanna placidly peruses the local supermarket amongst the other glamorously dressed wives. As they make their way through the store, they each vacantly greet one another. Meanwhile, in the same store, a couple argues with each other. During the end credits, photographs show a smiling Walter driving the family car and picking up his new "Stepford Wife" from the supermarket with their children in the backseat.

The story begins with Rynn and her brother Delon caught in a surprise attack by a pack of wartoks, Orc-like creatures serving Navaros. Rynn is injured and left for dead and Delon is kidnapped. She survives, however, and returns to her village to find it burned down by Navaros' minions. A mortally wounded village elder instructs her to seek out the dragon Arokh and resurrect the legendary Order of the Flame, an ancient organization of dragon-riding knights who battled evil and disappeared after it had seemingly been defeated. Rynn finds Arokh in an ancient cave and uses the crystal of Arokh's former rider Heron to awaken him from his statue-like sleep. Reluctantly, Arokh agrees to merge their existences into one through a magical ritual called the Bond. Gameplay-wise, the Bond allows Rynn to mount Arokh and makes them share their hit points so that when one of them is killed, the other dies, too.

Rynn and Arokh journey across the world of Drakan, solving various challenges, and after countless battles, discover that the minions of Navaros plan to use Delon's body as a host for the evil sorcerer's resurrection. Rynn has to fight the possessed Delon and wins but Navaros leaves his body and escapes. The final boss of the game is Navaros' Four-headed dragon Kaeros whom Rynn and Arokh must fight together. The game ends with a cliffhanger, showing Delon falling into the abyss and Rynn and Arokh following him.

A local newspaper, ''The Bulletin'', is under new management, with columnist Ann Mitchell being one of the staffers dismissed to "streamline" the paper, but not before being told to write one final column. Infuriated, Ann prints a letter from a fictional unemployed "John Doe" threatening suicide on Christmas Eve in protest of society's ills. When the letter causes a sensation among readers, and the paper's competition, ''The Chronicle'', suspects a fraud and starts to investigate, editor Henry Connell is persuaded to rehire Ann, who schemes to boost the newspaper's sales by exploiting the fictional John Doe. From a number of derelicts who show up at the paper claiming to have written the original letter, Ann and Henry hire John Willoughby, a former baseball player and tramp in need of money to repair his injured arm, to play the role of John Doe. Ann starts to pen a series of articles in Doe's name, elaborating on the original letter's ideas of society's disregard for people in need.

Willoughby gets $50, a new suit of clothes, and a plush hotel suite with his tramp friend "The Colonel", who launches into an extended diatribe against "the heelots", many heels who incessantly focus on getting money from others. Proposing to take Doe nationwide via the radio, Ann is given $100 a week by the ''Bulletin'''s publisher, D. B. Norton, to write radio speeches for Willoughby. Meanwhile, John is offered a $5,000 bribe from the ''Chronicle'' to admit the whole thing was a publicity stunt, but ultimately turns it down and delivers the speech Ann has written for him instead. Afterward, feeling conflicted, he runs away, riding the rails with the Colonel until they reach Millsville. "John Doe" is recognized at a diner and brought to City Hall, where he's met by Bert Hanson, who explains how he was inspired by Doe's words to start a "John Doe club" with his neighbors.

The John Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a broad grassroots movement whose simple slogan is, "Be a better neighbor". However, Norton secretly plans to channel support for Doe into support for his own national political ambitions. When a John Doe rally is scheduled, with John Doe clubs from throughout the country in attendance, Norton instructs Mitchell to write a speech for Willoughby in which he announces the foundation of a new political party and endorses Norton as its presidential candidate. On the night of the rally, John, who has come to believe in the John Doe philosophy himself, learns of Norton's treachery from a drunken Henry. He denounces Norton and tries to expose the plot at the rally, but his speech is interrupted by hordes of newsboys carrying a special edition of the ''Bulletin'' exposing Doe as a fake. Norton claims Doe had deceived him and the staff of the newspaper, like everyone else, and cuts off the loudspeakers before Doe could defend himself. Despondent at letting his now-angry followers down, John plans to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the City Hall on Christmas Eve, as indicated in the original John Doe letter. Ann, who has fallen in love with John, desperately tries to talk him out of jumping (saying that the first John Doe has already died for the sake of humanity), and Hanson and his neighbours tell him of their plan to restart their John Doe club. Convinced not to kill himself, John leaves, carrying a fainted Ann in his arms, and Henry turns to Norton and says, "There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!"

Annie John, the protagonist of the book, starts out as a young girl who worships her mother. She follows her everywhere, and is shocked and hurt when she learns that she must someday live in a different house from her mother. While her mother tries to teach her to become a lady, Annie is sent to a new school where she must prove herself intellectually and make new friends. She then falls in love with a girl by the name of Gwen. She promises Gwen that she will always love her. However, Annie later finds herself admiring and adoring a girl that she called the "Red Girl". She admires this girl in all aspects of her life. To Annie this girl is the meaning of freedom because she does not have to do any daily hygienic routines like the other girls.

Annie John is then moved to a higher class because of her intelligence. For this reason, Annie is drawn away from her best friend Gwen, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. The book ends with her physically distancing herself away from all that she knows and loves by leaving home for nursing school in England.

The game's story takes place during World War II in an alternate history. Thor's Hammer Organization (THO), is a shadowy organization with connections all over Europe and the goal of world domination. THO knows that this goal cannot be attained while there are powers capable of challenging them, and aims to use its connections and advanced technology to make sure the two sides of World War II devastate each other, while THO makes a grab for power when both are exhausted. The obvious influence of Norse mythology on the organization's name is further shown by the fact that all THO members use a mythological name as their call sign.

In exchange for the services of both Allied and Axis higher-ups, Thor's Hammer provides them with some of their inventions, including Panzerkleins. Panzerkleins are very difficult to destroy, as they are essentially immune to small arms fire.

Setting and themes

The story takes place in a fictional universe where humans live in harmony with gods, resembling humans with slightly pointed ears, and devils (demons in the English dub of the anime), who have more prominently pointed ears. Despite their respective positive and negative connotations, both races are equally kind and good-natured. Ten years prior to the story, the gateway between the worlds of the gods and devils were opened, and since then, people from all races have been immigrating between the worlds. The characters attend the multi-racial high school, in . This is so humans, gods and devils can interact and learn to live together in harmony with mutual understanding rather than hatred, fear and ignorance. Also, due to dimensional tears, whose appearances are never fully explained, some members of each race had been transported to one of the other worlds where they married and had children. This is how some of the students with mixed lineage are able to be older than the gateway to the human world like Mayumi Thyme, whose human parent had fallen into the world of the Devils through one of those tears years before the gateway to the Human world had been opened, or Asa's mother, Ama Shigure, who somehow was transported from the world of the Devils to the Human world.

''Shuffle!'' contains a leitmotif of allusions to flowers. All of the characters' names are references to flowers in some way, mostly genera of flowering plants. <!-- Sorry, the following is not acceptable. If necessary, please rewrite, by just stating facts.

It's true that many "birthday flowers" books are published in Japan, but they're creations by the authors, and not a custom in Japan at all. The list content varies among books. And the cited websites which explain "hanakotoba" are not reliable sources. Read WP:EL for the criteria.

If one, absolute "birthday flower" list is assumed in the story, just write so, and it'll be ok.

Deleted contents:

Additionally, in Japan, every day has a special flower associated with it, which in turn are associated with certain characteristics. This is called ''hanakotoba'', or "language of flowers". All of the characters' birthdays and personalities correspond with the flowers of their respective days. For example, the high school that the series takes place in, National Verbena Academy, refers to the genus ''Verbena'', which has connotations of cooperation.

-->

Main characters

The protagonist and player character of ''Shuffle!'' is Rin Tsuchimi, a normal seventeen-year-old second-year high school student and the male protagonist to the series. Since a young age, he has placed the well-being of others before his own and dislikes seeing people in sorrow. Since he lost his parents in his childhood, he has been living with Kaede Fuyou, a life envied by many of his classmates. One of the heroines of ''Shuffle!'', Kaede believes it her duty in life is to take care of Rin, which she takes upon herself in order to atone for her treatment of him in the past and bears a one-sided love towards Rin. Kaede appears again as the heroine in ''Really? Really!'', a sequel to ''Shuffle!'', that continues from Kaede's ending in ''Shuffle!''. In middle school, the two meet and later befriend Asa Shigure, another heroine of ''Shuffle!'' who is in her third-year of high school. While she has a weak constitution, she makes up for it with her energetic tomboy personality and is an excellent cook. She has a habit of slapping Rin on his back.

At the onset of the story, two girls who Rin had met once during his childhood come to his school as transfer students and began living as his next door neighbours. Lisianthus, a heroine of ''Shuffle!'', is an energetic and enthusiastic person who is able to start a conversation with anyone. She comes to the human world as a possible marriage candidate for Rin and as the daughter of the Lord of Gods, thankful for his kindness to her in the past. Similarly, Nerine, who is also a heroine, is a reserved girl with a beautiful voice and a capable user of magic. She also comes to the human world to be a marriage candidate for Rin as the daughter of the Lord of Devils. Nerine appears again as a heroine in Navel's game, ''Tick! Tack!'', which continues from Nerine's ending. Soon after the two daughters come to his school, Rin meets Primula, a strange, soft-spoken girl who often carries a stuffed cat around.

There are two new storylines that are available in the PlayStation 2 version of the game. Mayumi Thyme is a heterochromia-eyed girl who is half-devil and half-human. She is Rin's classmate and is always searching for news. She takes pride in her smallest bust size, a fact often made fun of by Rin and Itsuki, claiming them to be a rarity sought after by a select group of men. Kareha is of the god race and is Asa's friend and classmate who enjoys making sweets and taking on related part-time jobs. Whenever she sees something romantic or cute, she has a habit of saying "Ma Ma Maa!" and starts to daydream, losing awareness of her surroundings.

In ''Shuffle! Essence+'', there are four new storylines available in the game. Tsubomi is Kareha's younger sister, and like Kareha, she has a tendency to space out when she see something romantic or cute. Her catchphrase is "Kya! Kya! Kya!". She's the same age as Primula, so they easily become friends. Sakura is Rin's and Kaede's childhood friend, they know each other since elementary school. That's why she knows about Rin's and Kaede's tragic past. Nadeshiko is Rin's homeroom teacher. She's quite self-confident, firmly stepping on the ground, single, attractive and is frequently the victim of pickup lines, including from the Lord of Devils and Itsuki. It appears she has some martial arts training (being able to slice a bottle with her bare hand). She has a habit of dealing out very strong punishments such as writing 100-page reports and dragging a tire around the track for minor offenses. However when it comes speak about romantic relationship or cuteness she can become shy, specially when someone speaks so about her. Daisy is Sia's cousin. When they were kids they used to play a lot together, but because of some circumstances between their fathers both of them stopped playing together. Daisy remember the precious for her time she spend with Lisianthus, but Sia seems to forgotten the old days, when they were together.

Story

The storyline of ''Shuffle!'' follows the life of Rin Tsuchimi, a normal seventeen-year-old second-year high school student who finds himself sought after by a variety of girls. Eight years prior to the onset of the story, he lost his parents in a car accident that also took the life of Kaede Fuyou's mother. From that point onwards, he began living with her. At around the same time he lost his parents, he met Lisianthus and Nerine at different times who each were accompanying their fathers on a diplomatic business in the human world. Each girl became lost after wandering through the human world. During that time, Rin befriended each girl after playing with them for a day. As a result of his kindness, Rin finds himself as the potential marriage candidate for both Lisianthus and Nerine, the daughters of the king of the gods and king of the demon worlds, who recently transfer to Rin's school at the onset of the story.

Ruthie narrates the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille are raised by a succession of relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho (some details are similar to Robinson's hometown, Sandpoint, Idaho, particularly the presence of a major rail bridge and direct rail links to Spokane and Montana). Eventually their aunt Sylvie (who has been living as a ) comes to take care of them. At first the three are a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and moves out. When Ruthie's well-being is questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to life on the road and takes Ruthie with her.

The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one's self and family in the face of loss, for the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age.

The novel is narrated by Ruth, from the perspective of the transparent eyeball. This narration style was used by the transcendentalist authors that influenced Robinson, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The film is set in the tense period in the Israel-Palestinian peace process shortly after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, with the strained relations implied but not explicitly depicted. It is divided into two major sections, all loosely tied together as the story of Suleiman's return to the West Bank and Israel.Schwartz, Dennis. [http://www.sover.net/~ozus/chronicleofadisappearance.htm "Chronicle of a Disappearance"]. ''[http://www.sover.net/~ozus/ Ozus' World Movie Reviews]''. Published June 1, 1999. Retrieved August 22, 2009. The character of Suleiman in the film is described only as 'E.S.' E.S. returns from a twelve-year exile in New York City and is now in unfamiliar territory. Within the film, no real plot or character development emerges. A series of mostly unconnected scenes take place one after the other in documentary film like fashion. The gradual accumulation of images and dialogue start without conclusion presenting an unsettling kind of feeling, which was meant to convey the quality of life led by Palestinians given their statelessness.

The first, and lightest, section is the "Nazareth Personal Diary", featuring warm observations of his family and his relatives' lives. Some of the notable vignettes include the dull yet comedic routines of the proprietor of a souvenir shop called "the Holyland" in which he fills bottles of alleged holy water from his own tap and fails to keep a cheap camel statuette from falling over on his shelves. E.S. and the shop owner spend time sitting in front of the stop waiting futilely for tourists to stop by. A boat full of Arab men fish, as one of the men bashes various Palestinian families that his friend does not belong to while praising the one that his friend ''does'' belong to. Suleiman also interviews a Russian Orthodox cleric who rails against the tourists polluting the Sea of Galilee.

A short middle segment shows E.S. getting up to speak at a conference on Palestinian film making; the microphone immediately begins feeding back and he leaves the podium. The last section, "Jerusalem Political Diary, has a quicker narrative pace and a more overtly ideological message. Absurd humor is evoked alongside feelings of paranoia in the characters felt by the broader society; for example, what first appears to be a terrorist's hand grenade held by a Palestinian turns out to be a cigarette lighter.

Suleiman discovers an Israeli policeman's walkie-talkie, and he then meets up with a single young Arab woman who is engaging in a search for an apartment that is just as fruitless as the two men's search for tourists. The woman, who speaks fluent Hebrew, is told by Jewish landlords that they do not rent to Arabs, while an Arab landlord tells her to live at home in accordance to Islamic tradition. She uses the walkie-talkie to play various pranks on the Israeli police, at one point singing an overly malevolent version of Israel's national anthem over the air. In the last part of the film, the woman stages a piece in which the police unwittingly participate as a member of a guerrilla theatre group.Brody, Richard. [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/chronicle_of_a_disappearance_suleiman "Chronicle of a Disappearance"]. ''The New Yorker''. Published October 2, 2006. Retrieved August 22, 2009. The end comes after a long shot of Suliman's parents sleeping, with all the lights off and Israeli material playing on their television.

The plot and gameplay of ''CSI'' is split into 5 distinct cases, each working alongside a member of the CSI team.

Case 1: "Inn and Out"

A showgirl is found tied, gagged, and strangled to death in a hotel room. Suspects in this case are the owners of a record of priors involving women, and a man who she not only had sex with, but passed along a STD. Players work with Gil Grissom.

Case 2: "Light my Fire"

Investigate an arson at the home of an aviation designer. Only suspects in this case are the man's rival, and a local drug dealer. Players work with Sara Sidle.

Case 3: "Garvey's Beat"

Players and Nick Stokes investigate the cop killing of an officer and the case is a match to an old cold case.

Case 4: "More Fun than a Barrel of Corpses"

A strange call to the lab leads to the discovery of a female body. The woman is the daughter of a casino owner. The only suspects was a doctor, who had an affair with the dead woman and a pharmacist, who is also a suspect, and the doctor's wife. Players work with Warrick Brown.

Case 5: "Leda's Swan Song"

Grissom disappears after having been called out to a previous crime scene – from the previous case. And the last murderer you arrested in the previous case is beginning to sing her victory. Players work with Catherine Willows for discovering the link between the suspect, Grissom and another victim's death.

The emotionless, calculating Dominators have put together an Alliance to invade Earth and eliminate the threat posed by their unpredictable "metahumans". After purging the galaxy of numerous potential threats to their plan - securing Darkseid's non-interference by assuring him that they would not destroy the planet and thwart his quest for the Anti-Life Equation, assassinating many former members of the disbanded Green Lantern Corps, and attacking the Omega Men - the Alliance launches a massive attack on Earth, overrunning Australia and establishing a base there from which to conquer the rest of the planet. Meanwhile, the Spectre appeals to the Lords of Order to allow Earth's magicians to join in Earth's defense, only to be told that he must instead ensure their neutrality for fear of provoking the Lords of Chaos from intervening on behalf of the invaders and escalating the conflict into a cataclysm that would mean the destruction of everyone involved. The Alliance tenders an offer to spare the human race provided that the world's governments surrender their metahumans, but the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly rejects this offer.

Superman leads a counterattack against the main Alliance base. The counterattack is temporarily disrupted by the Daxamite observers, who become the equal of Superman and temporarily defeat him, but fall prey to Earth's atmospheric differences from their own world and how it affected their extreme and lethal sensitivity to lead poisoning. After Superman helps save them, they decide to withdraw from the Alliance and help defend Earth. To that end, a small fleet of troop transports arrive and demand that the Alliance withdraw from Earth. The Dominators decide to ignore them, unaware of the effect a yellow sun has on Daxamites, until the fleet deploys several thousand soldiers into space as a near invincible attack force. This, combined with key defeats in various theaters, and a full-scale and uncontrollable riot aboard the Alliance Gulag, leads to a quick collapse for the Alliance and individual surrenders by each former member.

However, a young Dominator, aspiring to prominence among his people, manages to isolate the "metagene" in humans that enables a person to develop superhuman powers. On his own initiative, he develops and deploys the Gene Bomb, a device that bathes the Earth in an energy that affects every metahuman exposed to it, causing them to lose control of their powers and fall into a coma. Since the point of the invasion was to harness these beings, not eradicate them, the Dominator is imprisoned by his own government. A group of heroes unaffected by the Gene Bomb, led by the Martian Manhunter, manage to take information from the Dominator's mind crucial to reversing the effects of the Gene Bomb and restore the affected metahumans back to health.

Jerome Branch Corbell has incurable cancer and is cryogenically frozen in the year 1970 in the faint hope of a future cure. His body is revived in 2190 by an oppressive, totalitarian global government called "The State". His personality and memories are extracted (destroying his body in the process) and transferred into the body of a mindwiped criminal. After awakening, he is continually evaluated by Peerssa, a "checker", who has to decide whether he is worth keeping. With the threat of his own mindwiping looming, Corbell works hard to pass the various tests.

Peerssa decides that Corbell is a loner and born tourist, making him an ideal candidate to pilot a one-man Bussard ramjet, finding and seeding suitable planets as the first step to terraforming them. Discovering it is a one-way trip and disgusted with the State's treatment of him as an expendable commodity, Corbell hijacks the ship and takes it to the center of the galaxy. (It was at this point that the original short story ended.)

Peerssa fails to talk him out of it. Peerssa and The State resort to subterfuge; an artificial intelligence program based on Peerssa's personality is secretly transferred into the ship's computer using the link with Earth. Though the Peerssa AI opposes the detour, it cannot disobey Corbell's direct orders.

After a lengthy journey (including a close approach to the super-massive black hole at the galactic axis), possible only due to the suspended animation devices on board, Corbell returns to the solar system. Although only about 150 years have passed on the ship, three million years have elapsed on Earth, due to relativistic time dilation. At first, he is confused and initially believes they might have come to the wrong system because it has changed considerably; the Sun has apparently evolved into a red giant and what might be Earth is in orbit around a super-hot Jupiter. Having followed a message clearly from humans (warning not to visit other human-occupied star systems), and being too old to survive going anywhere else, Corbell puts the ship into orbit around what is surely the Earth.

The Earth's climate has changed, especially its surface temperature; the poles are now temperate, while the former temperate zones reach temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (120+ degrees Fahrenheit). The Earth's axial tilt is still 23.5 degrees so the poles experience 6 years of night and 6 years of day. Almost all remaining life on Earth has adapted to live in Antarctica. Elsewhere life is extinct except for some evidence of biological activity in the Himalayan mountains.

When Corbell lands (in a modified biological probe), he is captured by Mirelly-Lyra, who is also a returned star ship pilot and refugee from the past—though from Corbell's (and Peerssa's) future. She explains that the human species has fragmented; it is dominated by a race of immortal, permanently pre-adolescent males (the Boys), who are created by advanced medical techniques. Some time in the past, they had defeated the equally immortal (though now extinct) Girls, in the ultimate war of the sexes. The Boys have enslaved the ''dikta'', who are unmodified humans (though they have evolved somewhat), from whom they take boys to replenish their ranks.

Mirelly-Lyra had initially been a captive toy of the Girls. After their downfall, she obsessively searched in vain for the lost adult-immortality treatment, extending her life as much as possible using her own drugs and a form of zero-time stasis while waiting for another returning star ship and potential help. Because she could not stop the aging process entirely, she is an old crone by the time she finds Corbell. He manages to escape from her, only to be caught by the Boys, who take him to a dikta settlement. Corbell finds out that the solar system was engineered into its new configuration by the Girls in order to move the Earth to a habitable distance from the enlarged Sun (caused by war with colonies), and that an orbital error caused Jupiter to overheat and triggered the war that killed the Girls. With Gording, the dikta leader, Corbell escapes once more.

Eventually, Corbell discovers the adult-immortality treatment, albeit by accident and only realizing it after he himself has been exposed to it. He uses it to enlist Mirelly-Lyra's help, which in turn finally gives him full control of his ship's technology (the hostile Peerssa has decided that the woman is the last survivor of the State and will only obey her). The planet Uranus has been discovered to have been maneuvered to pass by the Earth and adjust its orbit by Peerssa the AI. Corbell arranges for the Earth's distance from the super-heated Jupiter to be adjusted by Peersa to lower the Earth's temperature without destroying the plants and animals that have adapted to the extreme conditions.

As the novel closes, he is plotting to liberate the dikta and enable them to regain control of their own destiny.

Years ago, a mob boss named Lucio Malatesta (George Touliatos) pinned the murder of rival Sammy Carboni (Gino Marrocco) on another rival named Angelo Allieghieri (Anthony Quinn), which led to Sammy's son Gianni vowing revenge.

Frankie Delano (Sylvester Stallone) has spent his life safeguarding Angelo as well as Angelo's daughter, Jennifer Barrett (Madeleine Stowe), whose unsavory husband Kip Barrett (Harry Van Gorkum) has had their young son Rawley (Ezra Perlman) placed in a boarding school against Jennifer's wishes.

Jennifer was raised by her adoptive parents Whitney Towers (John Gilbert) and Peggy Towers (Dawn Greenhalgh) and is not aware that Angelo is her father.

After Angelo is killed in a restaurant by a hit man named Bruno (Billy Gardell), Frankie introduces himself, tells Jennifer who he is and what he has been doing.

A neurotic mess, Jennifer can barely handle the news that Kip is a philanderer, let alone the revelation that she is a gangster's daughter. But a DVD prepared by Angelo in the case of just such an event convinces Jennifer that it's the truth.

Jennifer certainly doesn't want a full-time bodyguard, even Frankie. She ditches Kip and then falls for Italian romance novelist Marcello (Raoul Bova), who lectures at her book club. Frankie has suspicions about Marcello, but his job is to stay on the sidelines.

Frankie rescues Jennifer from a string of attacks. With many of Angelo's enemies, including Lucio Malatesta, terminated, Frankie allows her to visit Italy with Marcello. But it turns out that Marcello is actually Gianni Carboni, who had Angelo killed. And now Gianni plans to kill Jennifer.

It is up to Frankie to protect her one more time.

Rachel Carlson (Moore) is a successful American murder mystery author living in London with her five-year-old son, Thomas (Balawi) and her second husband, Brian (Cusick), a successful book editor who has been unable to get any of his own works published. His mother being too busy working on her latest novel to play with him, Thomas goes to play outside their canal side home, only to drown, devastating Rachel and putting a tailspin on her marriage and her ability to finish her latest novel.

Several months later Rachel still blames herself for the death of her son, and is not only unable to finish her book but is also a signature away from formally being divorced from her husband. In an effort to finish her novel and find some peace, Rachel moves away to a remote cottage on the Scottish coast. However, she soon starts to see the ghost of her late son, who at one point drags her into the water and at another point moves a set of magnets on the refrigerator. A local town psychic informs Rachel that the spirit of her son is trying to tell her something, but the rest of the locals warn Rachel that the psychic is just a troubled woman.

Troubled by the possibility that her son has returned from the grave, Rachel shares her troubles with a young and handsome lighthouse keeper named Angus (Matheson) and the two spark a romance that suddenly goes awry when she learns that Angus died seven years ago by committing suicide after murdering his wife and her lover in the lighthouse. Rachel fears that she may be going insane, and her efforts to prove otherwise, and learn more about the suicide-murder of Angus, falter when the news articles about the tragedy have gone missing from the local library, and Sharon Winton, her best friend and writer for a British tabloid journal, goes missing after Rachel saw her killed by Angus in the lighthouse.

It eventually comes to light that her soon to be ex-husband has been having an affair with her best friend, and that they paid a man, Patrick, to pose as Angus in order to cause an already emotionally unstable Rachel to act crazy enough in public that, when they make her murder look like a suicide, no one will suspect foul play. Just as Rachel is about to leave town, convinced that her dead son is trying to warn her that her life is in danger, she is drugged by Sharon and Brian and dumped into the sea, only to be saved when the keys to the chains she has been put into suddenly fall into the water and thus allow her to free herself and make her way to the lighthouse in an effort to seek some revenge. (It was previously written on a slate, "don't forget, look behind you" and Rachel heard her son repeating those lines in water).

However, after a brief fight at the lighthouse, Sharon hits her head and is killed in the kitchen, and Brian is murdered by Patrick, possessed by the spirit of Angus, in much the same way that Angus's wife and lover died seven years previously. Patrick then jumps from the tower, as Angus had done. Rachel leaves town, with the promise that no one will be allowed to access the lighthouse, so that Angus's spirit can finally rest. She returns to her home in London, where her son died, having decided to celebrate his life instead of mourning his death.

Rose Da Silva and her husband Christopher are disturbed by their adopted daughter Sharon's constant sleepwalking and nightmares about Silent Hill, a town in West Virginia that was abandoned in the 1970s due to a massive coal seam fire. Desperate for a solution, Rose takes Sharon on a trip to Silent Hill to find answers. Her erratic behaviour concerns police officer Cybil Bennett when they encounter her at a petrol station en route. As they enter Silent Hill, a girl steps out into the road, causing Rose to crash and black out. She awakens in the fog-shrouded dimension of Silent Hill, and realizes that Sharon is missing.

Searching the town for Sharon, Rose pursues the girl she encountered prior to the crash, who resembles Sharon. At various points, the town suddenly transitions into a nightmarish world inhabited by inhuman monsters, including the fearsome Pyramid Head. Cybil encounters and tries to arrest Rose, but while attempting to bring her to the local station, they realize they are trapped, all roads out of town ending in a mysterious cliff. Rose encounters many other inhuman creatures and learns of Alessa Gillespie, a young girl burned as a witch by the Brethren, the town's fanatical Manichean cult. Her mother Dahlia wanders the streets as an outcast, guilt-ridden over her negligence that led to Alessa's suffering. In the real world, Christopher searches the abandoned town with policeman Thomas Gucci, but they find nothing, the town appearing to them simply as a dilapidated, abandoned place devoid of fog or creatures. Gucci later reveals he lived in Silent Hill and saved Alessa from the fire. He encourages Christopher to end his futile search.

In the Silent Hill dimension, Rose encounters the girl again, revealed to be an aspect of Alessa. When the town transitions into the dark dimension, Rose, Cybil, and Anna, a Brethren member, flee to an old church, but Pyramid Head catches and flays Anna alive. Brethren members lead Rose and Cybil to a hospital, claiming the demon that has taken Sharon is in the basement. Upon noticing an image of Sharon in Rose's locket, Christabella, the high priestess of the Brethren, identifies Sharon as a likeness of Alessa. She decries the two women as witches, and orders her Brethren to stop them. Cybil holds them off while Rose descends into the basement, but is quickly subdued and captured.

Rose explores the basement but is barricaded by a group of disfigured nurses. She sneaks past them and enters Alessa's room. In a flashback, it is revealed that Alessa was stigmatised by the townspeople for being born out of wedlock. Christabella convinced Dahlia to "purify" Alessa after Alessa was raped by the school janitor. Christabella immolated Alessa during a ritual, but Dahlia alerted Gucci. The pair arrived too late and the ritual went awry, igniting the coal seam fire. Hospitalized and in excruciating pain, Alessa's rage splits her soul apart, one half manifesting as the dark entity responsible for the shifting dimensions of Silent Hill. Her remaining innocence manifested as Sharon, who was taken to the real world to be adopted. Desperate to find Sharon, Rose allows Dark Alessa's spirit into her body, allowing it access to the church. Sharon, despite being protected by Dahlia, is captured by the Brethren.

In the church, Christabella burns Cybil as a witch and plans to do the same to Sharon. Rose confronts Christabella, denouncing her as a murderer before Christabella stabs Rose in the heart. Alessa emerges from the blood flowing from the wound as a disfigured being bound to a hospital bed, and tears Christabella and her followers apart with razor wire. Rose rescues Sharon, and Sharon and Alessa/Dark Alessa reunite into one body. Rose and Alessa leave the town and return home. Upon arriving, they discover they are still in the foggy dimension, separated from reality. Meanwhile, Christopher awakens alone in the real world, and discovers that the front door has mysteriously opened.

In 479 B.C., one year after the Battle of Thermopylae, Dilios, a hoplite in the Spartan army, begins his story by depicting the life of Leonidas I from childhood to kingship via Spartan doctrine. Dilios's story continues and a Persian herald arrives at the gates of Sparta demanding "earth and water" as a token of submission to King Xerxes—the Spartans reply by throwing the envoy and his escort down into a bottomless pit. Leonidas then visits the Ephors, proposing a strategy to drive back the numerically superior Persians through the Hot Gates. His plan involves building a wall in order to funnel the Persians into a narrow pass between the rocks and the sea: negating the Persian advantage in numbers, and giving the Greeks' heavy infantry the advantage over the vast waves of Persian light infantry. The Ephors consult the Oracle, who decrees that Sparta may not go to war during the Carneia. As Leonidas angrily departs, an agent from Xerxes appears, rewarding the Ephors for their covert support.

Although the Ephors have denied him permission to mobilize Sparta's army, Leonidas gathers three hundred of his best soldiers in the guise of his personal bodyguard. They are joined along the way by a force composed of a few thousand Arcadians and other Greeks. At Thermopylae, they construct the wall, using slain Persian scouts as mortar. Stelios, an elite Spartan soldier, orders an enraged Persian emissary to return to his lines and warn Xerxes, after cutting off his whipping arm.

Meanwhile, Leonidas encounters Ephialtes, a deformed Spartan whose parents fled Sparta to spare him certain infanticide. Ephialtes asks to redeem his father's name by joining Leonidas' army, warning him of a secret path the Persians could use to outflank and surround the Spartans. Though sympathetic, Leonidas rejects him since his deformity physically prevents him from holding his shield high enough, potentially compromising the phalanx formation.

The battle begins soon after the Spartans' refusal to lay down their weapons. Using the Hot Gates to their advantage, as well as their superior fighting skills, the Spartans repel wave after wave of the advancing Persian army. Xerxes personally approaches Leonidas and offers him wealth and power in exchange for his submission. Leonidas declines and mocks the inferior quality of Xerxes' fanatical warriors. In response, Xerxes sends in his elite guard, the Immortals; the Spartans nonetheless defeat them with few losses, with slight help from the Arcadians.

On the second day, Xerxes sends in new waves of armies from Asia and other Persian subject states, including war elephants, to crush the Spartans, but to no avail. Meanwhile, an embittered Ephialtes defects to Xerxes to whom he reveals the secret path in exchange for wealth, luxury, women, and a Persian uniform. The Arcadians retreat upon learning of Ephialtes' betrayal, but the Spartans stay. Leonidas orders an injured but reluctant Dilios to return to Sparta and tell them of what has happened: a "tale of victory".

In Sparta, Queen Gorgo tries to persuade the Spartan Council to send reinforcements to aid the 300. Theron, a corrupt politician, claims that he "owns" the council and threatens the Queen, who reluctantly submits to his sexual demands in return for his help. When Theron disgraces her in front of the council, Gorgo kills him out of rage, revealing within his robe a bag of Xerxes' gold. Acknowledging his betrayal, the Council unanimously agrees to send reinforcements. On the third day, the Persians, led by Ephialtes, traverse the secret path, encircling the Spartans. Xerxes' general again demands their surrender. Leonidas seemingly kneels in submission, allowing Stelios to leap over him and kill the general. Angered, Xerxes orders his troops to attack. Leonidas throws his spear at Xerxes, barely missing him; the spear cuts across and wounds his face, proving the God-King's mortality. Leonidas and the remaining Spartans fight to the last man until they finally succumb to an arrow barrage.

Dilios, now back in Sparta, concludes his tale before the council. Inspired by Leonidas' sacrifice, the Greeks mobilize. One year later, the Persians face an army of 30,000 free Greeks led by a vanguard of 10,000 Spartans. After one final speech commemorating the 300, Dilios, now head of the Spartan Army, leads them to battle against the Persians across the fields of Plataea.

The strip is set in the year 2531. The Solar System is engaged in a war of survival against an alien species known as "Geeks". Steve Smith, a raw recruit, has just completed his training and signed on with the Global Combat Corps as a star-trooper, but is quickly thrown in at the deep end: he is assigned to the hard-bitten crew of a space patrol ship crewed by the "Vacuum Cleaners" or V.C.s for short; so called because of their penchant for clean kills, with little to no debris. The twist is that Smith is the only Earth-born crew member: the rest of the crew are all from colonies on the other planets of the Solar System, often being physically adapted to alien environments, and having little love for 'Ma Earth'. A major theme of this series is the antagonism between the crew (often racially motivated), particularly towards the "earthworm" Smith; and Smith's struggle for acceptance by the crew. Like many war stories, there is a high mortality rate amongst the main characters.

The V.C.s are regarded with contempt by the Earth-led high command, but are acknowledged as the best crew in the fleet. Eventually, the Diplomatic Corps (known as 'dishwashers') recalls most of the fleet back to the colonies in an effort to show the Geeks that they mean peace. However, the Geeks take this as an opportunity, and a Geek armada attacks every major colony in the system, including Mars and Earth. After this, a counterattack is launched against the Geek homeworld by the Dishwashers. Following a preliminary attack on what was thought to be the Geeks' home planet, the V.C.s disobey orders by going down to the planet to save a platoon of 'green' soldiers. The 'Dishwasher' in charge perceives this as a slight, and gives the V.C.s punishment by sending them on near-suicidal duties. Much in the style of ''The Dirty Dozen'' this results in a high fatality rate and over the course of the series all of the V.C.s save Smith and Jupe are killed off. Ultimately Smith, the sole member of the original V.C.s who remains fighting fit, leads a heroic attack on the Geek homeworld that ends the war.

The VCs were revived in ''2000 AD'' in 2002 and are still active. The new series is written by Dan Abnett and initially drawn by Henry Flint, later replaced by Anthony Williams. In the new stories Smith, now a major, is a veteran of the first Human-Geek war who leads a squad of raw recruits when a new war breaks out between the two races just as Earth is on the verge of joining the Polity, a galactic alliance of species. It was later revealed that "The Polity" was behind both wars. At the end of Book V, the Humans finally negotiated a deal with the Geeks.

The film takes place in an isolated desert compound called ''Clonus'', where clones are bred to be used as replacement parts for the elite, including a soon to be president-elect Jeffrey Knight (Peter Graves). The clones are kept isolated from the real world by workers of the colony, but are promised to be "accepted" to move to "America" after they have completed some type of physical training. After a group of clones are chosen to go to "America", they are given a party and a farewell celebration with their fellow clones. The chosen clones are then taken to a lab where they are sedated and placed in an airtight plastic bag, and their bodies are frozen in order to preserve their organs for harvest.

The story surrounds clone Richard (Tim Donnelly) who begins to question the circumstances of his existence and eventually escapes the colony. Pursued by compound guards, the clone enters a nearby city. The clone is found by a retired journalist, Jake Noble (Keenan Wynn) who takes him to his sponsor, Richard Knight, who happens to be the brother of Jeffrey Knight. The Knights argue over what to do with the clone (who is revealed to be a clone Jeffrey had secretly made for himself).

After a falling out, Richard's clone returns to the colony to reunite with his love interest, Lena (Paulette Breen). To his horror, the clone finds that Lena has been lobotomized by those running the colony. They had used her for bait to trap the clone. Once they have him in custody, they kill and freeze him. Meanwhile, Clonus completes its cover-up by hiring thugs to murder Richard Knight, his son, and the Nobles. Jeffrey Knight is stabbed through the chest in the ensuing struggle with his brother, but appears fine the next day at a press conference, where he is stunned to find that Noble had, before his death, managed to disseminate a secret tape to the news media, exposing the Clonus project. The final shot shows Richard's frozen corpse with an open chest and a tear coming out of his eye.

The main characters of the series are the Lexx and its crew, consisting of security guard (class four), Stanley H. Tweedle, the love slave Zev (later Xev) Bellringer, the undead former assassin and last of the Brunnen-G, Kai, the love-crazed robot head 790, and the powerful but simple-minded Lexx. Centuries prior, mankind was nearly destroyed in a war with the Insect Civilization, where both sides sought the total annihilation of the other. Although the Brunnen-G led humanity to victory, they are later enslaved by the Divine Order: a religious cult centered around His Shadow, a mythical being that seeks to enslave the two universes. It was foretold to Kai by the Time Prophet that one day his people will destroy His Shadow and the last remnants of the Insect Civilization.

The plot unfolds across a time span of over six thousand years. Kai's "death" occurs 2008 years before the beginning of the main events of the series. For Seasons One and Two, each episode is focused on space travel and usually one different planet. Seasons 3 and 4 have a single general location for all episodes. At the beginning of Season 3, the crew spends 4000 years in cryostasis before arriving at twin planets Fire and Water. In Season 4, the Lexx reaches Earth in the early 2000s.

Season 1 (Tales from a Parallel Universe)

Kai and a small group of other Brunnen-G warriors mount a last stand against His Merciful Shadow as their planet, Brunnis-2, is destroyed. In a final act of defiance, Kai crashes his ship into the control pod of His Shadow's flagship, the Foreshadow. He is killed by His Shadow, his memories are taken from him, and he is forced to serve as an undead assassin in the Divine Order.

2008 years later, Stanley H. Tweedle is an assistant deputy backup courier for the Ostral-B heretics, a resistance group fighting against the Divine Order. After unknowingly leading His Divine Shadow to an Ostral-B outpost, resulting in its destruction, he is captured by the mercenary Feppo, who extracts information from him on the locations of other Ostral-B planets and sells it to the Divine Order, resulting in the deaths of billions. He is later made a class-four security guard on the Cluster, the capital planet of the Divine Order and League of 20,000 Planets. After being reprimanded for insubordination and failing to turn himself in, he becomes a fugitive on the Cluster.

Zev Bellringer arrives on the Cluster as a prisoner and is sentenced to be turned into a love-slave, after failing to perform her wifely duties and assaulting her fiancé. Other prisoners, including a group of Ostral-B heretics and their leader, Thodin, are sentenced to be publicly executed. Thodin attempts to use an explosive device to free himself, but the device malfunctions and releases giant Cluster Lizards from containment, wreaking havoc across the Cluster. Thodin escapes and frees the other heretics, and reluctantly rescues the cannibal Giggerota. During Zev's transformation into a love-slave, she is attacked by a Cluster Lizard, turning her into a love-slave/Cluster Lizard hybrid. Before the brainwashing portion of the transformation begins, Zev frees herself and places the 790 droid in charge of her transformation in her place, causing the robot head to be programmed to be a love-slave. Upon seeing Zev, 790 immediately falls in love with her and pursues her as she escapes. His Shadow awakens Kai from cryostasis to protect the secret weapons laboratory.

Stanley and Zev meet up and make their way towards the secret weapons laboratory, where they find several Ostral-B heretics attempting to board a ship. They are pursued by Kai, who kills Thodin and chases the others into the ship. Although the heretics are hostile towards the "arch-traitor" Stanley, they are attacked and killed by a Cluster Lizard. Before his death, one of the heretics releases some form of energy into Stanley.

Stanley, Zev, 790, and Giggerota reach the ship's bridge. The ship introduces itself as the Lexx, a machine-insect hybrid and "the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes", capable of destroying planets in a single blast. The energy Stanley absorbed is revealed to be the key to the Lexx, making Stanley its captain. As Stanley instructs the Lexx to fly off the Cluster, they are cornered by Kai and Giggerota is presumably killed. Before Kai can execute the others, he instead heads to the ship's hold to protect the Divine Predecessors, which are being attacked by a Cluster Lizard. After saving them, Kai regains his memories from the brain of the Divine Predecessor who killed him, prompting him to turn against His Shadow. The Lexx is pursued and boarded by His Shadow, who attacks Kai for turning against him. Stanley and Zev distract His Shadow long enough for Kai to destroy him; his essence retreats from the ship as it travels through a portal into the Dark Zone. While traversing the portal, the Lexx's memory of His Shadow and its allegiance to him is wiped. The Lexx destroys the remains of His Shadow's fleet. The three begin searching the Dark Zone for a new home, away from His Shadow.

During their search, they encounter Kai's homeworld and explore it for insights into his past. Finding the planet abandoned, they are pursued by Giggerota who attempts to destroy the planet by disabling a series of towers that are keeping a dying star from becoming a supernova. The trio becomes separated from each other and discover the Time Prophet's prophecy of Kai destroying the insect civilization. Giggerota disables the towers, but the crew escapes aboard the Lexx without her. She and the planet are destroyed in the supernova.

After some time, the Lexx runs low on organic fuel and lands on the nearby planet of Klaagia to feed. The group discovers a group of psychotics obsessed with "pattern", a liquid made from organic material that parasites within their bodies feed on. Stan, Zev, and Kai inadvertently awaken the parasite queen, who attaches itself to the Lexx and pursues them off the planet. The Lexx fires on the planet and destroys it, using the meteors to kill the queen.

Meanwhile, Kai is running low on protoblood, which he needs to function in his undead state; protoblood can only be found on the Cluster. The group returns to the Cluster to find it abandoned, learning that the entire population of the League of 20,000 Planets had been killed to feed and awaken the immense Giga Shadow, the last remaining insect. With help from a defecting priest of the Divine Order, they stall the Giga Shadow's awakening long enough for Kai to plant a baby Cluster Lizard inside of it. As the Lexx and its crew are almost destroyed, the Cluster Lizard reaches the Giga Shadow's brain and consumes it, killing the Giga Shadow. With a fresh supply of protoblood, the crew returns to the Dark Zone to search for a new home.

Season 2

Before the Giga Shadow's destruction, the last remnant of His Shadow possessed Kai. Kai lies to the crew and states that he requires more protoblood to survive, leading them to the imprisoned supreme Bio-Vizier of the Divine Order, Mantrid and his servant. During their meeting, His Shadow transfers his essence into an insect carcass, resurrecting it and attempting to kill the crew of the Lexx. Mantrid is gravely wounded in the attack, and his servant transfers his consciousness to a spaceship he had created to save him. Kai kills the insect, resulting in His Shadow's essence becoming mixed with Mantrid's. Mantrid, now intertwined with His Shadow, swears revenge on humanity as the crew escapes.

The rest of the season involves the crew searching for a new home. During their adventures, they encounter Lyekka, a plant that can transform into a human appearance and feeds on living beings. During their adventures, Zev is killed but later reincarnated by Lyekka as Xev. The crew has various encounters with strange creatures and civilizations, such as a group of astronauts from a potato planet, a planet that creates sitcoms, a vapor that changes sex organs into their opposite, a crashed prisoner transport captained by a gay cyborg, a graveyard planet for priests of the Divine Order, a cult led by the Wozzard that seeks to turn all beautiful women into ugly ones, and an island of secluded, illiterate monks.

Eventually, the crew learns that Mantrid has been using drones to consume the universe and convert its matter into more drones, quickly bringing the Light Zone to an end. The crew, realizing they have no chance against him, attempt to flee by traveling to the center of the universe, where the rules of causality are different, offering them a potential hideaway from Mantrid. During their escape, they encounter an interdimensional theater crew that tells the full story of the Brunnen-G, including how they defeated the insect civilization and eventually became hopelessly depressed at their immortality, waiting for the forces of His Shadow to come and destroy them. Kai, refusing to surrender, led a small group of rebels against His Shadow in a final act of defiance. Reinvigorated by Kai's story, the crew decide to stop running and face Mantrid.

With the help of 790, the crew finds that they can convert some of Mantrid's drones to fight for them and outsmart Mantrid's drones. During their attack on his ship, Lyekka boards Mantrid's pod and is about to destroy him, but is killed before she is able to do so. The crew, about to be overwhelmed by Mantrid drones, employs a last-ditch strategy to destroy Mantrid. Kai taunts Mantrid into pursuing the Lexx towards the center of the universe. The resulting movement of mass creates a big crunch, which Mantrid, the drones, the Lexx, and the rest of the Light Zone are pulled into and destroyed. However, the Lexx rematerializes in the Dark Zone through a portal as Mantrid is finally defeated. Without any other nearby planets and the Lexx running out of food, the crew place themselves into stasis and the Lexx goes dormant while 790 reactivates annually to search for nearby planets.

Season 3

After four thousand years in cryostasis, the crew reaches the twin planets Fire and Water. All of season three takes place on these two planets.

The crew meets people they knew from the Light and Dark Zones who cannot remember their past lives, though their personalities are the same. Fire is ruled by the charismatic Prince and his lackey Priest, while Water does not have a ruler. The inhabitants of both planets live in isolated towns. On Water, they live on islands in a huge ocean; on Fire, there are massive towers separated by long stretches of desert. Water is inhabited by good people, while Fire is inhabited by evil people.

During Prince's first encounter with the crew, 790 is damaged and falls in love with Kai rather than Xev, and gradually behaves much more erratically. Prince seeks to destroy Water and attempts to win the crew over to his side, especially Xev. Believing that the Lexx is "the grain of sand that will tip the scales", he tests their sense of morality through various temptations, including taking the forms of other crew members to deceive them. The crew are frequently separated from each other, forcing them to act individually. After jumping from the Lexx to the surface of Water, Kai has trouble functioning normally without the other crew members. Deep beneath Water's surface, Kai encounters his soul essence awaiting rebirth.

During one of Prince's attacks on Water, Stanley is killed and Prince holds a trial over the destination of his soul, revealing Fire and Water as the afterlife. All his bad decisions are weighed against his good deeds and he is ultimately sentenced to eternal punishment on Fire. Enraged over Stanley's death, Xev orders the Lexx to destroy Fire, releasing all of its tortured souls. Consequently, Prince possesses the Lexx and uses it to destroy Water. Stanley is released and returns to his body aboard the Lexx, while Prince and the other souls reincarnate on a nearby blue planet.

Season 4

The Lexx travels to Earth looking for food. 790 informs the crew that it is located in the very center of the Dark Zone and assumes that it must be a very dangerous place. The crew again meet people they knew from the Light and Dark Zones and from Fire and Water. Only Prince and Priest are able to remember their previous lives.

On Earth, the reincarnated souls cause chaos across the planet. Prince becomes the head of the ATF, Priest becomes the President and a puppet ruler for Prince, Giggerotta becomes a Florida real estate agent and is elected pope, and the Wozzard becomes Dr. Ernst Longbore, a paraplegic rocket scientist. The crew attempts to settle in and make Earth their home, but keep getting caught up in fights and other deadly situations with the locals. Although the crew keeps swearing not to return to the planet, they constantly find themselves back on Earth for one reason or another.

Kai's soul is trapped in limbo because he is undead, and he decides to regain his mortality. He makes a wager with Prince in a game of chess and wins, but Prince does not immediately fulfill his promise.

In the series finale, Earth is threatened by plants resembling Lyekka. The crew discovers that the fake Lyekka have destroyed other planets on their way through the Dark Zone and flooded the Earth with alien probes to sample the taste of its lifeforms. Furthermore, Dr. Longbore has created a rocket to escape Earth and, out of spite, leaves behind a particle accelerator to determine the mass of the Higgs boson particle, which will shrink the Earth to the size of a pea in the process. As Lyekka's asteroid attacks Earth, the crew flees with the particle accelerator to destroy the asteroid. As they leave Earth, Prince appears to Kai and fulfills his promise to him, restoring Kai's mortality. 790, now completely insane and still madly in love with Kai, takes advantage of the Lexx's senility and has it destroy Earth to kill any potential "competitors" for Kai. With Earth destroyed, the Lexx dying, and no other habitable planets nearby, the crew decide to sacrifice themselves to destroy Lyekka's asteroid. They travel inside the asteroid, but Kai becomes separated from the others as he is trapped inside with the particle accelerator. In a final sacrifice, Kai crashes into the center of the asteroid as the accelerator calculates the particle's mass, destroying the asteroid. The Lexx's senility becomes terminal as it disintegrates. Xev and Stanley discover that the Lexx had created another ship within it before it died, "Little Lexx". Little Lexx gives Stanley its key as they search for a new home.

In 1945 New York City, Corleone crime family don Vito Corleone listens to requests during his daughter Connie's wedding to Carlo. Michael, Vito's youngest son and a former Marine, introduces his girlfriend, Kay Adams, to his family at the reception. Johnny Fontane, a popular singer and Vito's godson, seeks Vito's help in securing a movie role. Vito dispatches his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to give Johnny the part. Woltz complies after he finds the severed head of his prized stallion in his bed.

Near Christmas, drug baron Sollozzo asks Vito to invest in his narcotics business and for protection from the law. Vito declines, citing that involvement in narcotics would alienate his political connections. Suspicious of Sollozzo's partnership with the Tattaglia crime family, Vito sends his enforcer Luca Brasi to meet with the Tattaglias. Brasi is garroted to death during the meeting. Later, enforcers gun down Vito and kidnap Hagen. With Corleone's first-born Sonny now in command, Sollozzo pressures Hagen to persuade Sonny to accept the narcotics deal. Sonny retaliates for Luca's death with a hit on Bruno Tattaglia. Vito survives the shooting and is visited in the hospital by Michael, who finds him unprotected after NYPD officers on Sollozzo's payroll cleared out Vito's guards. Michael thwarts another attempt on his father's life but is beaten by corrupt police captain Mark McCluskey. Sollozzo and McCluskey request to meet with Michael and settle the dispute. Michael feigns interest and agrees to meet, but hatches a plan with Sonny and Corleone capo Clemenza to kill them and go into hiding. Michael meets Sollozzo and McCluskey at a Bronx restaurant; after retrieving a handgun planted into the bathroom by Clemenza, he fatally shoots both men.

Despite a clampdown by the authorities for the killing of a police captain, the Five Families erupt in open warfare. Michael takes refuge in Sicily and Fredo, Vito's second son, is sheltered by Moe Greene in Las Vegas. Sonny publicly attacks and threatens Carlo for physically abusing Connie. When he abuses her again, Sonny speeds to their home but is ambushed and murdered by gangsters at a highway toll booth. In Sicily, Michael meets and marries a local woman, Apollonia, but she is killed shortly thereafter by a car bomb intended for him.

Devastated by Sonny's death and tired of war, Vito sets a meeting with the Five Families. He assures them that he will withdraw his opposition to their narcotics business and forgo avenging Sonny's murder. His safety guaranteed, Michael returns home to enter the family business and marry Kay. Kay gives birth to two children in the early 1950s. With his father nearing the end of his life and Fredo not suited to lead, Michael assumes the position of head of the Corleone family. Vito reveals to Michael that it was Don Barzini who ordered the hit on Sonny and warns him that Barzini would try to kill him at a meeting organized by a traitorous Corleone capo. With Vito's support, Michael relegates Hagen to managing operations in Las Vegas as he is not a "wartime consigliere". Michael travels to Las Vegas to buy out Greene's stake in the family's casinos and is dismayed to see that Fredo is more loyal to Greene than to his own family.

In 1955, Vito dies of a heart attack. At Vito's funeral, Tessio asks Michael to meet with Barzini, signaling his betrayal. The meeting is set for the same day as the baptism of Connie's baby. While Michael stands at the altar as the child's godfather, Corleone hitmen murder the dons of the Five Families and Greene, and Tessio is executed for his treachery. Michael extracts Carlo's confession to playing a part in Sonny's murder, assuring Carlo he is only being exiled, not murdered; afterward, Clemenza garrotes Carlo to death. Connie confronts Michael about Carlo's death while Kay is in the room. Kay asks Michael if Connie is telling the truth and is relieved when he denies it. As Kay leaves, capos enter the office and pay reverence to Michael as "Don Corleone" before closing the door.

At Ralph Waldo Emerson High School, bookish student Barney Springboro (Scott Baio) performs various scientific experiments on laboratory mice until his friend, yearbook photographer Peyton Nichols (Willie Aames), retrieves him for a class assembly. Peyton questions Barney's lack of interest in finding a girlfriend as the students rally in preparation for an upcoming baseball game against a rival high school. Afterward, Peyton seduces one of the school administrators, Corrine Updike, and Barney returns to his experiments.

At the insistence of the pesky class president, Bernadette (Felice Schachter), Peyton promises to take photographs of Barney posing with the genetically modified orchids he has been growing for the school principal, Walter Coolidge. Barney drops the beaker containing the mice's feeding solution, producing a cloud of shimmery smoke that knocks him unconscious. Sometime later, he awakens and returns home, where his uptight mother chastises him for his tardiness and antisocial behavior. As she yells, Barney's bedroom door mysteriously slams shut. During English class the next day, Barney fantasizes about a popular but vain girl named Jane Mitchell (Heather Thomas). When the teacher calls on him unexpectedly, Barney furrows his brow, causing the map above the chalkboard to fall on her head.

That afternoon, Peyton asks Jane on a date, but she reminds him that she has a college-aged boyfriend. As Barney stares at Jane's chest, her cardigan bursts open, leaving everyone confused. In the lab, Barney experiments with his new telekinetic abilities by levitating various objects across the room, unaware of Bernadette and Peyton, who are watching through the window. When his friends confront him, however, Barney convinces them to keep his powers a secret. At home, Barney propels his model spaceship through the air, imagining the crew members inside have come alive. He then animates a ventriloquist dummy, which frightens Mrs. Springboro so much that she believes her son is possessed.

On the day of the big baseball game, Barney manipulates the ball and hits the winning home run. Meanwhile, Principal Coolidge attempts to break into Barney's lab to check the growth of his orchids, but cannot obtain the key. After Barney agrees to let Bernadette write a report about him for her older sister's college science journal, they notice Mrs. Burnhart sneak into his lab and uncover a pot of Peyton's marijuana hidden behind the orchids. She retrieves Principal Coolidge, but they return to discover the plants are missing. Baseball coach Dexter Jones finds Barney and Bernadette stuffing the plants in the incinerator, and the smoke causes him to become intoxicated: under the influence, he imagines riding a bicycle with Albert Einstein while being chased by his wife, who is dressed like a Viking warrior.

Over the weekend, Barney, Peyton, and Bernadette go to a pre-graduation celebration at an amusement park, during which Peyton challenges Jane's boyfriend, Robert Wolcott, to a beer-drinking contest and a carnival game that Peyton ends up winning. While on the Tilt-a-Whirl, Barney increases the speed of Robert's compartment, causing him to vomit and lose the bet. That night, Peyton brings Jane home and seduces her by pretending to act older and more mature. Meanwhile, Barney and Bernadette have dinner and talk about former crushes. The pair spend the next afternoon together in the park before returning to Barney's lab, where they make love.

At school on Monday, Jane admits that she regrets having sex with Peyton and returns to her boyfriend. Robert, however, invites Peyton to a casino-themed college fraternity party with the hopes of winning the money that he owes him for the drinking contest. Peyton begs Barney to attend so he can manipulate the roulette wheel, but Bernadette becomes angry that he would use his powers to gamble. Meanwhile, Mrs. Updike convinces Principal Coolidge to respond to a personal advertisement in the newspaper to meet a woman for a date.

At the restaurant, Principal Coolidge discovers that his date is Rose Burnhart, and the two finally succumb to their long-time attraction by having sex under the table. During the fraternity party, Barney attempts to manipulate the roulette ball, but causes a commotion among the guests when he accidentally levitates the entire wheel. When Bernadette refuses to answer his telephone calls, he spends the night in his laboratory drinking whiskey. Hung over the next morning, he apologizes to Bernadette and arranges to meet her at the prom that evening. Before he leaves for the dance, however, Mrs. Springboro hires two priests to perform an exorcism on her son, and Barney uses his ventriloquist dummy to chase them around the house so he can get away.

Peyton and Jane are crowned prom king and queen, and Jane rejects Peyton's continued advances. Peyton realizes that Jane is nothing but a snob, because nothing he does is good enough for her. As Barney dances with Bernadette, Peyton ruins the moment by offering his friend airplane tickets to Las Vegas where they can continue gambling, but Barney rejects the offer. When Robert confronts Peyton about the roulette game, Peyton apologizes and gives him a packet of nude photographs he took of Jane. Enraged, Robert attacks, and Barney uses telekinesis to summon a large gust of wind that tears off the students' clothes and sends everybody running outside. Barney also uses his telekinesis to take down Robert and his friends and humiliate Jane by stripping off her prom dress; as she is laughed at, she runs away in shame. A wayward fire hose knocks Barney unconscious and after he wakes, he pretends he has lost his powers. However, while leaving the school, Barney grabs Bernadette by the waist and propels them through the night sky in a cloud of shimmery dust.

Like all Tex Murphy games, ''The Pandora Directive'' takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in April 2043. After the devastating events of WWIII, many major cities have been rebuilt (as is the case with New San Francisco), though certain areas still remain as they were before the war (as in Old San Francisco). WWIII also left another mark on the world: the formation of two classes of citizens. Specifically, the Mutants and the Norms. After the events of ''Under a Killing Moon'', tensions between the two groups have begun to diminish. The end to the Crusade for Genetic Purity was a turning point in the relations between Mutants and "Norms". Tex still lives on Chandler Ave., which recently underwent a city-funded cleanup. The events of WWIII still left the planet with no ozone layer, and to protect their citizens many countries adopted a time reversal. Instead of sleeping at night, and being awake in the day, humans have become nocturnal, in a manner of speaking. Though Tex lives in what is considered a Mutant area of town, he himself is a "Norm".

In ''The Pandora Directive'', after accidentally offending his love interest Chelsee Bando, Tex (Chris Jones) is hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick (Kevin McCarthy) to find his friend, Thomas Malloy (John Agar). He learns that Malloy stayed at the Ritz, and decides to follow up the lead after reconciling with Chelsee and agreeing to go for dinner with her at her apartment. Upon investigating Malloy's room, Tex is knocked out by a mysterious masked figure dressed in black. Tex is out through the night, inadvertently missing his date with Chelsee. After finding out that a female acquaintance of Malloy works at the Fuchsia Flamingo club, Tex offers to take Chelsee there to both apologise and hopefully to check out the lead. Regardless of whether Chelsee comes out with Tex or not, she will decide to take a vacation to Phoenix for a few days. At the club, Tex meets with the girl, Emily who agrees to trade information on Malloy if Tex can find out who is stalking her. She gives a note she received from her stalker to Tex and upon showing it to his connection in the police station Mac Malden, Tex finds out that Emily is being observed by the Black Arrow Killer.

Tex is able to discover that the NSA is involved and looking for Malloy, and breaks into one of their headquarters, Autotech. He finds out that the NSA are using video surveillance to monitor the goings on in Emily's room at the Fuchsia Flamingo. Tex finds the source of this and sees a figure dresses similarly to the person who attacked him in Malloy's room waiting to confront Emily. Tex hurries over to the club and is able to get there just in time to see the Killer jump out of the window carrying a small box. (Whether Emily survives or not will depend on the storyline path.) Tex chases him down and in the ensuing fight accidentally causes the Killer to fall off the roof and die. Tex removes the Killer's mask and sees that it is NSA agent Dag Horton, who had an office in Autotech. Tex is pulled in for questioning by the police, but is allowed to leave when an unknown woman enters the station and speaks to Mac.

Tex retrieves the box that Horton stole from Emily's room, but is seized by the NSA and taken to Jackson Cross's office at Autotech. He is threatened to stay out of their affairs, and is forced to hand over the box. Returning to his office, Tex is met by the woman who talked the police into letting him go. She reveals her name is Regan Madsen, she is Thomas Malloy's daughter and that Malloy sent out several boxes like the one Tex found. Tex goes to the Fuchsia Flamingo and finds out that Emily is Malloy's wife, hence her being sent a box. using the return address on the packaging, Tex is finally able to track down Malloy in a run down warehouse in the industrial district. After establishing that Tex is not with the NSA, he reveals that he used to work at Roswell, the military base where a spacecraft allegedly crashed in 1947. Malloy asserts that the crash was legitimate and that the government covered the story up. The military began investigating then wreckage to look for weapons, and in the 1980s Malloy came into the project to attempt to decipher the hieroglyphics on the craft. After World War 3, Malloy left the project but was able to continue his research in secret. Before Malloy can continue his story, two NSA agents arrive and kill him. Tex is able to escape by blowing the building up.

Tex fills a disheartened Fitzpatrick in on the events, but insists on following up on the details he has uncovered. Fitzpatrick tells him that he worked with Malloy in Roswell, and that after becoming close friends, Malloy confided in him that he had been deciphering the alien hieroglyphics and had discovered that a second spacecraft had crashed somewhere on Earth. He then reveals that he received one of Malloy's boxes and there are probably about 6 in circulation. Tex meets with Regan to tell her about her father, and she agrees to give him her box despite reservations that Tex will open it and sell off the information for himself. After stealing Horton's personal effects from the morgue where his body is being held, Tex is able to get into Autotech's evidence room to recover Emily's box. Tex travels to the Cosmic Connection shop and speaks to Archie Ellis, an eccentric comic book nerd and ufologist who recently interviewed Malloy. Archie tells him that the famous author Elijah Witt set up the interview between them, during which Malloy made several cryptic references to something called 'The Pandora Device'. He also reveals that during their research into the alien crafts at Roswell, the scientists accidentally released something into the facility that proceeded to kill off practically everyone in the complex before the military moved in and quarantined the entire base. Archie tells Tex that Malloy sent him one of the boxes but it was stolen, and that the alien power cell in a picture from one of the other boxes is still stored in the Roswell complex.

Tex travels to Roswell and enters the deserted site, but whilst moving around the facility becomes increasingly aware that he is being stalked. It is revealed that the alien entity released by the researchers many years before is still lurking in the complex, but Tex is able to seal it off in a containment pod before he suffers that same fate and is then able to secure the power cell from the security room. Tex is able to break the code on a disc Malloy sent to Elijah Witt on which Malloy reveals that each of the boxes sent out contains a piece of the Pandora Device and that assembling the parts will reveal the information Malloy had discovered. After obtaining all the relevant pieces, Tex summons Fitzpatrick, Regan and Witt to his office where he assembles the Pandora Device. A hologram of Malloy appears and tells the group that there was indeed another spacecraft that landed on Earth and that Malloy discovered its location. He hypothesises that the ship contains large amounts of anti-hydrogen on board, and that if this gets into the wrong hands it could result in the destruction of life on Earth. Witt immediately decides that the ship must be destroyed, but Regan is adamant that they could sell the technology off for big money. Regardless, the four decide that they must find the craft so they each take a separate route to the location Malloy specified.

Tex arrives and manages to navigate his way through a dense jungle and an ancient Mayan labyrinth in which he comes across Regan who set off earlier in hope she might get there first. Tex and Regan find the ship, but Jackson Cross arrives and it revealed that Regan and Cross had been working together all along. Before Cross is able to kill Tex, Fitzpatrick emerges from the ship and invites the three on board. Fitzpatrick shows them around and offers to show them the central power core before locking Regan and Cross inside, but not before Cross fires his gun and hits Fitzpatrick. As he is dying, Fitzpatrick reveals that he knows how to work the controls of the ship as his father was one of the aliens from the ship; his mother was a human woman from Nebraska, hence Fitzpatrick's human appearance. After urging Tex to type in the correct controls, he dies from his wound and Tex quickly exits the ship just in time for it to ascend into space and self-destruct. Tex is picked up by a late arriving Elijah Witt and taken home.

Endings

From this point, several endings are possible depending on how the player made Tex behave throughout the game:

'''Mission Street''':

1. Chelsee returns from Phoenix and invites Tex round for dinner, during which he recounts his tale though she remains skeptical. Afterwards she reveals she is dressed in a square dance outfit and rewards Tex with a striptease.

2. Chelsee and Tex go for a drink at the Brew 'n' Stew. Chelsee reveals that she feels she isn't ready to commit to a relationship so and Tex should just remain good friends. Having signed up to the new 'holodate' service, a hologram of Clark Gable arrives to take Chelsee on a date. A deflated Tex returns to his office and calls the holodate service himself. He speaks to the manager (a hologram of Humphrey Bogart) and requests a two-for-one special date with Jayne Mansfield and Anna Nicole Smith.

'''Lombard Street'''

1. Same as Mission Street Ending 2.

2. On the spacecraft when Cross shoots he hits Tex instead of Fitzpatrick. He is able to limp off the ship and sees it explode. Having ruined his chances with Chelsee he decides to give up his career as a P.I. and join the circus as a clown. We see him backstage putting on his makeup before going on, glancing briefly at photograph of Chelsee before sadly leaving the room to perform.

'''Boulevard of Broken Dreams'''

1. Same as Lombard Street Ending 2

2. On the space craft Tex is shot in the leg, but is unable to get off before it self-destructs and dies.

3. Before boarding the ship, Cross will give his gun to Tex and ask him to shoot Fitzpatrick. If the player opts to shoot Cross instead, the gun will be empty and Cross will pull out a loaded gun and shoot Tex dead.

4. If the player chooses to shoot Fitzpatrick, the gun will be empty. Before Cross can shoot Fitzpatrick himself, Tex suggests they go to look on the ship. Fitzpatrick will lock all three of them in the ship's core. Tex is able to unlock the door, but Fitzpatrick will have already begun flying the ship into space. The ship self-destructs and all four characters die.

The journalist Ted York (Terence Longdon) is rushed to Haven Hospital with appendicitis. The ambulance gets there at top speed, but only because the driver wants to know the result of a horse race. Ted is given a bed and is instantly smitten with Nurse Denton (Shirley Eaton). The other nurses are incessantly having to respond to the calls of the Colonel (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who has a private room. He is an inveterate gambler and is having his bets placed by Mick (Harry Locke), the orderly.

That evening, the boxer Bernie Bishop (Kenneth Connor) is admitted after hurting his hand at the end of a bout. The next day, the Sister (Joan Hickson) galvanises the nurses, orderly and patients for the inspection by Matron (Hattie Jacques). As usual, she is let down by Nurse Dawson (Joan Sims), a clumsy student nurse. Matron checks on the progress of the patients, and speaks to Mr Hinton (Charles Hawtrey), who is forever listening to the radio with his headphones. Mick and the Colonel bet on how long the Matron will take on her rounds.

Ted is visited by his editor and agrees to write a series of articles on his hospital experiences. He realises that Nurse Denton is in love with a doctor, but that her interest is not returned. Bernie is told that he will not be able to box for several months at least. Nurse Dawson is sent to ring the bell to signal the end of visiting hours, but she calls for the fire brigade by mistake.

The bookish intellectual Oliver Reckitt (Kenneth Williams) is visited by Jill (Jill Ireland), the sister of his friend Harry. They clearly like each other, but are too shy to admit it. Bernie urges Oliver to admit how he really feels about her. Bernie's manager Ginger (Michael Medwin) comes to visit him and tells him that he must try to be more of a showman and not simply go for broke with every match. Nurse Dawson comes in early to sterilise some rubber catheters, but is interrupted by the demanding Colonel. The catheters are put in a kidney dish to boil on the stove. Oliver is furious when the ward has to be cleared and tidied up for Matron's rounds as it upsets his schedule for no obvious purpose. When she arrives everyone begins to smell the forgotten catheters, which by now are burning on the stove. When Matron stops to speak to Oliver, he complains about the disruptive effects that her visits have on the patients. Matron is furious and has the Sister make all the beds again.

Jack Bell (Leslie Phillips) arrives to have a bunion removed and is placed on the ward. Jill comes to see Oliver and they admit that they care for each other. She gives him a bar of nougat as a gift, but later that evening it makes him sick. Mr Able complains that he can not sleep as he has been missing his wife. He is put on medication, but it makes him wildly excited and he runs amok in the hospital. Eventually Bernie subdues him with a left hook to the jaw.

Bell's operation is delayed, which upsets him greatly as he is planning a romantic weekend. He offers the men in the ward the champagne he was going to drink with his girlfriend. They all get drunk and decide to remove the bunion themselves. The night nurse is tied up and Hinton pretends to be her while the others go to the operating theatre. Jack starts to panic as Oliver prepares to operate, but soon they are all giggling as the laughing gas has been left on. The nurse arrives before any real damage is done.

The colonel plays a trick on Nurse Dawson and pins a piece of paper with a large red 'L' on her back. Ted learns that Nurse Denton is applying for a job in America and tries to dissuade her. Jack catches a cold and is told that his operation will have to be postponed yet again. Oliver is discharged and leaves with Jill. Bernie is met by his young son and they leave together. Ted is also discharged and makes a date with Nurse Denton. Nurse Dawson and Nurse Axwell decide to get even with the Colonel and replace a rectal thermometer with a daffodil. Luckily for them, upon her inspection, Matron manages to see the funny side.

''Rhapsody in August'' is a tale of three generations in a post-war Japanese family and their responses to the atomic bombing of Japan. Kane is an elderly woman, now suffering the consequences of older age and diminishing memory, whose husband was killed in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Kane has two children who are both married and both of whom grew up in postwar Japan. She also has a brother now living in Hawaii whose son Clark (played by Richard Gere) has grown up in America. Finally, there are Kane's four grandchildren, who were born after the Japanese economic miracle who have come to visit her at the family country home near Nagasaki in Kyushu.

Kane's grandchildren are visiting her at her rural home on Kyūshū one summer while their parents visit Kane's brother in Hawaii. The grandchildren have been charged with the task by their parents of convincing their grandmother to visit her brother in Hawaii. The grandchildren take a day off to visit the urban environment of Nagasaki. While in Nagasaki the children visit the spot where their grandfather was killed in 1945 and become aware, at a personal level, of some of the emotional consequences of the atomic bombing for the first time in their lives. They slowly come to have more respect for their grandmother and also grow to question the morality of the United States for deciding to use atomic weapons against Japan.

In the meantime they receive a telegram from their American cousins, who turn out to be rich and offer their parents a job managing their pineapple fields in Hawaii. Matters are complicated when Kane writes to Hawaii telling her American relatives about the death of her husband at Nagasaki. Her own two children, who have now returned from Hawaii to visit her, feel that this action will be viewed by their now Americanized relatives in Hawaii as hostile and a source of friction. Clark, who is Kane's nephew, then travels to Japan to be with Kane for the memorial service of her husband's death at Nagasaki. Kane reconciles with Clark over the bombing.

Clark is much moved by the events he sees in the Nagasaki community at the time of the memorial events surrounding the deaths which are annually remembered following the bombing of Nagasaki. Especially significant to Clark is the viewing of a Buddhist ceremony where the local community of Nagasaki meets to remember those who had died when the bomb was dropped. Suddenly, Clark receives a telegram telling him that his father, Kane's brother, has died in Hawaii and he is forced to return there for his father's funeral.

Kane's mental health and memory begin to falter. Her recollections of her lost spouse have never been fully reconciled within her own memory of her lost loved one. She begins to show signs of odd behavior in laying out her husband's old clothing as if her husband might suddenly reappear and need them to put on. When a storm is brewing, her mental health seems to confuse the storm for an air raid warning of another atomic bomb attack and she seeks to protect her visiting grandchildren by employing folk remedies, which confuse her children and especially her grandchildren. As the storm later intensifies again, Kane becomes more disoriented and mistakenly confuses the storm for the atmospheric disturbance caused by the bombing of Nagasaki which she witnessed visually from a safe distance when her husband was killed many years ago. In her disoriented state, Kane decides that she must save her husband, still alive in her memory, from the impending atomic blast. With all her remaining strength, she takes her small umbrella to battle the storm on foot on the way to warn her husband in Nagasaki of the mortal threat still fresh in her mind of the atomic blast which she cannot forget.

The series centres on the life of twin children, a brother and sister, Lucy and Louie, and their fears about their new baby brother, Billy Bob. BB3B actually stands for Billy Bob Third Baby. The plot generally involves a circumstance where the twins suspect the brother as usual of being an extraterrestrial, and they go on a wild adventure trying to prove it and stop him from launching an invasion. The twins are babysat by Chubba, a teenage boy with a fondness for pizza. Chubba often goes along with the idea of an alien brother, sometimes very seriously, and at one point he cracks and tells the parents of the twins plans to build a time machine. The show is set in the fictional American city of Sunnyfield, which is shown as having a central urban area and outer suburban area, the latter being the home of the family portrayed. The twins' grandmother lives in a trailer in the house's front garden.

Set in San Francisco, ''Play It Again, Sam'' begins with the closing scenes of ''Casablanca'', with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The main character, Allan Felix, is seen watching the film in a cinema, mouth agape. He leaves the cinema regretting that he will never be like Rick.

Apart from apparitions of Bogart, Allan also has frequent flashbacks of conversations with his ex-wife, Nancy, who constantly ridiculed his sexual inadequacy. Allan has just been through a messy divorce. His best friend, Dick Christie, and Dick's wife, Linda, try to convince him to go out with women again, setting him up on a series of blind dates, all of which turn out badly. Throughout the film, he is seen receiving dating advice from the ghost of Bogart, who is visible and audible only to Allan. Allan's ex-wife Nancy also makes fantasy appearances, as he imagines conversations with her about the breakdown of their marriage. On one occasion, the fantasy seems to run out of control, with both Bogart and Nancy appearing.

When it comes to women, he attempts to become sexy and sophisticated, in particular he tries to be like his idol, Bogart, only to end up ruining his chances by being too clumsy. Eventually, he develops feelings for Linda, around whom he feels relatively at ease and does not feel the need to put on the mask. At the point where he finally makes his move on Linda (aided by comments from Bogart), a vision of his ex-wife appears and shoots Bogart, leaving him without advice. He then makes an awkward move. Linda runs off but returns, realizing that Allan loves her. The song "As Time Goes By" and flashes from ''Casablanca'' accompany their kiss.

However, their relationship is doomed, just as it was for Rick and Ilsa in ''Casablanca''. Dick returns early from Cleveland and confides to Allan that he thinks Linda is having an affair, not realizing that her affair is with Allan. Dick expresses to Allan his love for Linda.

The ending is an allusion to ''Casablanca'''s famous ending. Dick is catching a flight to Cleveland, Linda is after him, and Allan is chasing Linda. The fog, the aircraft engine start-ups, the trenchcoats, and the dialogue are all reminiscent of the film, as Allan nobly explains to Linda why she has to go with her husband, rather than stay behind with him.

Allan quotes a closing line from ''Casablanca'', saying, "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." "That is beautiful", Linda says, causing Allan to admit, "It's from ''Casablanca''. ... I've waited my whole life to say it!" His journey is complete. Bogart praises him, saying that since he has learned how to be himself now, he doesn't need him for advice anymore. The music from the scene in ''Casablanca'' resumes the theme "As Time Goes By", and the film ends.

A few days before Christmas, Glasgow radio disc jockey Allan "Dicky" Bird is stunned when Maddy (Eleanor David), his kleptomaniac girlfriend of four years, suddenly announces that she is moving out. His doctor friend Colin (Patrick Malahide) tries to console him, but Bird is heartbroken.

One day, he goes for a drive to take his mind off his troubles. Noticing an attractive girl, Charlotte (Clare Grogan), in the back of a "Mr. Bunny" ice cream van, he follows it under a railway bridge on a whim and when the van stops, purchases an ice cream cone. (As in ''Alice in Wonderland'', the protagonist has followed a rabbit through a tunnel, with sometimes bizarre consequences.) To his amazement, three men drive up and proceed to smash up the van with baseball bats. The occupants retaliate with squirts of raspberry sauce. By sheer chance, Bird finds himself involved in a turf war between rival Italian ice cream vendors: the young interloper Trevor (Alex Norton) and the older, more established "Mr. McCool" (Roberto Bernardi).

As an admired local celebrity, Bird meets with McCool and his sons Bruno, Paolo, and Renato. He then goes back and forth between them and Trevor and Charlotte (later revealed to be McCool's rebellious daughter), trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Various misadventures follow, with his red BMW 323i Baur convertible suffering more and more damage each time. Bird becomes obsessed with resolving the war. To contact the combatants, he starts broadcasting coded messages on his early morning show, causing Hilary (Rikki Fulton), his boss, to ask his secretary if Mr. Bird's contract includes a "sanity clause". Hilary then orders Bird to see a psychiatrist about the Mr. Bunny he keeps trying to reach.

In the end, Bird proposes that the rival entrepreneurs, who turn out to be uncle and nephew, join forces to market a new treat: ice cream fritters. Both sides are impressed by the product's potential. It appeals both to Trevor's fish and chips frying background as well as Mr. McCool's ice cream expertise. Since Bird alone knows the secret ingredient of the ancient Chinese recipe, he cuts himself in for 30% of the gross as well as repairs to his abused car.

During the credits, he is heard trying to record a commercial for the new product: "Frosty Hots".

The memoir is about Simon's relationship with her sister Beth, who has an intellectual disability and who spends her days riding the fixed route buses in the city of Reading, Pennsylvania where she lives. Beth also lives independently, has a boyfriend named Jesse, and receives supports from two caring Direct Support Professionals, Vera and Olivia. Rachel is a busy writer and professor who loves her sister, but by the time they are in their late thirties, they've grown apart. When Beth asks Rachel to ride the buses with her for a year, Rachel reluctantly agrees. The book chronicles that year, during which Rachel befriends the bus drivers, Jesse, and Olivia, and learns about such key civil rights issues as self-determination and People-first language. The story in the present alternates with the story of the sisters' tumultuous family history, which also presents the struggles and pleasures of siblings of people with disabilities.

In a flashback set seven years earlier, Brian is born in a puppy mill near Austin, Texas and taken from his mother. In the present, Brian tells his psychiatrist about the memory. Afterward, Brian volunteers to pick up Stewie from his vacation at his grandparents' summer home in Palm Springs, California, where Stewie frames a maid for stealing to amuse himself at dinner.

At the airport bar, Brian gets drunk and, when Stewie comes to find him, their plane tickets are stolen. They stop at a decrepit motel, where Stewie tries calling home, but fails because he believes his phone number is 867-5309. The next day, they have to escape and hotwire a car due to their credit card being rejected. Eventually, they visit the puppy mill after being in a caravan of migrants and discover Brian’s mother was stuffed and used as a table. A horrified Brian decides to take her remains and bury them. To get home, Stewie and Brian masquerade as crop dusters to steal a plane, which they immediately crash.

When Stewie and Brian return home, Lois asks Stewie about the trip, and Stewie covers up for Brian by saying the trip was "Smooth sailing through calm seas". Lois leaves and Brian tells Stewie that he is thankful to Stewie for covering for him, and asks Stewie if there's anything he can do to repay him. At first, it appears that Stewie wishes to make him his servant by providing an example with an episode of ''The Brady Bunch'', although it turns out that Stewie wants Brian to tape that episode for him.

Meanwhile, Lois urges Peter to watch relationship videos with her, but the videos turn out to be pornography hosted by Dr. Amanda Rebecca, who strips after asking the women to leave the room. Peter becomes addicted to the videos, much to Lois's chagrin. She gets herself on the end of one of the tapes in black lingerie and entices Peter. While kissing, Peter rewinds the tape, playing the part of Lois taking her robe off over and over.

A hacker shuts down a hydroelectric power plant. When the helicopter carrying Tom Jorgensen, the man who is the "single most valuable weapon in the war against terror", tragically collides against the dam, all of the CIA's remaining resources are focused on catching the hacker. But first they practice for the father-son softball game. Stan talks up Steve as an "absolute warrior", which Steve of course is not, outside of ''Dungeons & Dragons''. He takes Steve to the batting cage to polish his skills, only to have the "big slugger" show that he is not the athlete that Stan thinks he is. So Steve can see how professionals hit the ball, Stan takes Steve and his friends to a Yankees game and to the locker room to meet Derek Jeter. But when the four nerds take off their baseball jackets to reveal not Yankees uniforms but Star Trek uniforms, Jeter tells Stan that his son is a geek.

In denial, Stan runs home. He finds Steve's nerd toys, and an algebra book hidden inside a pornography magazine. Horrified, he tells his wife Francine that he would prefer Steve to be the product of a torrid affair than for such a nerd be his own child. He breaks out in a stress rash and grinds his teeth into misalignment. Stan ditches Steve (pretending it was raining) and brings a mid-20s-aged African-American ringer ("Darnelle" Smith) instead to the softball game. Steve figures out he has been ditched and becomes angry. Stan goes to the dentist, because he now needs to get braces due to his being a "class A grinder." Now that Stan has zits and braces, the other CIA agents beat him up and make fun of him. They ditch him when they go on a mosque raid, in exactly the same way that Stan ditched Steve. Stan returns home to the basement and finds that the hacker's language is the same language used in Steve's card game, "Elvish." Steve's friend Snot adjusts Stan's braces' "rear bracket" to get rid of his lisp, and they translate the hacker's notes, discovering who the hacker is. Stan's stress zits go away. They go to the science fiction convention to find the hacker, "Dan Vebber", a J.R.R. Tolkien fan who "hopes to create a Middle-Earth in the here and now."

Roger feels cooped up in the house, like it is a prison without the thrill of a daily cavity search. Hayley's first idea, going to the beach with Roger posing as a Saudi exchange student and thus dressed in a burqa, does not satisfy him. Next, Roger gets a job as a Jumbo Juice costumed advertising man, but this ends when the Taco King mascot beats him up for being in his territory. Hayley takes Roger to the science fiction convention, where he can pretend to just be in costume. At the convention, Roger finds that the one human he probed (and whose Celica he set fire to) is there. The human's name is Kurt, and he went insane after the abduction. Roger spends the next two hours in the bathroom hiding from Kurt, both because the probing is presented with the undertone of a one night stand and because Kurt wants to show Roger to his ex-wife Eileen to prove aliens exist, which would blow Roger's cover. Stan and the four nerds look for Dan Vebber, who is giving a keynote on Frodo Baggins v. Luke Skywalker. After a fight and chase, Stan and Steve corner Dan Vebber. Steve burns a pair of Peter Jackson's underwear to distract Dan, before Stan shoots Dan in the leg. Stan tells Avery that the credit belongs to Steve.

Stewie is obsessed with a British television program called ''Jolly Farm Revue'', a colorful children's TV show featuring several imaginary characters. Reluctant to stay in Quahog, Stewie decides to travel to "Jolly Farm" in London and live there forever. Desperate, he goes to the local airport and stows away on a transatlantic flight, intending to travel to Britain, and to find the BBC studios where Jolly Farm Revue is filmed. Brian tries to stop Stewie from leaving Rhode Island, and follows him onboard the plane. When he finally finds Stewie, the plane takes off and lands in the Middle East.

Brian begins to search for a way to get back to the United States, but Stewie refuses to leave with him and insists they continue to London. Brian and Stewie search for a camel to use as transportation, and they perform a musical number as a diversion in order to steal one. They begin their journey, but the camel dies in the middle of the desert. They soon find a nearby Comfort Inn, however, in which to stay. They steal a hot air balloon from the hotel premises and make their way to Vatican City, embarrassing the Pope upon landing, then traveling by train from Switzerland to Munich, and end up in Amsterdam. Upon finally arriving at the BBC Television Centre, Stewie is shocked to discover that the farm is a set, and his beloved characters are merely burnt-out, vulgar actors. Heartbroken, Stewie decides to travel back home with Brian to Quahog after getting revenge at the Mother Maggie actress for kicking him by defecating in her shoes. This situation also causes Stewie to lose interest in the show.

Meanwhile, Peter is overjoyed to hear about Kiss-stock, a five-night set of concerts in New England by his favorite band, Kiss. He and his wife, Lois, dress in face paint and leather just like the band members in Kiss, as does the rest of the crowd, and they manage to stand in the front row. When Gene Simmons points the microphone at Lois as a way to prompt her to sing the next line in the chorus of "Rock and Roll All Nite," only to discover that she doesn't know the words, shaming Peter. Deeply saddened by this, Gene and Paul Stanley leave the stage, leaving Ace Frehley and Peter Criss to perform "Chattanooga Choo Choo" to cheer up the displeased audience.

After the concert, Peter accuses Lois of only pretending to be a Kiss enthusiast, and they leave the concert venue in disgrace. Later that night, Peter and Lois stop at a Denny's on the way home from the concert. The Kiss members are seated at another table, and Lois recognizes Gene without his "Demon" make-up as Chaim Witz (Gene Simmons' birth name), an old friend. Peter is amazed to discover that Lois or "Loose Lois" had dated Gene when they were in high school. Peter's faith in Lois is then restored, and he proudly shares the news on public-access television that "my wife did Kiss."

''The Story of B'' is presented as a diary of the American first-person narrator and protagonist, Fr. Jared Osborne, a Roman Catholic priest of the (fictitious) Laurentian order. The Laurentians have traditionally made it their duty to be the first group to recognize the Antichrist. With this mission in mind, an esteemed member of the order, Fr. Bernard Lulfre, personally tasks Jared with investigating an itinerant American lecturer, Charles Atterley, who has gained notable attention in Europe and whose ideas the Laurentians consider a potential danger to humankind. Although told that Atterley was last spotted in Austria, Jared is initially unable to track down the enigmatic preacher. Upon discovering that Atterley is more commonly known to the public as "B", Jared at last discovers him on a lecture circuit throughout major cities in Germany. Jared begins to attend each of B's speeches and takes verbatim notes that he faxes back to Lulfre. Ultimately pressed for a judgment on the possibility of B's being the Antichrist, Jared is driven to penetrate B's inner circle where he soon finds his religious foundations shaken to their core.

Jared meets with and soon gets to know B personally. Although B immediately understands that Jared is a potential threat to himself and his movement, he does not seem to be as suspicious of or cold toward Jared as are the rest of B's cohort, including B's closest companion, the extremely distrusting, lupus-stricken Shirin. Instead, B welcomes Jared and seems legitimately motivated to educate him, even presenting his teachings to Jared one-on-one. Among the tenets of B's philosophy are: an advocacy of new tribalism and the "Great Remembering"—which is his idea humanity has forgotten its hunter-gatherer history and should reclaim this forgotten knowledge that once steadily supported humanity's survival—as well as an opposition to "totalitarian agriculture", the style of agriculture whereby its practitioners destroy all competition and assume all resources are made only for their own use. Jared finds himself logically supporting these and others of B's ideas, though is unable to rationalize them in terms of his religious convictions.

On a train after one of B's lectures, Jared stumbles upon the murdered body of B in an empty railroad car. B's followers immediately suspect Jared or his organization. To Jared's surprise, Shirin resumes Atterley's lectures where he left off and claims that ''she'' is now B. Even more surprising, she begrudgingly continues to personally tutor Jared in B's philosophy, though she openly calls Jared stupid, not because he lacks the capacity to learn but because she has never seen a person "with so much mental equipment being put to so little use". Shirin's further teachings include the idea of a Law of Life, the concept that storytelling may be a genetic characteristic of humans, the promotion of animism, and the notion that totalitarian agriculture results in ecological imbalance and over-population, which themselves are rapidly leading to humankind's self-destruction. Jared begins to see how he cannot remain devout to his religion and in agreement with B's teachings simultaneously.

The diary abruptly picks up when Jared regains consciousness after surviving a mysterious explosion. In the hospital, Jared attempts to piece together his memories, chronicling that one of B's lecture theatres was bombed, and Shirin and B's inner circle are presumably all dead. Flown back to the United States to recuperate, Jared eventually confronts Fr. Lulfre, from whom he learns that the Laurentian order indeed authorized both Atterley's assassination and the bombing of the theatre. Jared renounces his devotion to the order and returns hastily back to Europe, desperately searching for any information about possible survivors of the bombing and lamenting his lack of knowledge about the people he seeks out, for example, the fact that he never even learned Shirin's last name. Ultimately, Jared recalls that the theatre had a tunnel through which Shirin and the others might have escaped. Visiting the mouth of the tunnel, which is barricaded by wooden planks, Jared finds contact information engraved in the wood. He is later reunited with Shirin and the others, and the memory comes flooding in that he warned them to flee moments before the explosion, thus saving their lives.

A brief epilogue explains that Jared and Shirin plan to completely disappear from the public eye together. Moments before Jared must leave to board a plane, he urges the spreading of B's philosophy and writes the final words of his diary: that Charles Atterley, Shirin, he, and the reader, too, are all B.

The series followed the story of Black Jack Savage (Steven Williams), the ghost of a legendary 17th-century Caribbean pirate who teams up with Barry Tarberry (Daniel Hugh Kelly), a crooked Wall Street con artist who has escaped trial by coming to the Caribbean. Facing eternal damnation, both of them discover that they need to save 100 lives to compensate for the damage done by their sinful lives, and thus save their own souls.

Any time Black Jack tries to leave the safety of his castle haunt on San Pietro Island, he is fair game for the "snarks". They are entities that can transport Jack to Hell through an entrance at the base of the tree where he was originally hanged. Tarberry has his own difficulties dodging the government agents sent to extradite him back to the United States to stand trial for his crimes. Other characters on San Pietro include the corrupt governor-general, Abel Vasquez (Bert Rosario), with whom Tarberry is able to make another deal, and island activist Danielle (Roma Downey), who is constantly trying to help protect the locals from the effects of Vasquez's corruption and is not above enlisting Tarberry's help in doing so.

The show follows the misadventures of both Black Jack and his human counterpart as they team up to dodge the law, both supernatural and secular, to make their 100 soul quota and thus win their way to salvation. Each episode ended with a graphic telling the viewers "??? Lives To Go..."

''Blackbird'' powerboat

A regular part of every episode was an appearance of the high tech powerboat. Built by scientist/inventor Logan "FX" Murphy (played by Steve Hytner), the ''Blackbird'' was a black trimaran speedboat that resembled a SR-71 reconnaissance plane. It was originally commissioned by the previous owner of Blackbird Castle, a drug runner. After his arrest, Tarberry took possession of the ''Blackbird'' from Murphy. When not in use, the ''Blackbird'' was moored at a secret dock at Blackbird Castle on San Pietro Island.

Slackers Bones Conway (Pauly Shore) and Jack Kaufman (Andy Dick) work at "Crazy Boys" discount electronics store in Glendale, California. While goofing off on the job, both aspire to open their own electronics store in the future. Both are fired though after destroying a rack of television sets.

Looking to score some quick start-up money for their store and believing that the commitment will be minimal (they are easily lured by the recruiting slogan "One weekend a month, two weeks a year"), the two join the United States Army Reserves. Bones chooses water purification for their field since his brother was an experienced pool man and the field appeared to be devoid of combat. After surviving basic training, they attend water purification training, meeting up with Christine Jones (Lori Petty), a female recruit longing for infantry, and skittish dental student Fred Ostroff (David Alan Grier). Adopting the nickname of "waterboys", the group then returns to Glendale.

Unbeknownst to Bones and Jack, Libya has been planning an invasion of Chad, and they are consequently called up for service overseas. They first try to get a military discharge by pretending to be homosexuals, but they fail.

Upon arriving in Chad, the four do not get along well with the full-time soldiers, particularly Special Forces Staff Sergeant Stern (Esai Morales). On a routine mission to resupply a forward base, their convoy is ambushed by a Libyan commando squad. The misfit reserves are thought to have been killed in action (KIA) and are left to fend for themselves. After a few days lost in the desert, they are captured by the Libyan forces and spend a night in a Libyan POW camp. There the reservists meet up with Staff Sergeant Stern who has been shot and captured in an ambush. He briefs them on his failed mission to rendezvous with two HALOed Fast Attack vehicles and destroy mobile Scud launchers carrying missiles armed with chemical warheads aimed at American bases in the region.

During an airstrike, the four reservists and Stern escape and find the Fast Attack vehicles. They make contact with the American headquarters and are ordered to finish the Special Forces' mission. After locating the missiles, they have a difficult time holding off a battalion of Libyans while painting the missiles with a laser for an incoming airstrike. The airstrike goes off-target, forcing the reservists to destroy the missiles themselves. Bones grabs an AT4 anti-tank rocket launcher and destroys the Scud launcher base in one hit, but not before accidentally firing one rocket backwards, forcing the group to use the last rocket they have.

The "waterboys" return home as heroes. At the end of the film, they open up their electronics shop next to an Army recruiting station — where two men like themselves are looking skeptical about joining the reserves.

Gwen Cummings is an alcoholic who spends her nights in a drunken haze with her boyfriend, Jasper. They arrive late and disheveled to her sister Lily's wedding, where Gwen knocks over the wedding cake and drunkenly steals a limousine, crashing into a house. Given a choice between jail time or 28 days in a rehab center, she chooses rehab.

Gwen is introduced to a variety of patients: hypersexual cocaine addict Oliver, former doctor Daniel, mother of two Roshanda, older addict Bobbi Jean, Dutch immigrant Gerhardt, and Gwen’s roommate Andrea, a teenage heroin addict. Angry and resistant, Gwen refuses to take part in treatment or admit she is an alcoholic, but struggles with flashbacks of her mother, an addict who died of an overdose when Gwen and Lily were children.

On visiting day, Jasper slips Gwen a bottle of painkillers and they sneak off for an inebriated day together. Cornell, the facility’s director and a recovering addict himself, prepares to kick Gwen out to serve her jail sentence, but she still denies that she has a problem. Storming back to her room, she takes one of her smuggled pills, but spits it out and tosses the bottle out of her third-story window. After spending the day suffering withdrawal symptoms alone, she climbs out of the window to retrieve the pills. She falls, severely spraining her ankle, and is rescued by Eddie, a new patient.

Finally convinced that she has a problem, Gwen asks Cornell for another chance and begins to participate in the recovery process. Jasper visits and proposes to Gwen with champagne, which she throws in the lake. Returning to her room, she stops Andrea from cutting herself, and grows closer to her and their fellow addicts, who warn that Jasper does not take her sobriety seriously. Gwen learns that Eddie is a professional baseball player, and they share an impulsive kiss but form a friendship instead. Discovering that he is a fan of ''Santa Cruz'', Andrea’s favorite soap opera, Gwen and the group begin watching it together.

Lily attends a group therapy session, revealing that a drunken Gwen ruined her wedding with a humiliating speech, and leaves in disgust when Gwen dismisses Lily’s feelings. Andrea will soon be released, and Gwen arranges a farewell skit for the group to perform. Jasper shows up unannounced, finding Gwen with Eddie; picking a fight, he insults them both and Eddie punches him, straining his friendship with Gwen. She discovers Andrea dead in their bathroom from an overdose, and commits herself to restoring her relationship with her sister. They reconcile and Gwen leaves treatment, but not before Eddie warns her that Jasper is dangerous to her sobriety.

Jasper offers to make amends, but Gwen realizes he is unwilling to change to support her recovery. Leaving him and their old party friends at a bar, she encounters a horse on the street and is able to lift its hoof, an activity she struggled with in rehab. She breaks up with Jasper, and is later reunited with a sober Gerhardt at a floral shop. In a post-credits scene, Eddie recognizes an actor from ''Santa Cruz'' who arrives as a new patient.

In it, the players controlled neophyte superheroes looking to apply for membership in the Crusaders, an esteemed team of superheroes. The Crusaders roster consisted of:

Manta Man, their leader, whose wife was killed by pirates and to exact revenge he built a costume that gave him the power to fly, breathe underwater and emit blasts of electricity.

Enforcer, a secret agent who betrayed his agency and saved a scientist who had developed a secret formula. Drinking the formula, he gained the ability to generate force fields. Enforcer also uses a specialized pistol.

Dreamweaver, a college student who gained the power to create illusions or become invisible from a dream research experiment.

Laserfire, a teenager who gained powers of heat and light when he was caught in the thrust of an alien spacecraft taking off nearby.

Evergreen, part woman, part plant, and able to mentally control vegetation. At the time of the module, she does not know her true origins.

Blizzard, a comic book fan who decided to follow the lead of his print heroes when he developed his power to create ice.

The players need to contend with the Crusaders' opposite numbers during the adventure, a villain group called the Crushers. A few of its members include Mocker, a robot able to fire sonic blasts, Mercury Mercenary, a soldier of fortune with superhuman speed and Enforcer's personal archenemy, Shocker, who has acidic blood and electric blasts and yearns to have Evergreen's love as well, and Marionette, a midget who can control minds.

The film opens on Keith Vincent, a Hollywood composer, as he creates a new song called "Nocturne". As he plays his piano, a woman sits silently in the shadows and listens to the composer speak as he plays. But the mood changes a little when he says, "You're no longer the one," and encourages her to go away for a while. Moments later, as he alters the score with a pen, the composer is shot and killed.

The police think it is suicide, but detective Joe Warne suspects murder. He encounters Vincent's housekeeper, Susan Flanders, who had been sleeping in the house but had been wearing ear-plugs because "she didn't like the music". They take her in for questioning.

Warne begins looking for "Dolores", because he sees that the score for "Nocturne" still on the piano has a hand-written dedication to this name. The Filipino houseboy, Eujemio, arrives after a day off - he knows his employer was planning to meet a woman but he does not know who. He tells Warne that the composer was a womanizer who called all of his girlfriends Dolores. There is a line of female photos on the wall... one is missing.

The coroner returns a verdict of suicide but Warne continues to investigate despite being warned to stop by his boss. Warne follows a series of clues around Los Angeles. He spots that he is being followed by a large man and challenges him outside the Brown Derby.

Warne's ruthless questioning tactics lead several suspects to report him for abuse. Pursuing the case with dogged determination, the obsessed Warne is suspended from the police force. As he digs deeper into the murder, the clues draw him closer to Frances Ransom, but he deduces that she was framed by Ned Ford.

Ford was enraged that his wife Carol had merely been the composer's latest conquest. When he found out that the composer had no intention of marrying Carol, Ford decided to kill him. Warne turns Ford over to the police, and reveals to Frances that he knew almost from the beginning that she was not the murderer.

The story is about an anthropomorphic pirate seal named Havoc (Lang in the Japanese version), his young sidekick Tide (Land in the Japanese version), a girl named Bridget, and an evil walrus pirate named Bernardo. Bernardo is looking for Emeralda, a gem with powers that can cause whole armies to be toppled. A map shows where Emeralda is located, and Bernardo is looking for the map. Havoc and Tide discover Bridget unconscious at a beach. When she wakes up in a dwelling, she instructs Havoc to keep her and the map safe. Havoc hides the map in a cliff. After Bernardo's henchmen kidnaps Bridget and Tide, Havoc sets off to rescue them.

The book has three separate but overlapping stories, with the repeated appearance of shared characters. The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, the overarching setting of the trilogy, functions as a shared location of their convergence and resolution.

The first story features former cop Berry Rydell, the protagonist of ''Virtual Light''. Rydell quits a temporary job as a security guard at the Lucky Dragon convenience store to run errands for atrophied computer hacker Colin Laney (the protagonist of ''Idoru''), who lives in a cardboard box in a subway in Shinjuku, Tokyo. As a child, Laney was the subject of pharmaceutical trials which damaged his nervous system. As a result, he has a form of attention deficit disorder but gains the ability to discern nodal points in the undifferentiated flow of information, and from that he acquires a certain predictive faculty. This makes him ideal for the role of "netrunner" or data analyst. A side effect of 5-SB, the drug administered to Laney, causes the user to become attached to strong personalities. As a result, Laney has become obsessed with media baron Cody Harwood of Harwood/Levine, a powerful public relations firm. He spends his life surfing the net from his enclave in the subway, searching for traces of Harwood in the media. From this, Laney foresees a crucial historical shift which may precede the end of the world "as we know it". He predicts that Harwood, who had also taken 5-SB before (albeit voluntarily, with the knowledge of the consequences), knows this and will try to shape this historical shift to his liking. To stop Harwood, Laney hires Rydell under the guise of a courier to travel to San Francisco where he believes the next nodal point will congeal.

The second story concerns ex-bicycle messenger Chevette Washington, also from ''Virtual Light'', who is on the run from her ex-boyfriend. She escapes to her former home, San Francisco's bridge community, to find refuge and revisit her past. She is accompanied by Tessa, an Australian media sciences student who visits the bridge to film a documentary on "interstitial communities".

The third story follows a mysterious, left-handed mercenary named Konrad. Although Konrad is employed by Harwood, he appears to be directed by his own motives. In particular, Konrad aligns his movements with the Tao, the spontaneous, universal energy path of Taoist philosophy.

Ryan Weaver, also known as the Lonely Hearts Strangler, an accused serial killer and rapist, is arrested in New York City despite his claims of innocence. Even though police lieutenant Aldo Hines at one point broke protocol during the arrest (which later enraged Weaver), the authorities have enough hard evidence to have Weaver transported to Los Angeles to face trial. He and another prisoner, a bank robber named Stubbs, are escorted by four US marshals on a Boeing 747-200 on a commercial flight. Even though it is Christmas Eve, the 747 is nearly empty, with only eleven people on board.

During the flight, Stubbs breaks free while using the bathroom and begins a shootout with the marshals. A stray bullet fired from one of the marshals' sidearms punches a hole in the fuselage, instantly triggering an explosive decompression before the hole is sealed with a briefcase. Amidst the chaos, the captain is fatally shot and the first officer dies when his head slams into the yoke, disengaging the autopilot in the process. Weaver frees himself and attempts to save the last remaining marshal, but fails when both Stubbs shoots the marshal dead, after being shot himself.

Weaver appears to be horrified by the ordeal, increasing the passengers' trust in him. With the pilots dead, Teri Halloran, a flight attendant, makes her way into the cockpit and learns she is the only one left capable of keeping the 747 from crashing. To make matters worse, the plane is heading into a storm which threatens severe turbulence.

Weaver's behavior becomes increasingly erratic since he is paranoid of being sentenced to death upon landing and occasionally suffers nervous breakdowns. He then locks the passengers in the crew's cabin then attacks and strangles Maggie, one of the other flight attendants, to death. Ryan reveals that he did in fact commit the murders that he's accused of, although he continues to insist that the evidence against him was planted by Hines. He then calls the FBI control center at LAX and threatens to crash the 747 into their facility since he is now willing to do anything to avoid being arrested. His motives had become clear to Teri after she speaks, via the aircraft's radio, with Hines.

Teri must be instructed by radio from Captain Bowen how to reprogram the autopilot to land at LAX, but her task is complicated by Weaver's obscene and constant interruptions. After the plane barely survives turbulence during the storm, Weaver breaks into the avionics bay and smashes the server running the primary autopilot software, rendering the first landing attempt unsuccessful, and forcing a last second go-around. It skims a rooftop Japanese restaurant and a multi-story parking garage, but regains the air. The plane's landing gear picks up a Ford Ranger pickup, which hinders the next landing at LAX. The backup autopilot has now engaged, and Teri makes efforts to turn the plane around. The LAX airport chief sends an F-14 Tomcat to intercept the 747.

Teri begs LAX not to have her shot down, insisting she can land the plane. Weaver breaks into the cockpit with an axe and tries to kill her, but the F-14 destroys the truck instead, shaking the 747 and giving Teri a chance to attack. Teri retrieves a .38 revolver that one of the marshals was forced to unload and turn over to the captain upon boarding, and, in the midst of Weaver's assault, manages to load a bullet that fell out of the marshal's pocket. She finally shoots Weaver through the head and kills him. Teri returns to the pilot's seat and with Bowen's radio assistance, safely lands the 747 using the autopilot. Despite Weaver's claims that he killed them all, the other crew and passengers are found alive.

Act I

Carol, a college student, is in the office of her professor, John. She expresses frustration that she does not understand the material in his class, despite having read the assigned books and attending his lectures. Of particular concern is a book written by John himself, wherein he questions the modern insistence that everyone participate in higher education, referring to it as "systematic hazing". While talking with Carol, John is often interrupted by the phone ringing. He is about to be granted tenure along with a handsome raise. Anticipating this, John is about to close on a new house, but his wife repeatedly calls with last-minute issues, demanding that he meet her at the home as soon as possible.

After initially appearing insensitive, John eventually decides to help Carol, telling her that he "likes her" and that he also felt similar frustrations as a student. He takes the blame for her not understanding what he is talking about and agrees to give her an "A" if she'll return to his office several more times to discuss the material. At one heated point in the discussion he goes to put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but she violently shakes it off. Finally, Carol has warmed to John and is on the verge of divulging a secret when the phone rings again and John's wife tells him that the realtor problems were all a scheme to get him back to the house for a surprise reception in his honor. He departs for home immediately.

Act II

Carol is back in John's office, but more poised than before. His tenure is threatened because Carol has filed a formal complaint with the committee, accusing him of sexual harassment. She has documented daily occurrences of sexist remarks by John toward his students and describes his offer of giving her an "A" if she agrees to meet with him privately in his office. John hopes to resolve the matter privately with Carol so that the complaint may be withdrawn from the tenure committee, saying he does not understand how his actions could have offended her so and attempting to convince her that he was only trying to help her without any ulterior motive. Carol decides it's best that she leave, but John stands in front of the door and grabs hold of her. Carol screams for help.

Act III

John has been denied tenure and suspended, with a possible dismissal, and is packing up his office. He has not been home to see his wife and family, staying at a hotel for two days trying to work out in his head what has happened. He has asked Carol to speak to him once more and she has obliged. Carol is even more forceful to name her instructor's flaws, finding it hypocritical that a college professor could question the very system that offers him employment and gives him an academic platform to expound his views. She also makes reference to "her group", on whose behalf she speaks and from whom she seems to be getting advice and support as she files her complaints.

In passing, John mentions that he has not been home recently. Carol reveals that if he had, he would have learned that her charges against him now amount to attempted rape. Carol offers to drop her charges if John would agree to her group's list of books to be removed from the university, which includes his own. John refuses, angrily telling her to leave his office as his phone rings again. It is his wife, whom he affectionately calls "baby". Carol tells him not to refer to his wife that way. This causes John to finally snap completely and he savagely beats her, screaming obscenities and holding a chair above her head as she cowers on the floor. As John calms down, realizing what he's just done, he says, ". . . well . . ." The play ends with Carol saying, "Yes...that's right."

Variations on the ending

There have been several endings produced for the end of Act III. In the original Cambridge production in May 1992, after John beats Carol, she stands and a defeated John reads a confessional statement that Carol has prepared. In the Fall 1992 production in New York, the ending is shortened, and after the beating, Carol ambiguously says "Well", and John responds "Yes. That's right". In the 1993 London production directed by Pinter, the director restored the longer Cambridge ending. The 1994 movie adaptation directed by Mamet uses the briefer ending, but after Carol says "Well", John replies "Oh my God".

The episode is interspersed with flashbacks, detailing Simon and River's lives before River's abduction: Simon studying to fulfill his family's expectations, River engaging in flights of imagination while correcting his textbooks, and their father encouraging Simon to become a "brilliant doctor". Simon's relationship with his parents begins to sour when River is sent to an elite, though secretive, academy. Simon does not hear from her in a while, then becomes concerned when she sends him a letter referring to events which never happened. Their parents are untroubled by River's letter, believing she is just playing games again. Simon believes it to be a coded message asking for help. When Simon gets arrested for trespassing while trying to find River, his father bails him out, but warns him that he will be disowned if he gets in trouble again.

In the present day, Simon continues to try and diagnose River's condition, while Mal demands that they stay out of the way while he conducts business. Upon arriving at the backwater colony of Jiangyin, Shepherd Book aids Mal and Jayne in unloading and penning their cattle and meeting with the Grange brothers, their disreputable buyers. Just as they come to an agreement on price, the local marshals arrive to arrest the brothers for murder, and Book is seriously wounded in the ensuing gunfight.

Meanwhile, Simon and River join Inara and Kaylee in town as the women are shopping. Although Kaylee contemplates buying something nice for Simon, the doctor proceeds to insult her and her beloved ''Serenity'' with his complaints about their predicament, and the Tams are left to their own devices. Simon quickly discovers River has wandered off. She finds a maypole dance, and Simon watches his sister enjoy herself for a change. River's ecstatic dancing suddenly falters when Book is shot, but before Simon can react to his sister's distress, he is kidnapped by three shabbily-dressed men. River follows and is seized as well.

Mal and Zoe manage to get Book back to ''Serenity'' to stabilize him. When Wash is unable to find Simon to help Book, Mal realizes that Simon and River have probably been taken by local hill-folk, who are known to kidnap people, especially skilled workers, when they need their talents. He makes the decision to abandon the Tams in order to seek urgently needed medical help off-planet for Book. On Inara's insistence, they dock with the Alliance cruiser ''Magellan''; its captain refuses to help until Book tells them to check his identification card, at which point the captain orders immediate assistance. Mal and the rest of the crew wonder what kind of connections with the Alliance Book has to receive such treatment, but a recovering Book dodges Mal's questions, stating merely that "it's good to be home."

The hill folk initially welcome Simon and his sister, and Simon quickly takes up his new responsibilities as the town doctor. Doralee, the village teacher assigned to work as his nurse, merely suggests that Simon may well be in the place he is fated to be. Simon and River share a memory of their childhood, and River despairs of how her plight has cost Simon everything he worked for. When River tells Doralee about the cause of a young mute girl's silence, the devout woman believes her to be a witch and summons the town leader, who orders River to be burned alive when she reveals that he murdered his predecessor. Simon tries to talk the villagers down, but when these efforts fail, he instead chooses to stand beside her as the fire is lit. ''Serenity'' then swoops over the village, and with Jayne positioned above with a sniper rifle, Mal and Zoe force the villagers at gunpoint to release the Tams.

As ''Serenity'' leaves Jiangyin, Simon asks Mal why he came back for them, and Mal explains off-handedly that Simon is part of his crew. "But you don't even like me," Simon reminds him. "Why'd you do it?" "You're on my crew," Mal repeats. "Why are we still talking about this?"

A covered wagon makes its way through a shallow river. When bandits on horseback hold it up, the driver, Jayne, and his "wife" Mal pull their weapons on them. Mal offers them the choice of jail or death. In the ensuing shootout, Mal, Jayne and Zoe swiftly kill the bandits. The crew then celebrates at a party that evening, thrown in their honor by a rural settlement that had been plagued by the outlaws. Mal dances with a beautiful young woman, who gives him a wreath and a bowl of wine to drink, while the village elder gives Jayne a wooden rainstick.

After ''Serenity'' is underway again, Mal encounters a stowaway in the cargo bay: the young woman from the party, who gives her name as Saffron and informs him that she is his wife. Shepherd Book reads up on the local customs of Saffron's homeworld and informs Mal that he had inadvertently taken part in the local marriage ritual by accepting a wreath of flowers, drinking her wine, and dancing together. Mal has a heart-to-heart talk with Saffron, saying that he doesn't want to be married and urging her to be her own woman. Despite this, Saffron cooks him a meal and offers to wash his feet. Jayne attempts to trade his favorite gun, "Vera", for Saffron, but Mal turns him down.

When Mal enters his quarters later, Saffron manages to seduce and kiss him. However, her lips turn out to be coated with a narcotic which renders him unconscious. Saffron heads to the cockpit and tries her wiles on Wash. When she is unsuccessful, Saffron instead knocks him out with a kick to the back of the head. She quickly takes control of the ship, setting it on a new course and sabotaging the controls, then welding the door shut behind her as she leaves. Running to a shuttle to escape, she meets Inara and tries to seduce her too. Aware that Saffron is lying, Inara plays along to buy time, but the ship's proximity alarm goes off. Inara compliments Saffron on her deception before the latter pushes her aside, hijacks the shuttle, and escapes. After Inara finds Mal unconscious, she kisses him, then collapses next to his body after calling for help.

After breaking into the bridge, Kaylee and Wash are able to restore only the ''Serenity'''s navigational system. They are headed straight for a "net", operated by two men who specialize in stripping lone vessels for parts. Book explains that the net is designed to electrocute everyone inside, making the operators' work easier. Mal has Jayne put Vera inside a space suit, then fire a bullet outside at a vulnerable portion of the net, disabling it. Jayne also shoots out the glass window of the operators' control unit, causing the two men to be asphyxiated by the vacuum of space.

Later, on a snow-covered planet, Mal bursts into Saffron's cabin and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that he will kill her if she ever tries to trick him again. Saffron admits that she respects Mal for not taking advantage of her like most of her previous marks, and before Mal leaves, he asks for her real name. Saffron hesitates, and Mal knocks her out cold before admitting to himself that she would have just lied again. Back on ''Serenity'', Mal presses Inara for an explanation of her supposed dizziness. Inara thinks Mal knows about the kiss and agrees to "not play" with him, but Mal, with a grin on his face, says he thinks she just kissed Saffron before walking out, leaving Inara with a confused expression.

The episode opens with Kaylee insisting that the always-proper Simon never uses swear words, despite his protestations that he does whenever they're "appropriate". Inara departs for an overnight meeting with a client, while the rest of the crew prepares to disembark at the town of Canton to pick up some illegal goods for a client. Mal and Simon catch Jayne trying to use medical tape to hide a gun under his shirt, in violation of Canton's no-gun law. Jayne says he needs it because he has enemies on Canton, but Mal orders him to leave the gun behind.

The crew reaches Canton, with Simon posing as a merchant looking to purchase industrial clay and the others as his employees. Jayne is fearful, as years before he robbed the local magistrate, Higgins. After talking with the foreman, they enter the town, where they find a statue of the "Hero of Canton", which to Jayne's shock is him. At a tavern, the crew hears a folk song revealing that the locals, who refer to themselves as "mudders", worship Jayne as their savior. Jayne reveals that during the robbery, his getaway vehicle was damaged and he was forced to dump the stolen money to escape. The loot apparently rained down on the mudders, causing them to mistakingly believe that he robbed the magistrate to protest his corrupt rule. Jayne is recognized and the mudders surround and honor him. Mal's smuggling contact is horrified, fearing that the authorities will catch wind of their presence, but Mal decides to use Jayne's popularity to their advantage by convincing the mudders to throw a celebration for Jayne while they move the goods to ''Serenity''.

Inara meets with Higgins, who introduces her to his 26-year-old son Fess. Fess is still a virgin, so the magistrate has hired Inara to "make a man of him". She reassures Fess that there is nothing wrong with his being a virgin, and after having sex with him, talks about how he needs to be his own man and not let his father control his life. Higgins and his foreman release a half-blind man, Stitch Hessian, from what appears to have been four years of solitary confinement in a very small cell, giving him a loaded shotgun and telling him that this is his chance to get revenge on his old partner, Jayne.

On the ship, an agitated River tears up Shepard Book's Bible, insisting that it makes no sense and that she has to "fix" it. Book manages to calm her down and explains that the Bible cannot be understood in a logical or scientific sense, but rather acts as an instrument of faith that fixes people rather than needing fixing itself. Later, she attempts to repair and return it to him, but panics when she sees his wild head of hair (per the rules of his order) that he normally keeps in a tight bun. Zoe then forces Book to tie his hair back when River tries to hide from him.

Inara prepares to return to the ship. When Fess expresses puzzlement at not feeling any different now that his virginity is gone, she explains to him that being a man is about being old enough to ask such a question rather than just having sex. Inara then learns from Fess that Jayne is set to either be killed or arrested by the magistrate's men, and that the ship has been "land-locked". He tells her that he sympathizes with what Jayne did, and hopes that he can escape.

Mal returns to fetch Kaylee and Simon from the bar, finding the mechanic draped over the doctor on a couch. He tries to explain to Mal how "nothing happened", but once again manages to accidentally insult the frustrated Kaylee. Collecting a tipsy Jayne, they head off, but Kaylee stops Simon in his tracks with her scorn. As the doctor eats breakfast alone, Stitch arrives. The scarred criminal brutalizes him in an attempt to locate Jayne, but the roars of an approving crowd outside give away his location instead. Stitch drags Simon along as a hostage to confront Jayne.

Stitch tells the mudders that he helped Jayne steal the money, and that when they found themselves needing to reduce weight, Jayne chose to throw him out first instead of the money; Jayne retorts that Stitch would have done the same. Stitch then shoots, but a young mudder jumps in front of Jayne and is killed. Jayne kills Stitch with his knife, and screams at the mudders that he is no hero and that they shouldn't have to wait for someone to come along and solve all their problems. He then tears down his own statue and angrily grabs his knife from the hands of a young boy before storming off with the crew.

Wash attempts to start the ship, but is unable to achieve ignition due to the land-lock. It is quickly released, however, due to Fess using his position to order ''Serenity'''s release. Kaylee has a heart-to-heart talk with Simon but cannot resist briefly making him worry about what happened after the previous night's party. In the cargo bay, Jayne broods about the mudder's sacrifice and how the townsfolk will probably put the statue back up and continue to worship him. Mal attempts to explain to Jayne the hero worship is not about him, but about what the townsfolk need, but Jayne only replies: "Don't make no sense."

After dropping off Shepherd Book for a religious retreat, ''Serenity'' heads to Ariel, a central world of the Union of Allied Planets, where Inara is due for her annual Companion physical exam and license renewal. Following an incident in which River attacks him with a kitchen knife, Jayne demands that she and Simon be dismissed from the crew and left on Ariel. Mal declines to do so and puts Jayne in his place for insubordination, but privately warns Simon that River has to be kept under control. Simon acknowledges that his sister's condition is getting worse.

The crew is bemoaning their recent run of bad luck in finding jobs when Simon approaches them with a proposal. Aware that Ariel City has one of the Alliance's best hospitals, he decides to smuggle River in so he can scan her brain using the hospital's advanced diagnostic equipment. As payment, he informs the crew that all Alliance hospitals have well-stocked pharmaceutical lockers that are replenished daily, enabling them to steal millions of credits worth of drugs without anyone noticing.

Simon puts himself and River into medically-induced comas so they appear to be dead, allowing the crew to enter the hospital dressed in EMT uniforms on a refurbished medical shuttle Wash and Kaylee find in a scrapyard. The group then splits up, with Jayne assigned to keep tabs on Simon as he analyses River's condition while Mal and Zoe steal the drugs. Jayne secretly contacts an Alliance officer, McGuinness, and agrees to turn in the Tam siblings for their bounty. Once awakened, Simon, disguised as a doctor with River as his patient, brings her to the diagnostic ward and conducts his examination. He discovers that River's brain is missing its amygdala, preventing her from suppressing her emotions or negative thoughts.

With the analysis complete, Jayne leads the siblings to a rear entrance, where they are arrested by Alliance marshals; Jayne is double-crossed by McGuinness, who intends to keep the bounty for himself. Mal and Zoe return to the medical shuttle with the loot, but realize that Jayne and the Tams are late and head back into the hospital with their weapons to find them. The three prisoners are moved to a holding area, where Jayne and Simon overpower their guards and escape. Shortly afterwards, two blue-gloved men arrive to take custody of the Tams, using a mysterious sonic device to kill McGuinness and the other marshals when the pair learn that some of them talked to the Tams. Meanwhile, a terrified River leads Jayne and Simon through the rear of the hospital to a locked door, where Mal shoots out the lock and rescues them.

Inara returns to ''Serenity'' just as the crew arrives. Once everyone else has left the cargo area, Mal knocks Jayne out. Jayne awakens to find himself in an open airlock as the ship begins to leave Ariel's atmosphere. A terrified Jayne confesses his betrayal, and Mal tells him that when he betrays one of the crew, it's the same as betraying him. As Mal turns to leave, Jayne asks him not to tell the others about what he did. Mal silently agrees and seals the airlock, but leaves Jayne stuck inside for some time as punishment. Simon is about to administer a drug to his sister when River asks if its time to "go to sleep" again. Simon replies "No. It's time to wake up."

On ''Serenity'', as Simon reviews the data he collected on his sister, Shepherd Book looks over his shoulder, musing about a "warrior-poet" named Xiang Yu. Book cites one of Yu's quotes that suggests that the way to truly learn about someone is to torture them, and wonders if this was the purpose behind the brain surgery done on River. Simon disagrees, believing there was a specific goal the unknown surgeons were hoping to achieve. Elsewhere, crime lord Adelei Niska is torturing one of his men, also alluding to Xiang Yu. He is interrupted by a man who informed him that Mal's ship has been spotted nearby. Eager to take revenge on Mal for being the only man to ever cheat him on a deal, Niska orders that he be captured.

Back on ''Serenity'', Kaylee playfully chases River around the cargo bay for an apple she stole, despite Jayne having contributed a crate's worth to the ship's stores. Once she takes hold of the apple, Kaylee claims that "no power in the 'verse can stop me." Amid the noise, Inara urges Mal to respect the privacy of her imminently arriving client, a local councilor of some political importance. Mal agrees to do so, as he prepares to depart on a "milk run" to sell off a shipment of stolen medicine.

Later, Zoe and Wash puzzle over Jayne's generosity as they munch on the apples. Kaylee asks why Zoe and Mal always cut up their apples, and Zoe (and Mal, who joins them) tell a war story about the time Alliance troops gave their unit apples packed with hidden grenades. Wash sardonically embellishes the story, annoyed by the close friendship between Mal and his wife. Mal vetoes Wash's idea to improve their profit from the medicine sales by bypassing the local middlemen. Wash is surprised by this, and is furious to discover that Zoe herself had agreed with Mal's decision. He angrily tells Zoe that there is no room for "two husbands" in their marriage.

As Mal prepares to leave, Wash purposefully sabotages his shuttle's controls, demanding the chance to accompany Mal instead of Zoe. Mal reluctantly agrees. In her quarters, Inara massages the councilor, while remarking that when she chooses her rare female clients, she does so because they are extraordinary in some way, and hints that the councilor's gift is allowing Inara herself to relax and serve her own needs as well as the councilor's. At the exchange, Mal's contacts are killed by a sniper team, and he and Wash are tied up and taken off-planet. Zoe, Book, and Jayne go to look for them, and quickly deduce from the evidence that Niska was responsible.

On Niska's skyplex, Mal and Wash are tortured with an electroshock device; Mal deliberately provokes Wash by discussing his marital problems in order to keep him from passing out. The crew pools all of their money and gives it to Zoe, who goes to see Niska and tries to buy Mal and Wash's freedom. Niska says there is only enough for one man, and Zoe chooses Wash, leaving Mal behind to be tortured to the brink of death. Zoe gets Wash back to ''Serenity'', and organizes a rescue mission with the entire crew, except for Inara and River. As the others fight their way through the skyplex, Kaylee is cornered near the ''Serenity'', too frightened to shoot back. River finds her, takes Kaylee's gun, closes her eyes, and kills all of her attackers without hesitation.

Seeing his abductor distracted, Mal gets up effortlessly despite the hours of pain he's endured and proceeds to beat a terrified Niska before his torturer interferes, allowing the crime lord to escape. Zoe, Jayne, and Wash arrive and gun down Mal's attacker, saving his life. Back on the ship, Inara's former client provides Simon with the expensive medical technology needed to treat Mal's injuries. As Wash sits down to a bowl of "wife soup", Mal surprises him by declaring that he must sleep with Zoe to deal with any lingering sexual tension between them, causing Wash to abandon his meal so he can spend time with his wife. Back in the cargo hold, Kaylee stares at River with a look of fear on her face, no longer wanting to play with her.

Two LAPD cops, Detective Mitch Preston and Officer Trey Sellars, both from the Central Division, are paired for a reality police show and run into real trouble with a crime lord. Mitch shoots a news camera after a failed confrontation local drug dealer Lazy Boy, who escapes by using a custom-built gun. Maxxis Television, the fictional network that employed the cameraman, decides to sue the police department for $10 million, but will drop the lawsuit if Mitch agrees to star in a reality cop television show, which Trey later calls ''Showtime!''.

Trey enters the picture shortly after, as an LAPD officer who actually wants to be an actor while also trying to become a detective. He pays a friend to snatch the purse of the show's producer, Chase Renzi, and then retrieves it after a staged fight scene. Even though the deception is embarrassingly revealed, Chase is impressed and signs Trey on anyway. It is quickly revealed that the show's producers have little interest in filming an actual police officer's existence; they build a mini-movie set in the middle of the station, and replace Mitch's nondescript personal car with a Humvee, while Trey drives a C5 Corvette. They also hire William Shatner (who once played T. J. Hooker) to give both men tips on how to act; while Trey is eager to learn, Mitch is merely annoyed.

Despite all this, Mitch tries to investigate the mysterious supergun, which is subsequently used by arms dealer Caesar Vargas to kill the drug dealer and his girlfriend. Through a clever ruse by Trey, they are able to get the arms dealer's name from Re-Run, the dead dealer's henchman. However, Vargas is less than cooperative, which causes a brawl at his nightclub. Trey and Mitch are able to defeat him and his henchmen, and subsequently have a relatively friendly conversation on their way home. However, Mitch's good humor evaporates when he finds that, in his absence, the Showtime producers have drastically remodeled his house and given him a retired K-9 dog as a pet.

Vargas and his crew assault an armored car and kill the crew, then devastate the police who respond. Trey and Mitch arrive and are pulled into the shootout. When the attackers flee in a garbage truck, Mitch gives chase in a police car. In the ensuing mayhem, the car is rammed by the garbage truck, which winds up crashing into a construction site. Mitch survives by jumping from the police car to Trey's sports car (he had previously denounced "hood-jumping" as a useless skill). In the wake of the disaster, the police chief pulls the plug on the show, suspends Mitch from duty and demotes Trey back to patrol.

With the show ended, Mitch's car is returned and his apartment restored (but he refuses to return the dog, of which he has grown fond). While watching the final episode, Mitch calls Trey and apologizes for his actions and even offers him to help ask questions on the detective exam. But while doing so, Mitch sees one of his police colleagues at Vargas's nightclub. He and Trey investigate, finding that Vargas is selling the weapons at a gun show at the Bonaventure Hotel. Vargas flees with one of the weapons, taking Chase hostage in the process. The duo is able to rescue her, via a pocket pistol concealed in a Maxxis camera, but the ceiling of the room is shot. It is located just below the pool, so it floods, and Vargas is washed out the window to his death, Trey manages to save himself and Mitch by handcuffing them together. They wind up suspended from a broken beam outside the hotel.

Trey is promoted to detective, and he and Mitch are now partners and still working together with a new case, and there are hints of a romance between Chase and Mitch. Showtime is revived and in its second season, this time with two young and attractive female officers, who are just as antagonistic as Mitch and Trey were.

'''Part One''': Andry, the new Lord of Goddess Keep, has visions of war and death. He sees the destruction of Radzyn, its proud towers ablaze. To prevent his visions, he reworks the teachings and rituals of Goddess Keep based on the findings of the Star Scroll. He also trains Sunrunners in sorcery. Meanwhile, true sorcerers ready themselves to challenge Pol's right to Princemarch. Ruval, Ianthe's oldest, undisputed son, prepared for the challenge by learning sorcery, while Marron infiltrates Chiana of Meadowlord's personal guards. When he gets close enough, he allows Mireva to enter Chiana's chamber and enspell the Princess with a mirror. Chiana then begins to amass an army, which will invade Princemarch.

'''Part Two: Year 728''': Pol, now Ruling Prince of Princemarch, seeks to become the man and Prince that his parents, High Prince Rohan and High Princess Sioned raised him to be, but his spirit is impatient and restless. When word comes that dragons are being hunted, Pol follows Riyan and Sorin to Elktrap Manor. They find a dying dragon nearby, who shows them that men had attacked it using sorcery. The attackers were Ruval and Marron, who had been trying to get Pol's attention. A battle ensues. Sorin is killed.

As the Desert mourns, Ruval enlists Prince Miyon of Cunaxa's aid in overthrowing Pol. He and Marron hide in Miyon's entourage as the Prince travels to Stronghold on business before the ''Rialla'', while Mireva becomes a servant of Miyon's illegitimate daughter, Meiglan. Miyon plans to use Meiglan to ensnare Pol. Pol has been raised among strong, intelligent, independent women all his life, while Meiglan is an innocent, shy, easily terrified young girl. Miyon has abused Meiglan all her life, and thinks Pol will be smitten by her innocence and need for protection.

As Pol prepares for the challenge Ruval will make, he begins to fall for Meiglan despite his suspicions of her. Before Ruval can make his challenge, however, Marron challenges Pol himself for Feruche, their birthplace. Riyan, who had only moments ago had been made Lord of Feruche, accepts Marron's challenge of sorcery. As Marron forms his first spell, Andry turns it back on the sorcerer by using his knowledge of the Star Scroll. He kills Marron in retribution for Sorin's death. This act results in Andry's banishment from the Desert.

When Ruval's challenge finally comes, on starlight, Rohan realizes that Pol needs to be told the truth about birth: that Ianthe bore him and he was a ''diarmadhi''. Pol is horrified and angry, but uses his newfound knowledge to study the sorcery in the scrolls. He and Ruval meet at Rivernrock and the ''rabikor'' begins. During the battle, Ruval tries to pull a dragon from the sky, but Pol bonds with it. The dragon, Azhdeen, kills Ruval, ending the threat to Pol's claim on Princemarch.

Category:Dragon Prince series Category:1990 American novels Category:Novels by Melanie Rawn Category:DAW Books books Category:Books with cover art by Michael Whelan

The film tells the story of a troubled ex-Navy SEAL and Vietnam War veteran Mark Lambert (John Lithgow), who, upon returning home from the war, alienates his wife and child by deserting them and moving away into the remote wilderness of Washington state.

After 10 years of living off the land and suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, Mark Lambert decides to rejoin civilized society and find his now teenage son, who is living in Illinois. As an estranged father and recluse, Mark Lambert quickly finds himself unprepared for the changes that he must face.

While on the island of Dorval, the Sunrunner Meath uncovers ancient scrolls in the ruins of an ancient Sunrunner keep. Concerned about the content and odd star symbols, Meath decides to these "Star Scrolls" to the leader of the Sunrunners, Andrade. Lady Andrade appoints Andry, nephew of High Prince Rohan, to translate the scrolls with the help of Hollis, his brother Maarken's unofficial betrothed. As Andry and Hollis work through the translation and the embedded code, they learn that the scrolls deal with ancient sorcerers and sorcery. They are unaware that the scrolls' existence and rediscovery is known to sorcerers in hiding. Mireva, a sorceress, forms a plan to retrieve the scrolls. One of her charges, Segev, Ianthe's youngest son, travels to Goddess Keep to pose as a young ''faradhi'' in order to steal the scrolls. He addicts Hollis to ''dranath'' as a cohort, but Andry disrupts Segev's plan.

Meanwhile, an arrogant upstart called Masul attempts to proclaim himself Roelstra's son and heir. The whispers of this heir lead to an assassination attempt on Pol's life. To proclaim Pol's position as Prince of Princemarch, Rohan and Pol travel through Princemarch. Pol meets the local Lords and earns his people's favor by participating in their traditions. Unfortunately, another assassination attempt is made, this time ending in the death of Maeta, one of Rohan's most favored guards.

At the ''Rialla'', most of the discussion is over Masul, whether or not he is Roelstra's heir, and whether or not it even matters. As the Princes debate the issue, Segev continues to drug Hollis, who in turn draws away from Maarken. Then, Andrade claims that she can show the events of the past by using sorcery from the scrolls. Gleeful at the turn of events, Segev uses sorcery during her conjuring in order to kill her. Andry becomes Lord of Goddess Keep. Though saddened by Andrade's death, the debate of Masul continues; her conjure proved nothing. At last a duel is proposed between Masul and Pol. Maarken, first cousin to Pol, fights in Pol's place as Pol has yet to be knighted. During the battle, Segev uses sorcery against Maarken. Seeing Maarken in pain snaps Hollis out of her drugged state, and she kills Segev. Masul nearly kills Maarken, but at the last minute, Rohan intervenes and kills him with a pair of thrown daggers.

As the Desert entourage travels home, accompanied by Hollis, who is slowly recovering, a valley filled with dragons is discovered. The site will become Pol's palace, Dragon's Rest. Sioned, who had earlier 'bumped' into a dragon on sunlight, attempts to 'speak' with a dragon. This time she succeeds and a bond is formed between human and dragon.

Category:American fantasy novels Category:Dragon Prince series Category:1989 American novels Category:Novels by Melanie Rawn Category:DAW Books books Category:Books with cover art by Michael Whelan

After Edward Elric recovers his arm and his brother Alphonse's body, Edward is dragged from his homeworld through the Gate of Alchemy—the source of alchemical energy—to a parallel world of Earth in 1923. The world is fundamentally governed by the laws of modern science instead of alchemy. When Edward arrives there, he discovers that he has been stripped of his alchemical powers and his newly restored arm and leg.

Two years later, in Munich, Germany, Edward researches rocketry with his friend Alfons Heiderich, a young man who resembles Alphonse, in the hopes of returning to his world. Edward rescues a persecuted Romani woman named Noah from being sold. Noah, who resembles Ed's friend Rosé, is taken in by Edward to live with him and Alfons, and begins having visions concerning Edward's life in his world. The next day, Edward meets Fritz Lang, a Jewish film director resembling King Bradley, who persuades Edward into helping him hunt down a dragon he has been seeking for inspiration for his next film. The dragon, which turns out to be homunculus Envy, attacks Edward, but is then weakened and captured by members of the Thule Society.

The Thule Society, led by Karl Haushofer and Dietlinde Eckhart, use Envy and Edward's kidnapped father Hohenheim as catalysts to open a portal to Edward's world, believing it to be the utopia Shamballa after learning about it from Hohenheim. A number of armored soldiers are sent through the portal, only to emerge on the other side in the city of Liore as mutated zombie-like creatures. Alphonse, who is visiting Liore, fights off the armored soldiers and merges parts of his soul to three of their suits to aid him in combat. Meanwhile, Edward breaks into the Thule Society headquarters and accidentally reopens the portal, returning the dead armored soldiers to Earth and allowing Alphonse's armored form to briefly reunite with his brother before his soul returns to his body, increasing Edward's determination to return to his world.

Alphonse is guided by the homunculus Wrath to the underground city beneath Amestris' Central City to reopen the Gate of Alchemy. There, they are attacked by the homunculus Gluttony, who fights and mortally wounds Wrath. At Wrath's insistence, Alphonse transmutes and sacrifices the two homunculi to use as material to open the Gate. Meanwhile, in Munich, the Thule Society persuades Noah into guiding them on how to correctly open the Gate based on what she had learned from reading Edward's mind. Edward learns from Lang that the Thule Society plans to use the weapons from his world to help Adolf Hitler in his attempt to start a revolution, and heads to stop them. Hohenheim and Envy are both transmuted at the same time that Alphonse transmutes Gluttony and Wrath. With the Gate opened, Eckhart leads a fleet into the other world, where she gains the ability to use alchemy. However, she begins to go mad with power and fear of her new surroundings and launches an attack on Central City. Alfons launches Edward in a rocket-powered plane to return him to his world before being gunned down.

Edward appears in his world, reunited with Alphonse and their friend Winry Rockbell, who fits Edward with new automail limbs. The Amestris military manages to stop most of Eckhart's soldiers with the help of Roy Mustang. Edward battles Eckhart before Alphonse transmutes parts of his soul to a group of armors, which attack her and force her to retreat. Upon reappearing in her own world, Eckhart is covered with shadow creatures from the Gate and killed by an officer out of alarm of her new, monstrous appearance. Understanding the danger posed by the connection between the two worlds, Edward returns to Earth to seal the Gate on the other side, knowing he will be trapped there forever. Instead of sealing the Gate on the other world's side as per Edward's request, however, Alphonse has Mustang seal the Gate and follows Edward to remain with his brother. Following Alfons' funeral, Edward and Alphonse leave Munich with Noah, intending to destroy the weapons meant to be used in Hitler's attack and make their new home a safer place. Back in Risembool, as Rosé's children play, Winry remembers the Elric brothers.

The novel tells the story of Hajime, starting from his childhood in a small town in Japan. Here he meets a girl, Shimamoto, who is also an only child and suffers from polio, which causes her to drag her leg as she walks. They spend most of their time together talking about their interests in life and listening to records on Shimamoto's stereo. Eventually, they join different high schools and grow apart. They are reunited again at the age of 36, Hajime now the father of two children and owner of two successful jazz bars in Aoyama, the trendy part of Tokyo.

With Shimamoto never giving any detail as to her own life and appearing only at random intervals, she haunts him as a constant "what-if". Despite his current situation, meeting Shimamoto again sets off a chain of events that eventually forces Hajime to choose between his wife and family or attempting to recapture the magic of the past.

Simon Sinestrari (Andrew Prine), a cynical ceremonial magician, is on a quest to become a god. Simon is living in a storm sewer, selling his charms and potions for money, when he is befriended by a young male prostitute named Turk (George Paulsin). Turk introduces Simon to his world of drugs, wild parties, and bizarre Satanic rituals featuring Ultra Violet and a goat. Death, freak-outs and mayhem ensue, along with romance for Simon with the district attorney's daughter Linda (Brenda Scott). Simon, a degenerate practitioner of magic uses his satanic rituals to seduce Linda. Together, the two lovers search for the proper spell to make themselves into gods.

''Wiz 'n' Liz'' takes place on the magical planet of Pum, where a group of "wabbits" (rabbits) have been taken by a spell gone awry and it's the job of two wizards – Wiz and Liz – to rescue them.

Following the grisly suicide of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, 33-year-old international conglomerate CEO Damien Thorn is appointed in his place, an office his adoptive father, Robert Thorn, once held. Having fully embraced his unholy lineage and having run his company for seven years, Damien now attempts to reshape his destiny by halting the Second Coming of Christ.

However, Father DeCarlo, a priest from the Subiaco monastery where Father Spiletto spent his final days and who has observed Damien from afar since his adopted father's death, acquires the Seven Daggers of Megiddo that were dug out of the ruins of the Thorn Museum in Chicago following the fire at the end of the second movie. Joined by six other priests, DeCarlo plans to kill Damien while finding the Christ child. Meanwhile, Damien becomes romantically involved with journalist Kate Reynolds. Learning of his assassins and killing all but DeCarlo over time, he proceeds to mold Reynolds's young son Peter into a disciple by playing on the boy's desire for a father figure.

After the alignment of stars in the Cassiopeia constellation on March 24, 1981, generating what is described as a second Star of Bethlehem, Damien realizes that it is a sign of the Second Coming and orders his followers to kill all boys born in England on the morning of March 24, 1981 to prevent the Christ's return to power. A week after a string of 31 infant deaths, Reynolds encounters DeCarlo and he reveals Damien's true identity to her while giving her evidence of the murders. The following morning she discovers Damien's birthmark.

Damien tells Peter to follow DeCarlo, resulting in Damien learning that his adviser, Harvey Dean, had concealed the date of his son's birth when Peter reports that DeCarlo visited Dean's wife Barbara and revealed her husband's role in the infant murders. Dean refuses to kill his son and makes preparations to flee the country, only to return home and be killed by his wife who just killed their son with a burning iron while under Damien's demonic influence.

DeCarlo later visits Reynolds and reveals that Peter is now under Damien's influence and that the real Christ child is now beyond Damien's reach. Agreeing to help DeCarlo, Reynolds tricks Damien with the promise to bring him to the church ruins where the Christ child is in exchange for Peter. The plan backfires when Damien spots DeCarlo first and uses Peter as a human shield against the dagger. As Peter dies in his mother's arms, Damien throttles Father DeCarlo before calling out for Christ to appear before him and "face him". This leaves Damien open to be stabbed in the back by Reynolds using DeCarlo's Megiddo dagger.

As Damien staggers through the courtyard and collapses, a vision of Christ appears in the archway above him. Damien mocks Christ for thinking he has won, and then dies. DeCarlo reappears carrying Peter's body and hands him to a praying Kate. As they leave the ruins, Bible passages are shown on-screen.

''Mom and Dad'' tells the story of Joan Blake (June Carlson), a young girl who falls for the pilot Jack Griffin (Bob Lowell). After being sweet talked by Griffin, she has sex with him. The girl requests "hygiene books" from her mother Sarah Blake (Lois Austin); however, the mother refuses because the girl is not yet married. The girl later learns from her father Dan Blake (George Eldredge) that the pilot has died in a crash. She tears up a letter she had been writing to him, and lowers her head as the film fades into intermission.

The film resumes at the point when the girl discovers that her clothes no longer fit, sending her into a state of despair. She takes advice from her teacher, Carl Blackburn (Hardie Albright), who had previously been fired for teaching sex education. Blackburn blames her mother for the problem, and accuses her of "neglect[ing] the sacred duty of telling their children the real truth." Only then is the girl able to confront her mother.

The film then presents reels and charts that include graphic images of the female anatomy and footage of live births – one natural and one Caesarian. In some screenings, a second film was shown along with ''Mom and Dad'', and contained images portraying syphilis and venereal disease. ''Mom and Dad'' is believed to have had a number of endings, although most typically concluded with the birth of the girl's child, sometimes stillborn and other times put up for adoption.

Over the course of the game, it was revealed that both Day Watch and Night Watch found a way to change the potential Others' affiliation via electronic transmitters. Stas was one of its first test subjects, as he was originally supposed to be a Dark Other. Zavulon was planning to take advantage of the spell by converting all the potential Others in Russia into Dark Others.

A plane filled with terrorists attempting to steal money from a treasury plane while airborne is shot down by an FBI plane. The terrorists survive and send out a distress signal, to which the main character, Gabe, responds. However, Gabe does not know that the mayday signal is coming from a group of terrorists, and after reaching them, the terrorists capture Gabe's partner, Hal, and hold him hostage. Gabe must then set out and retrieve the money in order to save Hal.

A corporate conglomerate called "The Ellison Group" acquires four breweries, all of them experiencing financial trouble. Enter Frank Macklin (Robert Hays), a young manager hired by Ellison to help reorganize one of the ailing breweries, a major employer in his home town. Initially his old friends, who work at the brewery, give him a cold welcome as they think he'll be unable to revitalize the brewery. But when Frank informs them that the brewery is drowning in red ink, and that they may be losing their jobs soon, they welcome him with open arms, and ramp up the brewery's sales and production. The brewery improves so much that the Ellison Group decides to sell it to a Texas oil millionaire, who doesn't know the first thing about running a brewery or — apparently — running a business.

Aging, respected Captain Paul Blanchard (Heston) is on his final submarine tour before promotion to command of a submarine squadron (COMSUBRON). Surfaced and returning to port, the submarine, USS ''Neptune'', is struck by a Norwegian freighter en route to New York in heavy fog. With the engine room flooded and its main propulsion disabled, the ''Neptune'' sinks to a depth of 1,450 feet (442 meters or approx. 241.6 fathoms) on a canyon ledge above the ocean floor. A United States Navy rescue force, commanded by Captain Hal Bennett (Keach), arrives on the scene, but ''Neptune'' is subsequently rolled by a gravity slide to a greater angle that does not allow the Navy's Deep-submergence rescue vehicle (DSRV) to complete its work.

A small experimental submersible, ''Snark'', is brought in to assist with the rescue. ''Snark'' is very capable, but run by a U.S. Navy officer misfit, Captain Don Gates (Carradine). The tiny submersible is the only hope for a rescue. Ultimately, the surviving members of the crew are rescued by the DSRV, thanks to Gates sacrificing himself by using the ''Snark'' to jam the ''Neptune'' in place as another gravity slide begins while the rescue is taking place. Moments later the gravity slide pushes the ''Neptune'' and the ''Snark'' off the ledge and into the ocean's abyss. The film ends with a somber Blanchard climbing out of the DSRV and being welcomed aboard the rescue ship USS ''Pigeon'' by Bennett and his officers.

The story begins when Bugs, while relaxing by his pool, gets a call from the "Disassociated Press", stating that the public demands his life story. Over the phone, Bugs then proceeds to recount his rise to fame.

Bugs relates that, while in the nursery immediately after he was born, he comes to the startling realization that he was "a rabbit in a human world". By the time he begins to walk, he shows an impressive talent for entertainment by successfully playing the "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" on his toy piano. Some years later, he takes ballet academically and becomes the star pupil. After graduation, Bugs begins to pursue a professional career as a Broadway star (throwing out the script to ''Life with Father'' proclaiming it would never be a hit), but only manages to be a chorus boy in three productions: ''Girl of the Golden Vest'', ''Wearing of the Grin'', and ''Rosie's Cheeks''. In all of the shows, he and the chorus sing the same song - "Oh! We're the boys of the chorus. We hope you like our show. We know you're rootin' for us. But, now we have to go." After a performance, he is approached by a producer of an unnamed show. The show's star has become ill, and the producer wants Bugs to take his place. He agrees, but the audience is unimpressed by his performance and he is hooked off stage. Angered at the prospect of resuming work as a chorus boy, Bugs quits show business until he's offered the "right part".

That winter, Bugs confines himself to a bench in Central Park. Along with him are a few other out of work actors that appear as caricatures of Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, and Bing Crosby. One night Elmer Fudd, while passing through, recognizes Bugs and offers him a role as his sidekick in his vaudeville act. Bugs accepts, and the two embark on a nationwide tour. The act consists of Elmer telling a joke to Bugs and physically delivering the punchline. After several performances, Bugs tires of the act, and decides to change the routine. So when Elmer sets up the joke, Bugs delivers the punchline, just as physically as Elmer had, and dances off-stage. Elmer is infuriated and, pointing his rifle at Bugs, backs the rabbit back onstage as the crowd laughs. Bugs then nervously delivers his famous line: "What's up, doc?" The audience cheers at this, to the surprise of the two; Bugs suggests they may have a new gimmick for the act and says, "Let's do it again." They do, and receive the same positive audience response. Afterward, fan mail and offers pour in, and the two of them attract the attention of Warner Bros. Elmer and Bugs pass a screen test in which they perform the title musical number, and the studio signs them on as film stars.

The story reverts to the present day. Bugs looks at his watch and notices that he is late to the set to begin filming his first role, in a film that was written with him in mind. At the filming, it is revealed that the part is chorus boy yet again, much to Bugs' disappointment.

The story begins as it returns to New York City sometime after the events of the first and before the second movie, as Fievel and Tony discover that an ancient treasure lies underneath Manhattan when snooping around an abandoned subway (the Beach Pneumatic Transit system) and stumbling upon the remains of a dead mouse clutching a treasure map, deciding they must find it with the help of an archaeologist Tony knows: Dr. Dithering, along with fighting five villains as well.

The movie focuses on the relationship between the over-exploited workers of a sweatshop (in this case, a cheese production line) and the factory's robber baron owners: Mr. Grasping (Ron Perlman), Mr. Toplofty (Tony Jay) and Mr. O'Bloat (Richard Karron). The treasure under Manhattan turns out to be a group of Lenape mice living a long-distance beneath the surface (far below the sewers) that decided to hide when they saw how the first Europeans only brought war and disease with them and didn't want to wait for the European mice to do the same to them.

The sachem, Chief Wulisso (David Carradine), decides to send his daughter Cholena (Elaine Bilstad), to the surface to see if they have "changed their ways." Upon their return, Scuttlebutt (John Kassir) (one of the members of the expedition to find the treasure) reports to the villains unbeknownst to the rest of the members of the expedition, who then decide to use this to their advantage. They lie to all the workers of the sweatshop about Cholena (obviously not by name), telling them that she is their enemy. The corrupt mouse police chief, McBrusque (Sherman Howard), and Scuttlebutt scavenge every nook and cranny until they find her. After the angry mouse mob try to capture Cholena and anyone else involved with her, Fievel and his friends decide to take Cholena back underground before being put in further harm's way, but the police find out and go after them.

Meanwhile, everyone finds out about Dr. Dithering's friendship with the Indian and take him to the butcher shop for his execution. Papa tells everyone about how madness like this is why they all left for America and should work together to become friends with those different from them as the fellow Americans they are. Tiger the orange tabby cat saves Dr. Dithering from the villains, who escape and order McBrusque and his men to find and kill the Lenape mice.

Upon returning Cholena to her home, they tell the chief what is happening. McBrusque, Scuttlebutt, and the other police officers show up to the village, but the Chief, the Native Americans, Fievel and his friends drive the villains away. The chief gives them a gunpowder bomb to collapse the tunnel connecting the Native Americans to the outside world. But before they can do so, they are ambushed by the enraged McBrusque and Scuttlebutt who attempt to get revenge on the Mousekewitz children and Tony once and for all, but the two crooks are overpowered and Fievel manages to set off the bomb. This floods the tunnel, together with McBrusque and Scuttlebutt as they fall into the chasm to their deaths. Tony and Tanya managed to reach higher ground, but Fievel is seemingly carried off by the current.

When the water recedes Tanya and Tony desperately search through the mud to find him, before giving up. But just then, Fievel breaks through the surface, and all three share a muddy group hug, thankful that everyone survived.

The movie ends with Fievel's papa forming a worker's union and the villains agreeing amongst themselves that they're forced to negotiate with "that riff-raff" to avoid a strike. Meanwhile, Tiger is enjoying his new job as the police chief. The last scene is Fievel seeing, through a foldable telescope, Cholena and her father disappearing into a hidden door at the foot of a statue, which pleases Fievel.

After the events of the third film, but before the second, Fievel, his sister Tanya, and his friend Tony get jobs at the local newspaper. The Mousekewitz children and Tony meet Nellie Brie, who wants to be an important reporter, but only gets small assignments, as if she were a secretary to Reed Daley, the newspaper's editor.

Nellie gets a chance when she is assigned to report on mice who disappear overnight into holes that open up on their floor all over New York City. Reed makes up a, as Nellie calls it, "so-called monster" that lives under Manhattan and takes mice away during the night to add more excitement to the otherwise unimportant story, intending to sell more papers. The night monster creates fears among the readers, as could be expected. Fievel begins having nightmares that cause him to lose sleep because of his fear of the monster; the film opens up with Fievel having a dream about being chased by what he thinks the monster looks like (a fiery demonic cat with a mouse trap on its tongue). When, through Tanya, he is assigned the job of following Nellie and drawing up interpretations of what the monster looks like based on witness testimony, this makes his insomnia all the worse. A particularly suspicious miniature French poodle named Madame Mousey, who has started living among the mice about this time, appears at every crime scene, claiming to be a fortune teller. The heroes finally decide to investigate her by means of the "dog council" that meets at Central Park. They also search down one of the holes, which leads directly to a group of cats known as the infamous Outlaw Cats hiding in the sewers. All the mice that had disappeared are being held in wood cages there, to be sold off to other cats and eaten.

The night monster itself, a mechanic device with ghastly flashing pictures and a circular saw, is revealed in full when it attacks the mice newspaper office and printing press to prevent them from printing the truth, which they had just discovered. A great chase scene takes place throughout both the mouse and the human newspaper offices. Reed finally wins Nellie‘s heart and ended up in a relationship. When all the cats seem to be under control, the "dog council" appears just as they are regaining consciousness and chase them all away, taking Madame Mousey with them. As the film ends, the last scene takes place at the beach, where Tony informed the Mousekewitz family that the "dog council" had chosen for the French poodle (who was the mastermind behind the night monster all along) a punishment worse than prison: returning her to her owner, Mrs. Abernathy. Mama Mousekewitz surmises saying that now that the mystery has been cleared up, Fievel finally goes to sleep, only to turn around and find him with Yasha his sister already asleep on the beach towel, to which Papa smiles and says, "You were saying?" The Mousekewitz family, including Tony and Tiger, share a group hug as Mama says, "Sweet dreams, my little Fievel. Sweet dreams."

Picking up four years after the original left off, narcotics officer Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) is still searching for elusive drug kingpin Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Orders from his superiors send Doyle to Marseille, France, to track down the criminal mastermind and bust his drug ring. Once in France, Doyle is met by English-speaking Inspector Henri Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson), who resents his rude and crude crimefighting demeanor. Doyle then begins to find himself as a fish out of water in France, where he is confronted with a language he cannot understand. Doyle is shown round the police station where he finds his desk is situated directly outside the toilets. He tells Barthélémy that he is not satisfied with this positioning and hopes it is not a joke at his expense. Barthélémy informs Doyle that he has read his personnel file and is aware of his reputation and especially hopes he has not brought a gun with him as it is strictly forbidden in France for visiting police officers from other countries to carry firearms.

Doyle continues to struggle with the language and tries to order drinks in a bar. He eventually makes himself understood, befriending a bartender while buying him drinks and they eventually stumble out of the bar together at closing time, followed by two men. The next day, while Doyle is watching a beach volleyball match, Charnier sees him from a restaurant below. Determined to find Charnier on his own, Popeye escapes from what are in fact French police escorts keeping watch on him. Doyle doesn't understand that he is being used as a bait by French police. The same night Charnier sends his men to capture Doyle, killing one of his watchers in the process, and take him to a secluded, seedy hotel in the old quarter for interrogation.

For several weeks, Doyle is injected with heroin in effort to force him into capitulation. Scenes of his growing addiction follow, including one in which an elderly lady (Cathleen Nesbitt) visits him in his befuddled state. She talks to him, declaring herself to be English, and saying that her son is "just like" him, while stroking his arm. Initially she seems compassionate to his plight, but a change in the camera angle reveals her 'track' marks. The gentle old lady steals his watch.

Meanwhile, Barthélémy has sent police everywhere to search for Doyle. Charnier interrogates a needy Doyle about what he knows, but Doyle says he was sent here just because he is the only one who can recognize him. Charnier believes Doyle, so lets him go after one massive injection. Doyle is dumped barely alive but addicted in front of police headquarters. Grueling scenes of resuscitation and drug withdrawal follow. In his effort to save both Doyle's life and his reputation, Barthélémy immediately quarantines Doyle in the police cells and begins his cold turkey withdrawal from the heroin. Supervising his recovery, and at his side with both emotional support and taunts questioning his toughness, Barthélémy ensures that Doyle completes the cycle of physical withdrawal. When he is well enough to be on his feet, Doyle starts back on the road to regaining his physical fitness. He searches Marseille and, finding the hideout he was brought to, sets it on fire. He breaks into a room at the hotel and discovers Charnier's henchmen, whom he pursues and interrogates as to Charnier's whereabouts. A delivery of opium is taking place at the harbour. Doyle, Barthélémy and other inspectors rush to the boat that is being unloaded and engage Charnier's henchmen in a gun battle in a dry dock. The thugs open the spillways, water starts rushing in, Doyle and Barthélémy are trapped. The henchmen and a policeman are killed, but Doyle rescues Barthélémy. French police hold Doyle responsible for the policeman's death and want to send him home. But Doyle believes that the deal is not done and convinces Barthélémy, who "owes him one", to keep watch over the ship. They eventually spot the ship's captain on his way to meet Charnier's lieutenant, whom Doyle recognizes. A tailing ensues taking the police to the drug warehouse, which they raid, but are met with a barrage of fire. Doyle picks up a gun and kills a gangster machine-gunning them. Charnier's lieutenant and other men escape with the drugs on board a van, but Barthélémy closes the warehouse door and stops them. But once again Charnier has escaped. Doyle, in a foot chase of Charnier, who is sailing out of the harbor on his yacht, catches up with the boat at the end of the pier, takes his gun out of his holster, calls Charnier's name, and in the last seconds of the movie shoots him dead.

Kira Aso and Rei Kashino meet when Rei asks Kira for directions to a local hospital one day in the park, but instead of telling him the directions she draws him a map and hands it to him without saying a word. On the back of the directions is a picture Kira drew of a mother and child. On the first day of school they are both surprised to find that they are in the same class. Later, Rei walks in on their teacher sexually harassing Kira. Rei promises to protect Kira in exchange for a painted version of the sketch that was on the back of the map. He also offers to "lend Kira his body," and she asks him to model for her. Thus beginning a relationship that is opposed by the world in general. They draw on their love for each other to heal the wounds the world has left on them; Rei, the scars from his twin's suicide for which he blames himself, and Kira, her hatred of men due to her stepfather taking advantage of her.

After being mentored by the God of Gamblers Ko Chun, Michael Chan/Little Knife (Andy Lau) has become a top gambler and become renowned in the United States, where he is branded as the Knight of Gamblers. Having achieved successful and fortune, Michael currently inhabits in a villa previously owned by his Kuwait neighbour, Sam, who has gone broke after Kuwaiti was invaded by Iraq. Ko's friend, Mr. Yama plans to announce Michael's identity and his charity casino project to the Hong Kong press, but Ko's rival, Chan Kam-sing, who is imprisoned after being defeated by Ko, wants to seek revenge, so Chan's godson, Hussien, schemes to destroy Michael's reputation by impersonating him. On the other hand, Sing (Stephen Chow), despite a world champion gambler and branded as the Saint of Gamblers, is living in poverty since he cannot spend any money won by using his supernatural powers as it gives him bad luck, so his uncle, Blackie Tat (Ng Man-tat) suggests him to plead the God of Gamblers to accept him as a disciple. After sending a video to Michael which he dismisses, Sing and Tat march into Michael's mansion where they are kicked out by the latter. They sneak in again at night but is caught and beaten by Michael's bodyguard, Lung Ng (Charles Heung), but they refuse to leave and stays outside all night. The next day, Hussein sends killers to Michael's mansion. While Michael defeats several killers and successfully escapes with Sing and Tat, Ng was knocked out in an explosion and was abducted by Black Panther.

Michael brings Sing and Tat to his village old home, which is inhabited by his underling, Raven, and Sam. Using his supernatural powers, Sing sees an unconscious Ng being brought to a bar, so he visits the bar with Tat where they meet the owner, Dream (Sharla Cheung), who looks exactly like Sing's old crush, Yee-mung. Tat becomes smitten with Dream, much to Sing's dismay, and pleads Sing to transfer some of his supernatural powers to him. Tat uses the powers to win stud poker game at Dream's house and gives some of his winnings to Dream, causing himself and Sing (whose power energy is connected to) to lose their supernatural powers. It is then revealed that Hussien found out from a mainland Chinese supernatural power expert, Tai-kwan, how to get rid of Sing's powers and forced Dream, who owes him HK$2 million to manipulate Tat. Hussein then attempts to rape Dream and kidnaps Tat.

Meanwhile, Michael finds out from the newspaper that Hussien schemes where the latter plans to announce to the press about a fraud casino ship project to scam patrons, Michael plans to expose Hussien and prove himself to be the true Knight of Gamblers. With the help of Sing, Michael manages to win enough funds from Brother Kau's gambling den and confronts Hussien on his ship the next day to face off with him. However, Hussein's ship is surveilled with high technology to help him cheat and since Sing lost his supernatural power, Michael loses. When Michael attempts to calls his mentor in Brazil to expose Hussein to the press, he discovers Tat and Ng have been captured and backs off. While feeling hopeless, Sam scolds Michael and Sing before returning to Kuwaiti to fight for his country, which motivates to confront Hussein at his ship again the next day. Knife publicly asks Hussein for HK$20, which he is able to use and win HK$25 million while Sing (having freed Tat and Lung) helps him distract Tai-kwan, allowing him to enter into the King of Cards competition. Although Hussein. As other players are eliminated, Michael, Sing, Hussein and Tai-kwan at the table. While Hussein and Tai-kwan try to cheat, Michael and Sing work together and eventually defeat Hussein and causes Tai-kwan to lose his supernatural power. Hussein's henchmen attempt to kill them, but Michael, Sing takes them down with the help of Ng and his younger sister, Kowloon (Monica Chan) and Michael exposes Hussein to the public before flykicking his face with Sing. In the end, Michael proposes a plan to Sing where the two agree to give each other their winnings, since Ko demands Michael to donate most of his winnings to charity and Sing would lose his powers if he spends his winnings, but Ko arrives to interrupt them.

The Rescue Rangers are going on a mission to retrieve a missing kitten for a girl named Mandy. As Gadget goes on ahead to scout the area and Monterey Jack is sent to investigate sightings of strange mechanical dogs with Zipper, Chip and Dale proceed through the streets and into a laboratory, where they are attacked by a crazed robot.

After defeating the robot, Fat Cat appears and reveals that "Mandy's kitten" was just a distraction so he could kidnap Gadget and force her to work for him. Fortunately, Gadget is able to contact Chip and Dale by building a wireless phone and sending a map to them via carrier pigeon, allowing them to navigate through the treacherous landscape and reach Fat Cat's casino where she is being held. After rescuing her, Gadget provides the chipmunks with a rocket that sends them towards Fat Cat's hideout so they can defeat him.

Synopsis

The action takes place twenty years after the previous play in the trilogy, ''The Marriage of Figaro''. The story's premise is that several years ago, while the Count was away on a long business trip, the Countess and Chérubin spent a night together. When the Countess told Chérubin that what they did was wrong and that she could never see him again, he went away to war and intentionally let himself be mortally wounded on the field. As he lay dying, he wrote a final letter to the Countess, declaring his love and regrets, and making mention of all the things they had done. The Countess did not have the heart to throw away the letter, and instead had a special box supplied by an Irishman called Bégearss, with a secret compartment in which to store the incriminating note, so the Count would never find it. Soon after, to her dismay, the Countess discovered herself pregnant with Chérubin's child.

The Count has been suspicious all these years that he is not the father of Léon, the Countess's son, and so he has been rapidly trying to spend his fortune to ensure the boy won't inherit any of it, even having gone so far as to renounce his title and move the family to Paris; but he has nevertheless held some doubts, and therefore has never officially disowned the boy or even brought up his suspicions to the Countess.

Meanwhile, the Count has an illegitimate child of his own, a daughter named Florestine. Bégearss wants to marry her, and to ensure that she will be the Count's only heir, he begins to stir up trouble over the Countess's secret. Figaro and Suzanne, who are still married, must once again come to the rescue of the Count and Countess; and of their illegitimate children Léon and Florestine, who are secretly in love with each other.

Detailed plot

;Act I Figaro and his wife Suzanne are still in the service of Count Almaviva and his wife Rosine, but the household has all moved to France. The Count is there with the intention of dissipating his large fortune, not wishing to leave it to his heir, Léon. The piece begins on Saint Leo's day, the birthday of the son the Countess has had with the former page, Chérubin. Ever since the Count and Countess's only son died in a duel, the Count has been hostile to Léon, who he suspects is the fruit of the Countess's adultery. Monsieur Bégearss, an Irishman, is introduced to the household. Figaro and Suzanne suspect him of wanting to betray them. He wants to marry Florestine, the ward of the Count, and to move Léon—who also wants to marry Florestine—away to Malta, accompanied by Figaro. Bégearss calls the Count's attention to a letter that Chérubin wrote to the Countess, which confirms the Count's suspicions about his wife's infidelity and Léon's parentage.

;Act II Having read the letter the Count is infuriated, finding at last substantiation of his suspicions. He consents to Bégearss marrying Florestine. Bégearss tells the household that Florestine is in fact the Count’s daughter, and that she therefore cannot marry León. She dissolves into tears and León is grief-stricken.

;Act III The Countess is persuaded that it will be in Florestine's best interests to marry Bégearss; the Count is prepared to give a substantial part of his fortune to Begearss as part of the marriage settlement. At the insistence of Bégearss, the Countess tearfully burns the letters she has kept from Chérubin. The marriage ceremony is to take place that evening.

;Act IV The Countess promises Léon she will appeal to the Count. She makes an eloquent plea, but the Count rebukes her over her adultery. The Countess faints, and the Count hastens to summon help. Suzanne and Figaro uncover Bégearss's plot, and are determined that he must be prevented from marrying Florestine and getting hold of the Count's fortune.

;Act V Figaro and Suzanne convince the Count and Countess that Bégearss is a bad man who is plotting against them. The disclosure of Bégearss's treachery brings the Count and Countess together. Almaviva, overwhelmed by relief at seeing Florestine saved from marrying Bégearss, is ready to forgo his fortune; Figaro, on the other hand, has no intention of letting the villain get away with the Count's money.

The Countess adopts Florestine as her daughter and tells her not to marry Bégearss; the Count adopts Léon as his son. Bégearss returns from a notary, now in a strong legal position over the Count's money. By complicated trickery led by Figaro, Bégearss is finally outwitted and sent away empty-handed and furious. As it is now established that Léon is the Countess's son but not the Count's, and Florestine is the Count's daughter but not the Countess's, there is demonstrably no consanguinity, and they are free to marry one another.

It is some time after the war, and Sir Richard Hannay is living in rural tranquility, having bought Fosse Manor and married Mary Lamington (both featured in ''Mr Standfast''); they have a small son, named Peter John. Hannay's new friend, local doctor Tom Greenslade, a well-travelled and learned man, talks ominously one night of psychology, the subconscious, thrillers and post-war society. Later, Dick reads a letter from his old boss Sir Walter Bullivant, warning him that he will soon be asked to undertake another job for the country.

The three hostages

Next day, Julius Victor visits Hannay and tells him his daughter Adela has been kidnapped and held hostage, asking Hannay to help find her. Later that day, MacGillivray visits and tells Hannay of a sinister criminal organisation, controlling the mass of disturbed and disordered minds left over from the Great War, and tracked by the police forces of the world. Faced with capture, some allies of the gang leaders had taken three hostages, Victor's daughter, an aristocratic student and a young boy, sending each of their families a mysterious poem to prove the kidnappings were linked. He also explains that they have only until June to round up the gang, and that the hostages must be safe by then.

Hannay is adamant that he cannot help, but his third visitor that day, Sir Arthur Warcliff, tells him about his missing son, and Hannay is drawn into the chase. That night, he lies awake pondering the lines of doggerel sent to the families, and connects them to something Greenslade had said recently. Next day he tells Greenslade all, and bids him remember where he drew his phrases, two of which, concerning a blind woman spinning and a barn in Norway, matched verses from the poem, while the third in Greenslade's speech referred to a curiosity shop run by an elderly Jew, which seems to bear no correspondence to the poem's reference to the "Fields of Eden". Greenslade is baffled, but Hannay recalls a hymn mentioning the Fields of Eden, which Greenslade connects with his vague memories.

Another day's pondering gets them no closer, until Hannay breaks his pipe. Suddenly Greenslade remembers an evening in a country pub, where a man named Dominick Medina had broken his pipe as he hummed the tune, and at the same meeting mentioned the ideas echoed in the poem.

The mysterious Mr Medina

Hannay heads to London to meet Macgillivray, and briefly runs into his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Macgillivray briefs him on their enemies, and soon after Hannay meets with Medina, a handsome and accomplished man who Hannay finds he likes a lot, but doesn't yet take into his confidence. He sees Sandy again, who is suspicious of Medina, and the three attend a meeting of an elite dining club, where something Medina says affects Sandy extremely – he becomes rude and angry, and tries to drag Hannay away, but Hannay refuses and walks home with Medina. They stop at Medina's house for a pipe, and there Hannay has a strange dreamlike experience of which he remembers little, only later realising that Medina attempted to hypnotise him and that he somehow resisted.

He wakes next day feeling ill, and visits a Doctor Newhover, whose name was planted in his head and who refers him on to a masseuse named Madame Breda, in whose house he also sees a strange young girl. He is again hypnotised, by unseen hands and a strange voice, and again resists. He later reports his experiences to Sandy, who urges him to watch Medina closely and makes plans to investigate the house of the masseuse, and then to take his researches to Europe.

For some time Hannay hangs around Medina, one day attending a secret dance-hall with his friend Archie Roylance, where he sees a beautiful girl with dead eyes led away by Medina's suspicious butler, but learns little. He visits Newhover again, and learns that he plans to head to Norway. At last, visiting Medina, he is taken to the library where he was first hypnotised, and introduced to Medina's mother, a striking, frightening, blind old woman. He is again hypnotised, and made to do demeaning tasks, until they are sure he is under their control. He hears of Medina's plans to meet with one Kharama, and learns the gang plans to break up by midsummer, before he faints from exhaustion.

The farm in Norway

Hannay arranges with his friend Archie Roylance to be flown home from Norway when the time comes, and is taken to meet Kharama, an impressive but sinister Indian who discusses hypnotism with Medina. Later, he gets a note from Sandy, arranging a meeting. Telling Medina he is ill and needs a week's rest, he fixes a rendezvous with Roylance and heads home to Fosse, where he sets up a pretence of being in his sickbed. He meets Sandy and they share what they have found, and then slips onto the boat taking Dr Newhover to Norway.

Arriving there, he sees Newhover head off by boat, and follows at a discreet distance. Knowing Newhover's heading, he leaves his boat at the village before, bidding the pilot to await his return, and heads overland to Merdal. There, not wishing to be seen at the inn by Newhover, he approaches some locals to find lodging, and is amazed to meet Herr Gaudian, a German engineer he met during the events of ''Greenmantle''. Gaudian reveals he knows Newhover, in truth a former German agent, and agrees to help Hannay. Hannay takes lodgings alongside Gaudian, and learns of a farm in the hills leased to an Englishman ; next day they watch Newhover travel up there, and the man he replaces head down to the village.

They spy out the place, but learn little until the second night, when Hannay, heading to the farm, sees Newhover hurrying anxiously down the hill ; he heads into the scrub to avoid being seen, and comes across someone scrambling through the bushes. The man falls into a stream, and Hannay rescues him, and recognises Lord Mercot, one of the hostages. They feed and bathe him, and hear his broken story of hypnotised abduction, but then must persuade him to return to his captors, until such time as the other hostages can be found, promising Gaudian will be keeping an eye. The brave boy heads back to his prison, and Hannay heads for his rendezvous with Archie Roylance. Despite the weather, he makes it safe back to England, and returns to London and Medina.

The Fields of Eden

Richard Hannay spends some days with Medina, including another meeting with Kharama, to little avail, but on hearing the hymn mentioned by Greenslade at the start of his quest he is inspired to investigate London for a place suggesting the "Fields of Eden", calling in his old boss Bullivant, an expert on old London, to help. They find mention of a pleasure-resort of that name, and Hannay travels to where it stood and finds an antique shop, clearly a front. He arranges a housebreaking expert to let him in by night, and explores, finding the shop backs on to a larger and newer house; he sees a man there he recognises from his time under hypnosis at Medina's, and following the sound of music finds himself in a room overlooking the dance club where he saw Odell, Medina's butler. To his shock, he sees his old friend Turpin there, dancing with his own wife Mary.

He meets Mary later at her aunts' house, and learns she has been working for Sandy, who also knows about the Fields of Eden; they have found the missing girl, Adela Victor, disguised as one of the dancers at the club, but are no closer to finding the little boy. Hannay is invited to stay at Medina's house, but before he moves there he hears from Mary that Archie Roylance has been to the club, been upset by Odell's treatment of the girl and revealed Turpin's identity. Hannay visits Roylance in hospital, where he was recovering from having been beaten by Odell, but Turpin has disappeared – Hannay later learns he was taken, part-hypnotised by Kharama, to a strange house; there Turpin shakes off his paralysis, sees his girl in the house, and plays quiet for a time.

Hannay moves in with Medina, whose cool facade has weakened somewhat, and hears that Sandy has been spotted in London. For a week he stays at the house, under close scrutiny, but learns little until he gets a telegram from Gaudian, saying Mercot and his captors have fought and Gaudian has had to lock them all up, bringing Mercot home himself. Tom Greenslade visits, with a message from Mary saying Turpin and Adela Victor are safe. Hannay discovers that Medina's plans to liquidate his gang have been brought forward, and manages to warn Mary.

The round-up

We learn in an aside of a dowdy but somehow elegant district visitor coming to the house of Madame Breda in Palmyra Square, befriending the maid but being warned off by her mistress. Hannay continues to cling to Medina, until at last Greenslade visits again, and instructs Hannay to come to the dance club the following night, leaving a door to Medina's unlocked, while Mercot travels home by train and Turpin, having awakened Adela from her trance, is held in the mysterious house while she sets off once more for the club, and around Britain, Europe and the world the police close in on a variety of people and places.

Sandy briefly drops in on Hannay and Medina at a dinner of the Thursday Club, from where Hannay goes to the dance club and sees the staff rounded up and Turpin soundly beat Odell; Mary visits Madame Breda once more, leaving with a bundle in her arms and police swarming the house behind her; Hannay returns to Medina's house, and reveals he knows all, pleading with Medina to hand over the boy. Despite the upset to his plans, Medina is cool, but shaken somewhat when Kharama enters and reveals himself as none other than Sandy Arbuthnot, who has looked after Turpin and Adela at Medina's request, and now threatens to expose him if he refuses to heal the child. Lavater, an old friend of Sandy long lost to Medina, is discovered to be Medina's private secretary, and to hold many secrets, but still Medina holds out. Mary enters with the strange little girl from Madame Breda's house; she has become a powerful figure of wrath, and threatens to disfigure vain Medina if he does not cure the child; he gives in, restores the boy's mind, and they return him to his joyous father. Later, Hannay and Mary join Adela, Turpin, Mercot, and Gaudian in celebration.

The showdown

After a restful spell in the country, Sandy warns Hannay that Medina, never accused of any crimes, may be out for revenge, and advises him to head to Scotland for a spell. Soon he, Mary, their son and Doctor Greenslade are in the Scottish Highlands for the deerstalking season. Soon Archie arrives with news that Medina is at a neighbouring lodge, and Hannay prepares for a showdown. After a long and complex stalk through the crags, Hannay, with no bullets, climbs a dangerous chimney, only to have his hand shot by Medina; he struggles to the top, and Medina follows, but takes a bad turn and gets stuck. He loses his gun, and Hannay lowers a rope to him, but the exhausted Medina is too much for one-handed Hannay to raise up, and lowering him wears through the rope until it breaks, dropping Medina to his death. Hannay falls back exhausted, but is found alive and safe next day.

This film is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where few fertile men and women exist due to atomic fallout. As a result, the government places a high priority on those who can still breed. Shortly before the movie opens, a group of mutant amphibians (who have been exiled to the desert by humans) capture a group of fertile women and are using them as sex slaves.

Sam Hell (Piper) is a nomadic traveler who wanders the countryside. He is first seen tied to a chair and smashed over the head with a bottle by a man whose daughter he sexually assaulted. He is eventually captured by an organization of warrior-nurses, the closest thing to a government in his region of the world, who reveal that they located him by tracking the trail of pregnant women left in his wake. Their original plan was to use him as breeding stock with their collection of fertile women, but this was the group captured by the mutants. With their own attempts to capture the women failing, the group presses Hell into service as a mercenary; he is to infiltrate the mutant city (derogatorily referred to as "Frogtown") and rescue the women. To make sure that the rebellious Hell follows his orders, he is forced to wear an electronic protective codpiece that will explode if he disobeys or tries to abort his mission. Having already had numerous samples of his reproductive material taken, he is now deemed far more expendable than the women themselves. To aid him in his mission (and make sure he follows the plan), he is paired with one of the nurses, Spangle (Bergman), and an aggressive guard named Centinella (Verrell).

During their journey to Frogtown, Hell tries numerous times to escape, but quickly learns that a device Spangle carries will shock his genitals if used or if he gets too far away from it. Despite their rocky start and Spangle's initial cold demeanor, the pair grow closer during the journey and eventually fall in love. When they reach Frogtown, everyone involved is captured. The frogs' second-in-command, Bull (Nicholas Worth), tortures Hell and attempts to remove the codpiece for its technology. Meanwhile, a slightly drugged Spangle is forced to work as a slave and dance for the frogs' Commander Toty (Brian Frank) in the notable "Dance of the Three Snakes" sequence. Proving more successful than she had wished, the nurse soon finds herself at the mercy of the aroused commander. However, with the codpiece now removed (Bull finally removed it with a chainsaw, but it blew up and killed him), the escaped Hell rescues her along with the group of fertile women (Ellen Crocker, Kim Hewson, Ilana Ishaki, Annie McKinon and Janie Thorson) held captive.

At Wolfram & Hart, Harmony tells Angel that there was a mix-up with a girl named Dana's medication at a psychiatric hospital, and no longer sedated, she broke down her door, killed several people, and escaped. At the hospital, Dr. Rabinaw tells Angel and Spike that Dana had been kidnapped and tortured for months when she was 10, by the man who killed her family. Recently, she gained incredible strength. Angel realizes Dana — like Buffy — is a vampire slayer, activated during Buffy's battle with the First Evil.

Wesley asks Giles to send "his top guy" to take care of Dana, who turns out to be Andrew Wells. He updates the group on how Willow activated every potential Slayer; when Wesley wonders how the Slayers will be trained now that the Watcher's Council is gone, Andrew explains that Giles and some "Sunnydale alum" have been taking care of it. As Spike heads off to look for Dana, Angel follows Lorne's suggestion to visit Dana's childhood home with a psychic. The psychic flashes back to Dana's abduction and her family's murder; the smell of molasses and a basement is "where her pain lives" he says. Meanwhile, Dana goes to the basement of the building where she was held captive, flashing back to her torturer injecting her with various drugs. When she looks up at his face, she sees Spike.

Andrew catches up with Spike, and updates him on the Scoobies' activities - Xander is in Africa, Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil, Buffy and Dawn are in Rome, and everyone else is in England. Andrew learns that Spike has not told Buffy about his resurrection. When Spike follows the scent of blood into Dana's trap, Andrew tries unsuccessfully to shoot Dana with a tranquilizer gun. Spike chases Dana to the basement, where she starts repeating what her torturer once said to her. Dana, channeling Nikki, recognizes Spike as William the Bloody. Before he can explain that she is dreaming of other slayers, she injects him with a sedative. At Wolfram & Hart, Fred and the team realize the smell of molasses indicates Dana was held in a distillery, and they send a tactical team to search abandoned distilleries.

Back in the basement, Spike awakens to discover that Dana has cut off his hands. She tells Spike he cannot hurt her anymore, but when he insists she is thinking of someone else, she finally remembers who her torturer really was. Angel arrives, tells Dana her real torturer is dead, and knocks her out with a tranquilizer dart. Spike is taken to the hospital to have his hands reattached. Later, Andrew tells Angel because Dana is a slayer, she belongs in the care of the new council. This goes against Angel's intentions to have her treated in his own W&H facilities. Andrew says none of the Scoobies — especially Buffy, whom he points out, gives him his orders — trust Angel now that he works at Wolfram & Hart. When Angel presses the issue, a group of slayers comes out of hiding and Andrew makes it clear that they will take Dana by force, if necessary. In the end, Dana is taken away with Andrew.

Angel visits Spike at the hospital, where Spike admits he has never thought much about what being evil means, he only ever killed for the rush and enjoyment of the act, and he then states that he never once looked his victims in the eye. At this, Angel replies that Angelus could never stop staring into his victims; for him, it was always about the evil of the act, it was a form of art. Back then, he would have considered Dana a masterpiece. Angel and Spike agree that Dana is like them — she was an innocent victim until someone turned her into a monster.

Suki, her cowardly brother Linus, and their conceited cousin Fleck are all lion cubs. When two rogue lions called Dark and Harry known as "The Wanderers" attack and while the lionesses help, they kill Fleck's mother leaving him an orphan. Suki and Linus decide to go exploring and find out how the Wanderers got across the river. Their mother Macheeba thought it impossible for the Wanderers to get across as there are Nile crocodiles in the river. Suki and Linus find a dead tree making a bridge, which is probably how the Wanderers got across. Elephants destroy the bridge leaving the cubs (and the Wanderers) trapped. When they meet Dark, he saves them from a pack of spotted hyenas, and Suki develops a crush on him. She and Linus have no choice but to swim across the river, and they successfully do.

As the cubs become teenagers, Suki and Linus are being taught to hunt. Suki does not want to hunt and becomes a vegetarian. Fleck thinks that Suki and Linus do not like him because he is an orphan. Often in the film, Linus tries to practice hunting but is humiliated twice (being urinated on by an olive baboon, and trying to hunt a banded mongoose, but is chased up a tree by a herd of cape buffalo). When Suki, Fleck and Linus are adults, Suki refuses to hunt/contribute to the pride as she sees it as cruelty to kill animals, therefore rendering her useless or another mouth to feed to the other lions, and, seeing as she does not see that she fits in, leaves the pride and becomes a Wanderer. After a year with the Wanderers, Suki now has Dark's cubs but still refuses to hunt. One night Harry, who killed Fleck's mother, eats all but one of Suki's cubs, Rory. Harry claims they went missing and threatens for her last cub to "go missing" if she does not contribute. That night Suki overhears Harry talking to Dark about striking another attack on the pride saying they will kill them all. Outraged, Suki goes back to warn her pride about the impending attack.

On her way back, Suki meets Lush, a lion who left the pride to see the rest of the world. Suki asks him to help her find some food and help fight the Wanderers. She hunts for the first time to provide food for the pride as they had not eaten for a while. Since the pride will not accept Fleck, he decides to join the Wanderers. Soon a fight erupts on the mountain top containing Harry and Linus where Harry dies by falling off the cliff side after Dark refuses to help him because Dark had just found out what Harry did to his cubs. Both Fleck and Dark leave after the battle, with Fleck threatening his revenge, claiming he will come back with an entire group of "highly-trained lions." Suki mates with Lush and has his cubs as Linus decides to leave to see the rest of the world and vows to come back when he is needed.

"In the 2001 film Undercover X (aka No Boundaries), Shaw plays an undercover LAPD detective named Truck Baker, a cross between action star Chuck Norris and The Dude from The Big Lebowski. He's laid-back, but he can also tear your head off with his bare hands. Newcomer Richard Magram plays Shaw's hyperactive partner Torino, who rambles on and on like Joe Pesci after four cups of espresso."

The feature was filmed in Hollywood, California, Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan.

This film is considered a "Zen Film" in that it was created in the distinct style of filmmaking formulated by Scott Shaw known as ''Zen Filmmaking''. In this style of filmmaking, no scripts are used.

The episode opens with Gunn still being tortured by a demon in a hell dimension, when he is suddenly rescued by Illyria, who uses her ability to shift between dimensions to return them both to Wolfram & Hart.

Gunn enters Wesley's office, and both have so much emotional baggage, they are uncertain how to behave. Wesley acknowledges that he should apologize for stabbing him earlier but is unsure how as he feels it would just be awkward. Gunn replies he is not looking for an apology and he probably wouldn't accept one anyway, adding that his torture in the hell dimension was much worse.

Meanwhile, Angel grows suspicious of Illyria's continued presence at the Firm, and concludes that she is staying not out of loyalty, but because of an attraction to the Firm's power. He orders Lorne to shadow her, and then turns his attention to a legal case involving a ceremonial demon pact. A pregnant woman named Amanda has agreed to allow a demonic cult called "the Fell Brethren" to adopt her baby, and Angel and Gunn start to advise her until they learn, to their outrage, that their client is not the innocent woman, but rather the seemingly benevolent demons who are secretly taking advantage of her and planning to sacrifice the child on the eve of its 13th birthday.

Meanwhile, Illyria enjoys sparring with Spike in the training room, perhaps because he does not kowtow to her, and is even learning to adapt to her fighting techniques, but she begins to act oddly even by her standards, and Wesley theorizes that she is growing emotionally and molecularly unstable as a result of her interdimensional travels. He realizes that if her energy excess continues to go unchecked, it will result in a catastrophic explosion.

As Angel, Gunn, and Hamilton argue over how to handle the Fell Brethren case, Illyria grows increasingly disoriented and paranoid, culminating in a confrontation in which she effortlessly kills Angel, Lorne, Spike, and Wesley in a matter of seconds. At this point, the narrative switches to her point of view, and it is revealed that Illyria's disorientation has been caused by the fact that her excessive mystical energy has been sending her uncontrollably back and forth in time.

Illyria again goes back in time to a point before she had killed the other characters, and she inadvertently begins taking Angel with her on her trips through time. Angel learns of the deaths of his friends and is horrified. After Illyria gives him advice about power, she explodes and likely decimates the continental shelf, but the explosion is so powerful it blasts Angel back in time to before Illyria killed everyone. This time, thanks to what Illyria told him, Angel is able to disrupt Illyria's attack and avoid the massacre. Illyria accuses Angel and Wesley of plotting to kill her with Wesley's massive ray gun, but Wesley reveals that the gun is not meant to kill her, but rather to disperse her excessive energy and thus prevent the fatal explosion. Spike briefly holds his own fighting Illyria until she uses her time control powers on him, giving Wesley the chance to activate the ray in time. Illyria is left emotionally devastated by the resulting loss of some of her super powers.

Angel returns his attention to the Fell Brethren case, and shocks Gunn by agreeing to represent the demons rather than the blithely naïve pregnant woman, having apparently taken Illyria's advice about power.

Deciding to go on a date with a hot but dumb blonde, Brian soon discovers he is dating "an idiot". Brian returns home depressed, and Lois tells him that he's too picky when it comes to the women he dates. Lois suggests that Brian go with Peter, Quagmire and Cleveland to a laser rock concert, but while there, Brian begins looking around the theater at all of the loving couples and becomes even more depressed, eventually deciding to start drinking. On the journey home, he is soon pulled over by Joe and arrested for driving under the influence.

One month later, Brian is sentenced to 100 hours of community service in the "Outreach to the Elderly" program, and assigned to an elderly woman named Pearl Burton, who has not left her house for thirty years. Appearing at her home the next day, he quickly becomes angered by her constant complaining, eventually losing his temper and telling her to "drop dead". Later that day, however, Brian soon discovers Pearl was actually a brilliant opera singer from the 1940s until the 1960s; who was shamed into hiding once she faced demands to sing her more popular radio jingles. Deciding to visit Pearl later that night, he discovers her about to take her own life; but prevents her from doing so at the last second. Brian manages to convince Pearl that her voice is amazing and she is touched.

The two quickly bond over Pearl's singing, and become close friends. Suggesting they go out for dinner, Brian leads Pearl out of her house, where she is immediately run over by a truck. At the hospital, Pearl is left in a serious condition and Brian feels guilty about taking her outside her house. Spending their last seconds together in virtual reality, which Brian had bought while at the rock concert, Pearl soon dies from her injuries, leaving Brian alone and upset once again.

Meanwhile, after watching an episode of ''Grizzly Adams'' on television, Peter decides to grow a beard, despite Lois' disapproval. After his beard is fully grown, the Griffin family decide to go out for dinner, but are soon pestered by a white-rumped swallow, who eventually settles in Peter's facial hair. Unaware that the bird is actually an endangered species, Peter attempts to remove the bird, but is soon threatened with a prison sentence if he does so. Left with no other choice but to let the bird live within his beard, Peter attempts to continue life as normally as possible, until he can no longer take the bird's constant squawking, and decides to shoot the bird. Stopped at the last second by Lois, Peter accidentally shoots a nearby window, causing the bird to fly out. Thankful that the bird is finally gone, the two soon hear peeping coming from inside his facial hair, and discover three small baby birds. Won over by their resemblance to his own children, he decides to keep the baby birds, and take the place of their mother. As time goes on, he becomes reluctant to release the birds once they have become fully grown, but is ultimately convinced by Lois to release them back into the wilderness once they attempt to fly out of their bedroom window. He does release them, and then he finally takes the plunge and shaves off his beard.

Later in the Drunken Clam, Brian and Peter drink to each other's experiences and, as Brian sees an attractive blonde at the bar and Peter is getting looks from a large female bird, agree they aren't ready to move on.

During a late-night bachelor party at the Eager Beaver, a strip club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, drunken groom-to-be Paul Guber climbs on stage and grabs Erin Grant, one of the dancers. Before the club's bouncer can act, Paul is attacked with a champagne bottle by another customer. The attacker turns out to be Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, an incorrigible (yet secret) patron of adult establishments. Political fixer Malcolm Moldowsky, representing Dilbeck's legislative patrons in Florida's sugar cane industry, is furious at Dilbeck's stupidity since he is in the middle of a re-election campaign.

Erin, a single mother engaged in a custody legal fight with her ex-husband Darrell, was fired from her job as a secretary for the FBI after he was arrested for grand larceny. The legal costs of her divorce impelled Erin to take up erotic dancing as a career. Ironically, her occupation has given the judge a prejudiced view of her, while Darrell's criminal record has been expunged after he has agreed to become an informant for the police. As a result, Darrell has been given custody of their daughter Angela, and Erin desperately needs even more money to reverse the court decision.

One of Erin's lovestruck fans, a bookish man named Jerry Killian, recognizes Dilbeck from the club and tries to blackmail him into influencing the judge in Erin's favor. But when the judge proves resistant to Dilbeck's probing, Moldowsky decides the only way to safeguard Dilbeck is to have Jerry murdered. His body is found floating in the Clark Fork River in Montana – by Miami homicide detective Al Garcia, on vacation with his family.

Another blackmailer surfaces in the person of Mordecai, a sleazy lawyer related to Paul's fiancee. One of Paul's friends from the bachelor party inadvertently snapped a picture of Dilbeck during the attack, with which Mordecai demands hush money. Instead, Mordecai and Paul's greedy fiancee are likewise murdered on Moldowsky's orders. However, Dilbeck's memory of Erin is indirectly sparked by the photo, and he obsessively refuses to continue with his campaign until he can "possess" her. Moldowsky, conscious that Dilbeck is necessary to his employers' continued prosperity, is forced to assist him.

Garcia returns to Florida and compares notes with Erin and her main ally, the club's bouncer Shad. He discovers evidence linking Jerry's murder to Moldowsky, but nothing that will stand up in court. At the same time, Darrell is again busted for larceny and his criminal record is restored, tipping the dispute in Erin's favor. Deciding not to wait, she snatches Angela while Darrell is away, from her aunt's house. Meanwhile, Moldowsky approaches Erin's boss and asks for her to give Dilbeck a private performance. Erin agrees, knowing that it is the best way of gathering evidence.

During her first private show, Dilbeck is rendered nearly helpless with lust, and Erin finds it easy to manipulate him. He offers her more money for a repeat performance, and she agrees. Realizing Dilbeck will probably escape implication in Jerry's murder under normal circumstances, Erin comes up with a plan to "destroy" him. On the night of the second show, Darrell follows Erin to the meeting place and comes upon Moldowsky watch-dogging the show, beating him to death in a drug-induced rage. Inside, Dilbeck tries to seduce her, and is vexed when she is unimpressed. Darrell enters and demands to be taken to his daughter. Erin moves to the next phase of her plan, drawing a pistol and ordering them both out.

With the help of Dilbeck's limousine driver, Erin drives the two men to a sugar cane field owned by Dilbeck's most prominent supporters. When the car stops, Darrell runs into the cane and winds up falling into a drug-induced slumber; he is killed the next day when the cane he passed out in is fed into a milling machine. Erin offers to slow-dance with Dilbeck in the cane field. Dilbeck believes the dance is a prelude to "wild cowboy sex," but when he realizes it is not, he tries to rape Erin – at which point he is seized by a squad of FBI agents, led by Erin's old boss, who received an anonymous call saying she had been kidnapped. Erin gives Dilbeck an ultimatum: in exchange for avoiding arrest and public exposure, he must resign from his congressional seat.

With Darrell gone, and the threat to her from Dilbeck and his patrons removed, Erin resigns from the club and starts a new life with Angela. In the epilogue, it is said that she has got back her old job as a secretary with the FBI and a night job dancing in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World, and is currently applying to become an FBI agent herself.

The cartoon stars Mr. T as a coach to a gymnastics team (with a specific emphasis on members Jeff, Woody, Robin, and Kim), travelling the world while becoming involved in and solving various mysteries similar to the Scooby-Doo franchise.

At the beginning of each episode, a live-action introduction featuring Mr. T himself is shown to explain what the episode is about. At the end of each episode, he narrates a moral lesson for the audience.

In September 1971, the US is losing the Vietnam War. Roland Bozz, a draftee opposed to the war, is an unruly soldier who disrespects authority. He befriends another Army recruit, Jim Paxton, an aspiring writer who records his experiences in a journal. Unlike Bozz, Paxton volunteered. Upon reaching their post, company commanding officer Captain Saunders explains that every soldier who passes through Fort Polk will be sent to Vietnam, and that any political views on the war are irrelevant.

Having "X-ray vision for loopholes", Bozz finds ways for soldiers to get out of the army — one because he not only has children but also a handicapped wife; another, Miter, had joined to prove his manhood but finds himself overwhelmed. Eventually Bozz's natural leadership and ability earn him the title of squad leader. Another private, Wilson, a racial bigot and instigator, continuously demeans Miter and Bozz. Bozz fights and easily beats Wilson, earning Wilson's hatred.

Later, during live fire exercises, Wilson threatens Bozz with a pistol. Bozz tries to disarm Wilson, and the two wrestle each other to the ground, with Wilson prevailing and putting the gun to the back of Bozz's head and pulling the trigger. Miraculously, the gun misfires, saving Bozz's life. Saunders lets Bozz choose the punishment: have Wilson court-martialed or "let me deal with him", strongly suggesting the latter. Bozz says he wants Wilson "out of the Army", because he recognizes Wilson has emotionally suffered ever since his inability to command became obvious.

The platoon is sent to "Tigerland", a forested training area designed as a replica of Vietnam. During an exercise, Bozz's squad acts as villagers in a mock Vietnamese village, with one squad member designated as a Viet Cong sympathizer. They compete with another squad charged with rooting out the sympathizer, led by Wilson, who was ultimately spared. As the exercise ends with Bozz's squad "winning", Wilson tells Bozz he will kill him no matter what it takes. Soon thereafter, Bozz plans to escape to Mexico with the aid of some civilians he has paid. Platoon member Johnson tells him if he runs away, Wilson will kill Paxton instead. Bozz remains.

During the last training exercise, the two squads are pitted against each other on patrolling missions. As Wilson's squad prepares for an attack, he replaces his blank cartridges with live ammunition and removes his blank-firing adaptor. As Bozz's squad nears, he opens fire. Though he does not hit anyone, he is obviously using live ammunition, and the trainer for the exercise tries to intervene. As he does, Bozz is standing above Paxton and deliberately fires a blank round with his rifle muzzle near Paxton's face, the flash wounding Paxton's eye. The trainer aims a pistol at Wilson's head to get him to hold his weapon up and surrender, telling him he will be court-martialed.

The platoon prepares to head to Vietnam, except for Paxton, whose eye injury, though temporary, has earned him a medical discharge. Bozz and Paxton exchange farewells. Paxton tells Bozz he is going to write about him, but Bozz says he will not. He has stolen Paxton's journal and rips out pages as the platoon's bus drives off, leaving Paxton scrambling to recover them. Bozz tosses the journal as the bus speeds away.

In the closing narration, Paxton says he never saw Bozz again. Over time, he heard from various sources that Bozz either died in Vietnam or disappeared over there. One acquaintance told Paxton he thought he'd seen Bozz, years after the war, in Mexico with a beautiful woman.

Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his life history. He arrived in Britain during the summer of 1939 as an infant refugee on a kindertransport from a Czechoslovakia threatened by Hitler's Nazis. He was adopted by an elderly Welsh Nonconformist preacher and his sickly wife, and spent his childhood near Bala, Gwynedd, before attending a minor public school. His foster parents died, and Austerlitz learned something of his background. After school he attended Oriel College, Oxford and became an academic who is drawn to, and began his research in, the study of European architecture. After a nervous breakdown, Austerlitz visited Prague, where he met a close friend of his lost parents, Vera, who often took care of "Jacquot" when his parents were away. As he speaks with her, memories return, including French and Czech expressions she taught him. The elderly lady tells him the fate of his mother, an actress and opera singer who was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. From Prague, Austerlitz travels to Theriesenstadt, and after returning to England via train, with an emotionally difficult journey through Germany, manages to obtain a 14-minute video compilation of highlights from ''Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet'', the 1944 Nazi propaganda film, in which he believes he recognizes his mother. Vera, however, dismisses the woman from the documentary. Instead, she confirms the identity of Austerlitz's mother in a photograph of an anonymous actress which Austerlitz found in the Prague theatrical archives.

The novel shifts to contemporary Paris as Austerlitz seeks out any remaining evidence about the fate of his father. He meets up with the narrator and tells him of his first sojourn in Paris, in 1959, when he suffered his first nervous breakdown and was hospitalized; Marie de Verneuil, a young Frenchwoman with whom he became acquainted in the library, helps nurse him back to health. Sebald explores the ways in which collections of records, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France or National Library of France, entomb memories. During the novel the reader is taken on a guided tour of a lost European civilization: a world of fortresses, railway stations, concentration camps and libraries.

Margaret Ford is a psychiatrist who has achieved success with her recently published book about obsessive-compulsive disorder, yet feels unfulfilled. During a session one day, her patient Billy Hahn tells her his life is in danger because he owes money to a criminal figure named Mike Mancuso, and threatens suicide, brandishing a gun. Margaret persuades him to surrender the weapon to her and promises that she will help him.

That night, Margaret visits a pool hall called the House of Games, where she finds and confronts Mike, who says that he is willing to forgive Billy's debt if Margaret accompanies him to a back-room poker game and identifies the tell of George, another player. She agrees, and spots George playing with his ring when he bluffs. She discloses this to Mike, who calls the bet. However, George wins the hand and demands that Mike pay the $6,000 bet, which he is unable to do. George pulls a gun, but Margaret intervenes and offers to pay the debt with a personal check. She then notices that the gun is a water pistol, and realizes the entire game is a set-up to trick her out of her money. She declines to pay, but spends the rest of the night socializing with the con men. As the experience has excited her, she returns the next night and asks Mike to teach her about con games so she can write a book about the experience. Mike appears skeptical, but agrees.

Mike begins to enchant Margaret by showing her simple tricks. Eventually, the two steal a hotel room and have sex. Afterward, Mike tells Margaret that all con artists take a small token from every "mark" to signify their dominance. While Mike is in the bathroom, she takes a small pocket knife from the table belonging to the room occupant. Mike tells her he is late for another, large-scale con he and his associates plan to pull at the same hotel. Margaret is eager to tag along, and with seeming reluctance, Mike allows her to accompany him, posing as his wife. The con involves Mike, his partner Joey, and the "mark", a businessman, discovering a briefcase full of money and taking it to a hotel room. There, they discuss whether to turn it in or split it among themselves. When the "mark" withdraws to the bathroom, Margaret discovers that he is an undercover policeman, and the trick is a sting operation. She warns Mike, and they attempt to escape, but the policeman blocks their way and tries to arrest them. After a struggle, Margaret accidentally causes the policeman to fatally shoot himself. She, Mike and Joey escape to the garage, where they force Margaret to steal a car and drive past two uniformed police officers with the con men concealed in the back seat. They drive the car to a riverbank and are preparing to abandon it when they discover that the briefcase, containing $80,000 borrowed from the mafia for the con, is gone. Margaret offers to give Mike $80,000 of her own money so he can pay back the mob.

Mike tells Margaret that they must split up so as not to draw any attention from the police, and claims to be going into hiding. Riddled with guilt, Margaret returns to her office and refuses to see any patients. Billy arrives in high spirits, and after a brief conversation, she spots him driving away in the same red convertible she "stole" at the hotel. She tracks him to a bar, where she sees Mike and a group including all his associates, the man posing as the occupant of the hotel room, and the undercover policeman, discussing the night's events - a scheme to con Margaret out of $80,000. She also learns that the pocket knife she stole from the hotel room belongs to Mike, who set up the room beforehand to look like it was occupied and who mocks Margaret for stealing it.

Margaret intercepts Mike at the airport after overhearing him say he is catching a flight that night and tells him she is so worried about the police that she has withdrawn her entire life's savings. She pleads with him to start a new life with her. Mike is lured by the money, but realizes he is being tricked when she inadvertently says that she was the one who stole "his" pocket knife, revealing that she overheard the con men's conversation. He tells her her money has already been split up and is gone, but she pulls out the gun taken from Billy and demands that he beg for his life. Calling her bluff, Mike refuses, but Margaret shoots him in the leg. When Mike then curses her, she shoots him five more times, killing him. She calmly conceals the gun and leaves.

Some time later, Margaret has returned from a vacation, she has written another successful book and is meeting her friend and colleague Dr. Littauer. They talk over lunch, and Margaret says, "When you've done something unforgivable, you must forgive yourself, and that's what I've done, and it's done." While her friend is away from the table, Margaret distracts another diner so she can steal a gold lighter from her purse, relishing the thrill.

The events in the series are set in motion by Cobb Anderson, a computer scientist born in 1950 as part of the baby boomer generation. In the late part of the 20th century, the population bulge of the Baby Boomers causes massive unemployment. By 1995, Anderson's self-replicating robots, known as "boppers", colonize the Moon. By 2010, the United States Social Security system collapses. In response to riots, the federal government turns over the state of Florida to the elderly. This leads directly into the events of ''Software'', in 2020.

''Software''

''Software'' introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting Josephson effect circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a ''freaky geezer'', Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome the Asimov priorities to achieve free will. Having duplicated himself many times — as boppers are required to do, to encourage natural selection — Numbers finds himself caught up in a lunar civil war between the masses of "little boppers" and the "big boppers" who want to merge all robot consciousness into their massive processors.

''Wetware''

Set in 2030-2031, ten years after the events of ''Software,'' ''Wetware'' focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a ''meatbop''. Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the Moon (Della Taze, Cobb Anderson's niece) and then frames her for murder to force her to return to Earth. After only a few days, she gives birth to a boy named Manchile, who has been genetically programmed to carry bopper software in his brain (and in his sperm), and to grow to maturity in a matter of weeks.

Berenice's plan is for Manchile to announce the formation of a new religion unifying boppers and humans, and then arrange to have himself assassinated. (Rucker makes several allusions to the Christ story; Taze's abbreviated pregnancy is discovered on Christmas Eve, for instance.) Before the assassination, Manchile impregnates several women, the idea being that his similarly accelerated offspring will create a race of meatbops at an exponential rate.

The plot goes disastrously awry, and a human corporation called ISDN retaliates against the boppers by infecting them with a genetically modified organism called chipmold. The artificial disease succeeds in killing off the boppers, but when it infects the boppers' outer coating, a kind of smart plastic known as flickercladding, it creates a new race of intelligent symbiotes known as ''moldies'' — thus fulfilling Berenice's dream of an organic/synthetic hybrid.

Both of the two main human characters of ''Software'' play prominent roles in ''Wetware'': Cobb Anderson, whose robot body was destroyed at the end of the last novel, has his software implanted in a new body so he can help raise Manchile; while Sta-Hi Mooney — now known as Stahn Mooney — is now working as a private detective on the Moon after accidentally killing his wife, and is used as a pawn in various bopper and anti-bopper schemes.

The ''Belle of Louisville'', a steamboat of historic significance in Louisville, Kentucky (the setting for the earthbound portions of the book), occurs as a character in the book, in which it is revealed that the steamer has been imbued with an onboard artificial intelligence.

''Freeware''

''Freeware'' deals with the lifeforms (called "Moldies") that evolved from the molds in ''Wetware''. A moldie named Monique is drawn into a plot to destroy the Earth. The main human protagonist is ''Randy Karl Tucker'' a so-called "Cheeseball" - a human who has sex with Moldies. According to Rucker in his afterword of ''The Ware Tetralogy'', "''Freeware'' (1997) proposes that aliens could travel as radio signals coding up the software for both their minds and their bodies."

''Realware''

In ''Realware'', a fourth-dimensional being is worshiped as a god by aliens living near Tonga. After humans are captured and swallowed by the being, Phil Gottner goes to investigate. As a gift for allowing them to be studied by him, the being gives humanity an "alla", a device capable of making real anything imaginable.

For months now, former President Lex Luthor has been using his resources to assemble an army against the superheroes. Luthor's team now has over two hundred members with a six-member core team consisting of Luthor, Talia al Ghul, Doctor Psycho, Deathstroke, Black Adam, and the Calculator. Nevertheless, not all the villains offered a chance to join this army are thrilled with this idea. Batman villain Catman has joined a team of five supported by the mysterious Mockingbird including Cheshire, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, and Parademon to oppose this new Secret Society. Catman replaced the first Fiddler, after he was killed by Deadshot on Mockingbird's orders when Mockingbird felt he had not fulfilled his part in a mission.

The Mockingbird

Late one night in the mansion of the Secret Six, Catman and Deadshot have a discussion about their unknown leader, Mockingbird, and about the dramatic change in Catman's life, while Cheshire secretly listens in the shadows. Afterwards, Scandal informs everyone that Mockingbird has just assigned them to steal Thanagarian weaponry from a tanker in Gotham harbor.

Upon their arrival at the tanker, the Six are ambushed and captured by members of the Society, including Weather Wizard, Cheetah, Doctor Polaris, Count Vertigo, Killer Frost, Captain Nazi, Hyena, Crazy Quilt, and others. The Crime Doctor tortures the Six, asking them, among other questions, the identity of Mockingbird. After a few rounds of torture, Catman breaks free and rescues his teammates. While escaping, the Six decide to send the Society a message. They murder one of the two Hyenas.

The Six then infiltrate a Society installation in Brazil. After fighting their way through a legion of H.I.V.E. troopers, apparently led by the Queen Bee, they discover the Society's plans for the "Vindication Scenario": erasing the memories of all of Earth's superheroes. The facility is a giant battery, powered by kidnapped heroes Firestorm and Gehenna. The Six release Firestorm just as Black Adam arrives with a response team, and the facility is destroyed.

Betrayal

Once the Six return to their base, Cheshire and Catman are in bed together when Cheshire accuses Catman of being a spy and wanting to be a hero. However, she reveals that she has slept with him in order to conceive a child.

A short time later, most of the Society's founding council votes to mount a final strike on the Secret Six — Lex Luthor disagrees with a preemptive attack, but the remaining four members (Black Adam is absent for unknown reasons) decide the action is necessary. Simultaneously, the Six agree to a last stand, but only under the condition that any survivors be set free from Mockingbird's control with no strings attached.

The Six hunted

Prior to the battle between the Society and the Six, Deadshot visits Scandal's room to talk about the team's future. A framed picture on the woman's desk reveals that her father is the immortal Vandal Savage. Before the conversation can progress past basic greetings, Catman ambushes Deadshot and admits knowing that he (Deadshot) masqueraded as the villainous Deathstroke and murdered the lions in his pride. The two scuffle before finding the real Deathstroke leading a small band of villains to the front door of the House of Secrets.

As the crew debates how the Society found them, Cheshire confesses to several traitorous deeds, including giving Luthor the coordinates of the Six's base and covertly joining the Society. When asked why she would do such a thing, considering Mockingbird's threat to kill her daughter if she does not comply, Cheshire points out that the baby she is having with Catman would make a fine replacement for a lost child.

Mockingbird revealed

The Society storms through the castle, and Cheshire is shot by Deathstroke, who comments that "The Society doesn't need traitors". The Secret Six, however, fights back successfully. Talia and Scandal, daughters of immortals Ra's al Ghul and Vandal Savage, respectively, fight each other. Just when Talia has the upper hand, Scandal's mole in the Society, Knockout, knocks her out (it is also revealed that Knockout is Scandal's lover). Ragdoll convinces Solomon Grundy, a fellow "ugly monster", to switch sides. Ragdoll fights his father until Parademon beats the elder Rag Doll. Catman and Ragdoll Jr. escape from Black Adam's group while Parademon blows up himself, Rag Doll and the battleground. Deathstroke and Deadshot duel, ultimately shooting each other at the same time. To save his daughter Scandal, Vandal Savage infiltrates the Society's headquarters and threatens to kill Luthor if he does not disengage the attack against the Six. Reluctantly, and over Black Adam's objections, Luthor ends the battle. Deadshot is led to medical help by the surviving members of the Secret Six.

The central revelation of the book is that Mockingbird is actually Lex Luthor and that the Luthor who organized the Secret Society is an "imposter" (in reality, Alexander Luthor, Jr.). Mockingbird/Luthor reveals that he chose those six individuals because each had different knowledge and experience that could be used to oppose the Society: Catman, for his knowledge of Batman's villains; Deadshot, for his knowledge of the remaining Suicide Squad members; Parademon, for his experience living on Apokolips; Ragdoll, because he grew up as a "nephew" to the members of the Injustice Society; Scandal, because she grew up with Vandal Savage and his associates; and Cheshire, for her knowledge of the Teen Titans villains. Mockingbird/Luthor reveals to Scandal that he never placed the families of the Six in danger and disbands the team. Also notable is the Society Luthor's apparent murder of Pariah, a character from the original Crisis.

For two generations humanity has been enslaved by the Vorra, a race of technologically advanced barbarians who had conquered space. On Qallavarra, the home planet of the Vorra, Gareth Shaw is an indentured servant of the House of Pwill, one of the giant city-states into which the planet is divided. As the only Terran on the estate, he is drawn into a seraglio intrigue by Under-lady Shavarri, the ninth wife of Pwill Himself, the overlord who rules the estate like a medieval duke. Shavarri's demand obliges Shaw to visit the "Acre of Earth", a ghetto-like enclave in the middle of a nearby city.

In the Acre humans lived in relative freedom because they provided services that the Vorra could not provide for themselves. Chief among those services was the maintenance and repair of machines brought from Earth for the Vorra to use. But the Terrans also provided certain chemical services and Shaw had been sent to obtain one of those.

Chased into the Acre by a Vorrish mob instigated by a squad of soldier-trainees, Shaw meets an almost equally hostile reception from three Terrans—Marijane Lee, her brother Ken, and their friend Gustav—who have rescued him from the mob. Seeing that he's wearing the livery of a Vorrish estate, they take him to Judge Olafsson, the voice of Terran law in the Acre. After being interrogated about his time on Qallavarra, Shaw leaves Judge Olafsson's court and completes his mission. He obtains from Hans Kramer, an apothecary, the love potion that Shavarri has ordered him to bring to her. Containing credulin, a drug that enhances suggestibility, the potion will enable Shavarri to manipulate Pwill Himself in her favor.

Returning to the Pwill estate, he is called to the Grand Terrace of the manor house, where he finds Pwill Himself and his primary wife, Over-lady Llaq, having an angry confrontation with their wastrel son, Pwill Heir Apparent. Pwill, Sr. tells Shaw that his son has become addicted to a drug that affects the Vorra much as heroin affects Terrans—coffee—and that he expects Shaw to ensure that no one in the Acre will supply his son with more coffee. Later Pwill, Jr. prevails upon Shaw to keep him supplied with coffee beans through his friend Forrel.

Soon after returning from the Acre and after his confrontation with Pwill Himself, Shaw begins to notice that he doesn't know things that he should know and that he knows things that, apparently, he shouldn't. He struggles to decode the meaning of that discovery and to regain lost memories, but has little success. After an encounter with the estate's whipmaster, he uses drugs obtained from Kramer to drive the whipmaster insane and thereby gains a reputation among the superstitious Vorra as a powerful shaman. One day he is taken to confront a rival shaman, who tells him that the Vorra acquired their hyperdrive-propelled starships and advanced weaponry by stealing them from another alien race. The shock of seeing the mummified remains of one of those aliens, still encased in a spacesuit, breaks a barrier in Shaw's mind and he begins to regain his lost memories, including why and how he lost his memories in the first place.

On the same day that he regains his memories he is told by Marijane to cut off Pwill, Jr's coffee supply. Shaw agrees, knowing that Heir Apparent's display of withdrawal symptoms will throw the House of Pwill into crisis and put his life into jeopardy. But before anyone can notice his withdrawal symptoms, Pwill, Jr. comes to Shaw's room desperately seeking coffee and attacks Shaw. In self-defense Shaw kills the young man and hides the body in a sewer. Heir Apparent's disappearance precipitates the desired crisis and Shaw comes under suspicion of having provided the coffee that kept the young man addicted. The night before he is to be tortured to death, Shaw is extracted from the Pwill estate by Marijane, Ken, and Gustav and taken to the Acre.

The next morning, convinced that his son has gone to the Acre in search of coffee, Pwill Himself leads four companies of his army toward the city, only to be ambushed by six companies of soldiers from the rival House of Shugurra. Soon thereafter the armies of ten other Houses join the battle and the Vorra are fully engaged in an all-out civil war, just as the Terrans had hoped.

In the Acre all of the Terrans on Qallavarra climb to the rooftops and watch as a Vorra starship descends upon the city. The ship has been hijacked by a specially developed robot that had been hidden in a cargo container and now the ship will take all of the Terrans back to Earth. There the ship's technology can be copied for use against the Vorra in the general Terran revolt.

Safe aboard the ship, Shaw sees the last piece of the puzzle fall into place in his mind. He realizes that the old shaman had lied to him about how the Vorra got their starships and advanced weaponry and he understands then that for the next century or so the Vorra will be the lesser of Earth's worries.

The film takes place in New Zealand in 1868 during Titokowaru's War phase of the New Zealand Wars between the Māori and New Zealand colonial forces. Sarah O'Brien (Samantha Morton) has grown up among soldiers in a frontier garrison on Te Awa Nui, the Great River. Pregnant at 16 by a young Maori boy, she gives birth to a son. When, seven years later, her son, Boy, is kidnapped by his Maori grandfather, Sarah is distraught. Abandoned by her soldier father, Sarah's life becomes a search for her son. Her only friend, Doyle (Kiefer Sutherland) is a broken-down soldier without the means to help her.

Lured to the ill rebel chief Te Kai Po's village by the chance to see her child, Sarah finds herself falling in love with Boy's uncle, Wiremu (Cliff Curtis), and increasingly drawn to the village way of life.

Using medical skills she learned from her father, Sarah heals Te Kai Po (Temuera Morrison) and begins to reconcile with her son (Rawiri Pene). But her idyllic time at the village is shattered when she realises that she has healed the chief only to hear him declare war on the Colonials, men she feels are her friends, her only family. Her desperation deepens when she realises that Boy intends to prove himself in war, refusing to go back down river with her. As the conflict escalates, Sarah finds herself at the centre of the storm, torn by the love she feels for Boy and Wiremu, anguished over the attachments she still has to the white man's world, and sickened by the brutality she witnesses on either side.

And when the moment comes, Sarah must choose where she belongs; will she be forced back into the white man's way of life, or will she have the courage to follow the instincts that are telling her where she truly belongs?

Born on Christmas in 1959, Zac is one of four and later five brothers: bookish Christian, rebellious Raymond, sporty, flatulent Antoine and then Yvan. He had a special relationship with his father Gervais, but things began to fall apart as Zac's non-masculine ways started to show. Their unique relationship officially came to an end when Gervais comes home to find Zac dressed in his mother's clothes. Ever since then, he "had unwittingly declared war on his father".

At the Christmas party in 1975, Zac shotguns a joint with his cousin Brigitte's boyfriend Paul, which sparks Zac's attraction. His friend Michelle tries to kiss him, but Zac stops her with the excuse of protecting their friendship. Later on, he discovers that Brigitte is no longer with Paul. In a moment of spontaneity, Zac runs a red light on his motorcycle, only to be struck by a car and hospitalized. Zac later learns that Brigitte is back with Paul.

Zac begins a relationship with Michelle, temporarily relieving Gervais — until he sees Zac stepping out of the car with a male classmate, adjusting his crotch. Angry, Gervais has Zac see a therapist to "cure" him of his "homosexuality". The therapist's conclusion was that Zac made "a subconscious deliberate mistake", intentionally doing it so that Gervais would catch him and find out he was "gay".

At the Christmas dinner in 1980, Zac and Michelle's relationship has become closer and more physical. His brother Christian announces his engagement. At Christian's wedding reception, Zac and Paul shotgun a joint outside, but are seen by a guest who thought they were kissing. Gervais overhears this gossip, and chaos ensues. Gervais confronts Zac in the pouring rain, and Zac admittedly comes out, yelling that while he was not kissing Paul, he wished he had been. A sobbing, eavesdropping Michelle runs out of hiding, and Gervais tells Zac to leave. Zac flies to Jerusalem. Disgusted with himself after a gay sexual escapade, he walks into the desert and collapses in exhaustion. A Bedouin, who found Zac, drips water on Zac's face and takes Zac into his care.

Zac returns home to find his second eldest brother hospitalized after a heroin overdose, who dies the next day. After the funeral, Gervais hugs Zac emotionally. Ten years after his brother's death, Zac narrates that Gervais "had become my father once more", even to the point of allowing his lover into his house.

When young Gerald McGrew visits the zoo, he discovers that the exotic animals are "not good enough." He says that if he ran the zoo, he would set all of the current animals free and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones. Throughout the book he lists these creatures, starting with a lion with ten feet and escalating to more imaginative (and imaginary) creatures, such as the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, "the world's biggest bird from the island of Gwark, who eats only pine trees, and spits out the bark."

The illustrations also grow wilder as McGrew imagines going to increasingly remote and exotic habitats, capturing each fanciful creature, and bringing them all back to a zoo now filled with his new wild animals. He also imagines the praise he receives from others, who are amazed at his "new Zoo, McGrew Zoo".

In the Soviet Union in 1927, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, an impoverished aristocrat from Imperial Russia now working as a local village bureaucrat, is summoned to the deathbed of his mother-in-law. She reveals before dying that a fortune in jewels had been hidden from the Bolsheviks by being sewn into the seat cushion of one of the twelve chairs from the family's dining room set. After hearing the dying woman's confession, the Russian Orthodox priest Father Fyodor, who had arrived to administer the last rites, decides to abandon the Church and attempt to steal the treasure for himself. Shortly afterwards in the town of Stargorod, where Vorobyaninov's former mansion is located, a homeless con-artist, Ostap Bender, meets the dispossessed nobleman and manipulates his way into a partnership in his search for the family riches.

The chairs, along with all other private property, had been appropriated by the State after the Russian Revolution. Vorobyaninov and Bender set off together to locate the chairs and recover the fortune, but are stymied by a series of false leads and other trying events. They find that the chairs have been split up and sold individually. Therefore, their hunt requires a great deal of travel to track down and open up each piece of the set in order to eliminate it as a possible location of the booty. As they progress, they meet comrades from every walk of life in Soviet Russian society, transforming the film into a satirical send up of failing Communism.

By posing as the official in charge of the Department of Chairs, Bender tricks Father Fyodor into a wild goose chase to recover a similar set of eleven chairs in the possession of an engineer in a remote province in Siberia. Father Fyodor makes the long journey only to be thrown out of the engineer's house. When the engineer is reassigned to a post on the Black Sea, Fyodor follows him and buys the counterfeit chairs (on the condition that the engineer and his wife never see him again). He finds that none of the chairs has the jewels. Later, he runs across Vorobyaninov and Bender after they have retrieved one chair from a circus, and while being chased by them frantically climbs with the chair straight up the side of a mountain. After finding out that this chair doesn't contain the jewels, he finds that he is unable to get down again without help. Vorobyaninov and Bender leave him to his fate.

After traveling many miles and perpetrating numerous cons to pay for the lengthy enterprise, the two men return to Moscow where they discover the last chair; because the others contained no hidden treasure, this one must contain it all. It is located in a Palace of Culture, which is inconvenient due to the presence of so many witnesses. Vorobyaninov and Bender return after closing time, entering through a window Bender secretly had unlocked earlier.

At the moment of discovery, Bender carefully and quietly opens the chair cushion with his knife, but their hopes are dashed as it is found to be completely empty. Vorobyaninov is stunned and angry, but Bender laughs at the absurdity of the situation. A watchman finds them, and Vorobyaninov demands to know what happened to the jewels. "Look around you," the watchman answers, explaining that after the jewels were accidentally found, they were used to finance construction of the grand building in which they stand. Driven into a sudden rage, Vorobyaninov smashes the chair to pieces and assaults the officer whom the watchman has summoned. After admonishing him for hitting a policeman, Bender leads the way and they escape into the night.

At the end of his patience, demoralized and bankrupted, Bender proposes that he and Vorobyaninov go their separate ways. In a desperate attempt to keep Bender from leaving, Vorobyaninov flings the remains of the last chair into the air, and collapses to the ground feigning an epileptic seizure; this is an act they had previously rehearsed as part of a con. Attracted by the crowd and understanding what Vorobyaninov is doing, Bender calls for the crowd's attention and begs the passers-by to give generously to this sad and stricken man. Using simple gestures without uttering a word, the two men cement their partnership in crime.

At a junior high school St. Valentine's Day dance in 1988 San Francisco, Jeremy Melton, an outcast student, asks four popular girls to dance. The first three girls, Shelley, Lily, and Paige, reject him spitefully and cruelly, while the fourth girl, Kate, politely responds, "maybe later." Their rich friend Dorothy accepts Jeremy's invitation, and they proceed to make out underneath the bleachers. When the school bully Joe Tulga and his friends discover them, Dorothy claims that Jeremy sexually assaulted her. Joe and his friends publicly strip and severely beat Jeremy, and his nose starts bleeding under the distress. It is later revealed Jeremy was expelled and eventually transferred to reform school and juvenile hall, due to Lily, Paige, Shelley and Joe testifying against him for unwanted sexual advances towards Dorothy, and then ended up in a state-run mental institution.

Thirteen years later, in 2001, Shelley, now a medical student at UCLA, is at the morgue one evening studying for her medical exam. After receiving a vulgar Valentine's card in her locker, Shelley discovers someone has taken the place of the cadaver they had been dissecting. After being attacked by someone in a trench coat and Cupid mask, Shelley is cornered in a cooler where she attempts to hide in a body bag, but the killer finds her before slitting her throat. The killer's nose bleeds as she dies.

At Shelley's funeral, Kate, Lily, Paige, and Dorothy are questioned. They admit to not having seen her in some time after she moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Paige, Lily and Dorothy subsequently receive obscene cards, each signed "JM". Lily's card comes with a box of chocolates which she finds are filled with maggots. Meanwhile, Dorothy's boyfriend, Campbell, loses his apartment and temporarily moves in with her at her father's large mansion.

As the girls attend the exhibit of Lily's artist boyfriend Max, they meet Campbell's bitter ex-girlfriend Ruthie, who accuses him of being a con artist. Lily becomes lost at the exhibit and the killer appears, who proceeds to shoot her repeatedly with arrows until she falls several floors into a dumpster. When they have not heard from Lily, the others assume she is in Los Angeles on a work trip. Upon contacting the police, they agree that the culprit can be Jeremy Melton. Dorothy admits to Kate and Paige that she lied to avoid being humiliated and that Jeremy never attacked her; ruining his life by causing him to be beaten and sent to reform school. Meanwhile, Kate's neighbor Gary breaks into her apartment to steal her underwear. The killer catches Gary in the act and hits him with a hot iron, then proceeds to brutally beat him to death with the object.

As Valentine's Day approaches, Dorothy is planning a party at her family's estate. On the morning of the party, the killer murders Campbell with an ax in the basement. The others assume he has simply left Dorothy, angering her, to which Dorothy believes that they are jealous and still look at her as the "fat girl" of the group. After coming to the party to confront Dorothy with the truth about Campbell, Ruthie is thrown through a shower window by the killer, who then impales her neck on the glass. At the party, Paige is attacked and trapped in a hot tub by the killer. The killer impales her in the shoulder with an electric drill before throwing it into the water, electrocuting her.

The party disintegrates when the power cuts out, cause Paige was killed, and Dorothy and Kate argue over who the killer is. Kate claims that Campbell could be a suspect because they do not know anything about him or where he is, while Dorothy counters by accusing Adam, Kate's recovering alcoholic on-off boyfriend, who is now a journalist. After being told by Lily's boyfriend that she did not arrive in Los Angeles as planned, Kate realizes she is also probably dead and calls Detective Vaughn who was assigned to the case. After dialing the number, she follows the sound of a ringtone outside the house and discovers Vaughn's severed head in the pond. Kate becomes convinced that Adam is actually Jeremy, disguised by reconstructive surgery, and goes back into the house, only to find Adam waiting for her. To her surprise, he asks her to dance. Kate becomes frightened and flees. She runs through the house, discovering Dorothy's room trashed and Paige and Ruthie's corpses. She locates a gun, but the Cupid masked killer jumps out from the darkness and sends them both tumbling down a staircase. The killer arises and is shot to death by Adam.

As a shocked and confused Kate apologizes profusely, Adam pulls off the killer's mask to reveal Dorothy. Adam forgives Kate, explaining that childhood trauma can lead to lifelong anger and some people are eventually forced to act on that anger, referring to Dorothy. As Kate and Adam wait for the police to arrive, they hug and Adam says he has always loved her. Moments later, when Kate closes her eyes, Adam's nose begins to bleed, revealing that he is in fact Jeremy Melton (and also the actual killer having knocked out Dorothy and put her in the costume), who set everything up to ruin Dorothy's reputation and exact revenge.

A successful weatherman at a Chicago news program, David Spritz (Nicolas Cage) is well paid but garners little respect from people in the area who throw fast food at him, David suspects, because they're resentful of how easy his high-paying job is. Dave also feels overshadowed by his father, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Spritzel (Michael Caine), who is disappointed in Dave's apparent inability to grow up and deal with his two children. The situation worsens when Robert is diagnosed with lymphoma and given only a few months to live. As he becomes more and more depressed, Dave takes up archery, finding the activity a way to build his focus and calm his nerves.

David later remembers a conversation between himself and his father, where his father explains to him that "the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are often the same thing" and that "nothing that has meaning is easy". David appreciates this advice but struggles to implement it.

To prove himself to his father and possibly reconcile with Noreen (Hope Davis), his estranged wife, Dave pursues a weatherman position with a national talk show called ''Hello America''. The job would nearly quadruple his salary, but means relocating to New York City. When ''Hello America'' invites him to New York, he takes his daughter, Shelly (Gemmenne de la Peña), with him and bonds with her by helping her shop for a more suitable wardrobe. While away, Dave learns that his son Mike (Nicholas Hoult) attacked his counselor, Don Bowden (Gil Bellows), claiming that the man wanted to perform oral sex on him. Despite this stress and an all-night drinking binge, Dave impresses the ''Hello America'' interviewers and is eventually offered the job.

When he returns, Dave slaps Russ (Michael Rispoli), Noreen's boyfriend, when he finds him dealing with his son's predicament. Dave later confronts the counselor at his home, beating him up and warning him that he is in store for worse.

The family holds a living funeral for Robert (organised by Dave's mother, Lauren, played by Judith McConnell), in which Dave asks Noreen to reconcile and move to New York, but she has decided to marry Russ. Dave and Robert have one final talk, in which Dave breaks down in tears, unsure of his life's choices. Robert consoles him, telling him that he has time to "chuck" the garbage of his life. Robert dies soon after.

The film ends several months later, after Dave has accepted the job and moved to New York. People have ceased throwing things at him though, he muses, this may be a pleasant side-effect of his archery hobby, for which he carries a bow.

A frame story has Carrie visiting the town as a widow with three children. She tells the children what happened thirty years before.

Carrie Willow and her younger brother Nick are evacuated to a rundown mining town in Wales during the Second World War. After a traumatic difficulty in finding a family to foster them, they stay with a shopkeeper, Mr Evans, who dominates his gentle but weak younger sister, whom they call "Auntie Lou". Another evacuee whom Carrie has befriended, Albert Sandwich, is staying at a dilapidated country house called Druid's Bottom with Mr Evans's older sister, the dying Mrs Dilys Gotobed, and her disabled cousin, Mr Johnny Gotobed. Their English housekeeper, Hepzibah Green, is reputed to be a wise woman. Carrie and Nick become friends with Albert and Johnny and spend a lot of time there. The housekeeper tells the children many tales, including one about a curse on Druid's Bottom, which will be activated if a mysterious skull is removed from the house.

It is revealed that Mr Evans has been estranged from his older sister, Mrs Gotobed, after she married a wealthy Englishman whose family owned the mines where their father was killed in an accident. Carrie is caught in the rift between the brother and sister. Despite almost universal contempt for Mr Evans, Carrie gives him a chance and sees that, beneath his rough exterior, he genuinely is a well-meaning man, who became embittered with the world due to his hard life and the feud with his older sister, to whom he was once very close.

When Mrs Willow comes to visit them, they say nothing about their dislike of Mr Evans, as they do not want to leave. Mrs Gotobed assures Hepzibah and Mr Johnny that they can continue to live in her house once she has died, and that she has made a will saying so. Carrie only meets Mrs Gotobed twice before she dies, and Mrs Gotobed asks Carrie to tell Mr Evans that she has never forgotten him, despite their feud. Hepzibah and Albert tell Carrie that despite Mr Evans's firm belief that Hepzibah is cheating Mrs Gotobed out of money, she is in fact penniless.

On Carrie's birthday, Albert kisses her as a present and she is delighted. Auntie Lou, meanwhile, becomes friendly with Major Cass Harper, an American soldier, keeping this secret from her brother, who would not approve. When Mrs Gotobed dies, Albert is sure that Mr Evans has stolen her will so that he can turn Hepzibah and Mr Johnny out of his deceased sister's house, despite there being plenty of evidence that Mrs Gotobed had made no will – only mental deterioration led her to believe she had made one. Johnny and Hepzibah will be homeless after a month's notice, as the house has become Mr Evans's property. Carrie does not want to believe this of Mr Evans, seeing him as an honest man. Albert, on the other hand, is convinced that Mr Evans has destroyed the will, and becomes even more adamant after he realises that a ring which Mr Evans gives Carrie as a present had in fact belonged to Mrs Gotobed.

However, Carrie changes her mind about Mr Evans after Albert vaguely recalls seeing an envelope in Mrs Gotobed's jewellery box that disappeared after Evans visited the house to take an inventory of his late sister's belongings. This envelope, Carrie believes, was Mrs Gotobed's will, and she too thinks Evans stole it to ensure he would inherit everything. To prevent this from happening, she throws the cursed skull into the horse pond. Mrs Willow arranges a new home for her family near Glasgow, and so the children prepare to leave, with mixed feelings. At the same time, Auntie Lou departs to marry Major Harper, leaving Evans alone. Carrie later learns that Evans is innocent after all: the envelope in fact contained nothing more than a childhood photograph of Evans and Mrs Gotobed, which she had left him. Evans bought the ring he gave Carrie as a present for Mrs Gotobed in their youth. As the children leave by train, they see that Druid's Bottom is on fire. Carrie is guilt-stricken, believing it is her fault for casting out the skull.

Thirty years later, Carrie's children discover that Hepzibah and Mr Johnny are living in a converted barn at Druid's Bottom, having escaped the fire. Albert Sandwich still visits them. Evans, grieving and lonely, died long ago.

: ''For theatrical terminology, see Stage (theatre)''.

The entire action of the show takes place in and close to a Broadway theatre in which the long-running musical ''Me and Juliet''  (the "show-within-the-show") is playing. The setting is the early 1950s.

Act 1

A half-hour remains before the show is to begin. Electrician Sidney and chorus girl Jeanie are irritated at Sidney's fellow electrician, Bob, for not being there. Sidney needs Bob's help; Jeanie, Bob's girlfriend, is annoyed at being stood up. Sidney warns Jeanie that Bob may not be the right man for her; these are doubts she has too (Musical numbers: "A Very Special Day"/"That's the Way it Happens").

Jeanie leaves, and Bob appears. Bob tells Sidney he likes dating Jeanie, but does not plan to marry her. When Sidney jokes that Jeanie can do better than Bob, the larger man momentarily chokes him. Jeanie sees this, adding to her doubts about Bob. Larry, the assistant stage manager, is also attracted to Jeanie (reprise of "That's the Way it Happens").

Stage manager Mac sees to the final preparations, and the overture to the internal show is played by the orchestra, led by Dario, the conductor ("Overture to ''Me and Juliet''"). The internal show's curtain rises ("Marriage Type Love"): the main male character, "Me" (performed by Charlie, a singer), tells the audience about the girl he wants to marry, Juliet (Lily, a singer). He also tells the audience of the girl he is determined not to marry, Carmen, who scares him. "Me" feels Carmen (the lead female dancing role) is better suited to his boss, Don Juan (the lead male dancer). As the internal show continues, Bob and Sidney are on the light bridge. Bob identifies with Don Juan for his reluctance to marry ("Keep It Gay").

Another day at ''Me and Juliet'', and the dancers are rehearsing under Mac's supervision (conclusion of "Keep It Gay"). At Larry's urging, Jeanie decides to audition for the position of second understudy for the role of Juliet. On learning this, Mac takes Larry aside and warns him never to get involved with a cast member of a show while in charge of it. No sooner has Mac said this than his girlfriend Betty (currently in the show across the street) auditions for the role of Carmen. The producer gives her the role. As Larry looks on with amusement, Mac accepts this professionally, then stamps off in disgust.

Jeanie practices for her own audition ("No Other Love"), and Larry tells her that the audience will accept her if she's "a real kid" like Juliet, but reject her if she's a "phony" ("The Big Black Giant"). Larry desires a romance with Jeannie, but fears the larger and stronger Bob.

Several months pass, during which Jeanie gets the job as second understudy. Larry and Jeanie are meeting secretly and keeping their budding romance from Bob. The rest of the cast is aware of their dates—one dancer spotted them in a chili restaurant on Eighth Avenue.

Mac, true to his principles, has dumped Betty, but the two are still attracted to each other. Betty enjoys acting ("It's Me"). As she performs in the internal show, Bob and Sidney are on the light bridge again.

Bob has been fooled by Jeanie's lies about why they are not going out, and is enlightened when Sidney lets slip that Larry and Jeanie are seeing each other. Bob demands proof, and Sidney tells Bob to watch what happens in the wings during the upcoming Act 1 finale to ''Me and Juliet''. Bob sees Larry and Jeanie kiss after she comes offstage with a tray of flowers, an action caught by Bob's spotlight. Mac enters, grasps the situation, sends Larry away, then puts the tray back in Jeanie's hands and pushes her onstage. She is pursued by Bob's spotlight, which relentlessly follows her around the stage as more and more of the dancers become aware something has gone badly wrong. Bob drops a sandbag from the light bridge; it knocks the tray Jeanie is holding to the ground. Mac orders the curtain lowered in front of a stage in panic.

Act 2

In the downstairs lounge, a few minutes before the Act 2 curtain for ''Me and Juliet'' rises, the ushers comment on the remarkable conclusion to Act 1—although the audience has noticed nothing unusual ("Intermission Talk"). As Act 2 of the internal show starts, an enraged Bob is searching the theatre for Jeannie and Larry. Unable to find them, he takes up position at a bar across the street where he can watch the theatre doors ("It Feels Good"). The perspective shifts to the onstage action in ''Me and Juliet'', where Don Juan and Carmen are on a date ("We Deserve Each Other"), before moving to the manager's office where Larry and Jeanie are hiding out ("I'm Your Girl"). Mac has only just begun his lecture to them when Bob enters through the window, having heard familiar voices. In the ensuing fight, Bob knocks out Mac, but when the electrician grabs for Jeannie, Larry strongly defends her. The fight ends when Bob accidentally hits his head on a radiator and is knocked out as well.

Ruby, the company manager, sends Larry and Jeannie down to the stage to continue the play. After Bob and Mac recover, Ruby informs Bob that Larry and Jeanie had secretly married earlier that day, and the surprised electrician leaves. Mac, fearful of more mayhem, goes in search of him. As Mac exits, the phone rings, and Ruby takes the call. It is the producer, calling for Mac to transfer him to another show, thereby setting him free to resume his romance with Betty.

Onstage, ''Me and Juliet'' is concluding. After the internal show finishes ("Finale to ''Me and Juliet''"), Larry, who will be the new stage manager, insists on rehearsing a scene from the show. Seeing Bob enter with a scowl, Larry orders him and Sidney to be present the next morning to re-angle the lights. Taken aback, and rather sheepishly, Bob says "I didn't know you were married" before quietly leaving, after stating, "I'll be here, I guess." Jeanie is congratulated by her showmates, but Larry, all business, waves them to their places to rehearse the scene. As Lily has had to leave, Jeanie stands in for her as Juliet, while Larry sings the part of Me in the scene, as the curtain falls ("Finale of Our Play").

Bob is a gambler who lives on his own in the Montmartre district of Paris, where he is well-liked by the demi-monde community. A former bank robber and convict, he has mostly kept out of trouble for the past 20 years, and is even friends with a police commissioner, Ledru, whose life he once saved. Ever the gentleman, Bob lets Anne, an attractive young woman who has just lost her job, stay in his apartment in order to keep her from the attentions of Marc, a pimp he hates. Bob declines Anne's advances, instead steering her to his young protégé Paolo, who soon sleeps with her.

Through Jean, an ex-con who is now a croupier at the casino in Deauville, Bob's friend Roger, a safecracker, learns that, by 5:00 in the morning on the day of a big horse race at the nearby track, the casino safe is expected to contain around 800 million French francs in cash. As Bob has had a run of bad luck, he plans to rob the safe, convincing a man named McKimmie to finance the preparations and recruiting a team to carry out the heist. Jean gets detailed floor plans of the casino and the specifications of the safe, and buys a bracelet for his wife, Suzanne, with some of the money he is paid for his services.

The smitten Paolo brags about the upcoming raid to try to impress her. Not taking him seriously, she lets this information slip to Marc just before the two have sex. Earlier, he was arrested by Ledru for beating up one of his prostitutes, but Ledru released him on the condition that he provide some information on a bigger crime; his reaction makes Anne realize she may have made a mistake.

The next morning, Anne tells Bob what she did, and he and Roger search for Marc, but cannot find him before he is picked up by Ledru. Marc tells Ledru that he has heard about something involving Bob, but needs more time to get the details, so Ledru lets him go. When Paolo hears about Marc and Anne, he finds Marc and shoots the man dead just as he is about to tell Ledru what he was able to find out. While all of this is going on, Suzanne discovers the source of her husband's recent windfall and decides to blackmail Bob for a larger share of the take, but, unable to find him, instead anonymously tips off Ledru.

Thinking that, with Marc dead, their plan is still a secret, Bob and his team head to Deauville. Ledru searches fruitlessly for Bob to convince him to abandon his plan before, dispirited, he leads a convoy of armed police to the casino.

Bob enters the casino to check on things. The plan is that, unless he signals them otherwise, his team will burst in at 5:00 a.m. and rob the safe at gunpoint. He had promised Roger that he would not gamble until after the heist was over, but, after wandering around the tables for a while, he cannot resist placing a bet. Moving from roulette to chemin de fer, he has an incredible run of luck, winning millions, but loses track of the time. Just before 5:00, he finally looks at his watch. He orders the staff to cash his huge pile of chips and hurries out the door. The police arrive as Bob's team are walking toward the casino, and a brief shootout ensues. Bob comes upon the aftermath and holds Paolo as he dies. He and Roger are handcuffed and put into Ledru's car, and two employees of the casino put Bob's winnings in the trunk. Ledru says Bob will probably only spend a few years in prison for planning the robbery, but Roger says that, with a good lawyer, he may get acquitted. Bob, however, quips that he may even be able to claim damages.

Sergeant Joe Gavilan is a financially strapped homicide detective with the Hollywood Division of the LAPD. He has been moonlighting as a real estate agent for seven years. His current partner is K.C. Calden, a much younger detective who teaches yoga on the side and wants to be an actor. The partners are investigating the murders of the four members of rap group "H2OClick", who were gunned down in a nightclub by two unidentified assailants. The detectives discover there was a witness who fled, and they work to track him down. They are distracted, failing to bond as partners, as Gavilan has to deal with a looming real estate deal that may be the key to getting out of debt, while Calden further pursues his dreams of acting by trying to be scouted by talent agents.

Meanwhile, the manager of H2OClick, Antoine Sartain, has his head of security eliminate the two hitmen, whom he had hired to kill H2OClick, and earlier a rapper named Klepto that Sartain also managed.

Gavilan and Calden believe the murders are gang-related, but when Calden happens to see the bodies of the hitmen at the morgue, they conclude that the murders were orchestrated. The detectives also notice similarities that tie the H2OClick and Klepto homicides together. Gavilan learns from an undercover officer that the songwriter for H2OClick, a man named K-Ro, has gone missing, leading Gavilan to believe he is their murder witness. They struggle to track down K-Ro until they finally learn his real name, Oliver Robideaux, the son of former Motown singer Olivia Robideaux.

Meanwhile, Internal Affairs Lieutenant Bernard "Bennie" Macko arrives at the station. Macko and Gavilan have a bad history, as Gavilan embarrassed Macko after proving him wrong on a case years ago. The animosity is compounded by the fact that Gavilan's latest love interest, a psychic named Ruby, used to date Macko. Macko is intent on ruining Gavilan, going so far as to try to frame him and place both detectives in interrogation. Instead, it only serves to help Gavilan and Calden strengthen their partnership. Gavilan offers to help Calden with the case of his father's death; Officer Danny Calden had been gunned down during a sting operation gone wrong, with his partner, Officer Leroy Wasley, being implicated but eventually released due to lack of evidence.

The partners track down K-Ro to his home, where Olivia professes her son's innocence and that manager Sartain was the real culprit. Sartain had been embezzling money from Klepto, H2OClick and other clients for years. Klepto and H2OClick discovered this and threatened to hire lawyers to nullify their contracts, which led Sartain to have his head of security hire the hitmen as a "lesson" to all his clients. It also turns out that Wasley is Sartain's security chief, and that Macko is also in league with him.

When the partners can't locate Sartain and Wasley, Gavilan enlists the help of Ruby. She uses her psychic power to lead the two detectives to a clothing store. Just then, Sartain and Wasley happened to drive by, and Gavilan and Calden follow in a wild car chase. The chase ends with the four men on foot, with the two partners chasing the two culprits in different directions. When Gavilan struggles with Sartain, Sartain ends up falling from the top of a building to his death. Wasley has drawn a gun on Calden and loudly brags about having killed his father. Calden utilizes his acting skills to distract Wasley, incapacitate him, and reveals he had a tape recorder on the whole time. Gavilan and Calden reunite as LAPD officers swarm the scene, but Macko appears and calls for the arrests of the two officers. Instead, Macko is arrested for his part in helping to cover up Sartain and Wasley's crimes.

Gavilan and Ruby are seen attending a production of ''A Streetcar Named Desire'', in which Calden is playing a lead role. It is implied that Gavilan successfully brokered the real estate deal, and Calden is giving his all in the pursuit of his acting dream. However, both of them receive calls from police headquarters and leave in the middle of the play, now solid partners.

John Hemingway, recovering alcoholic, has been appointed to the role of night shift manager of the St. Louis bus depot. He must deal not only with the intricacies of keeping the station running smoothly, but also the employees and other personalities who frequent the station, all while dealing with his own demons. This was highlighted in the first episode, with a running gag of every character offering to buy him a drink upon his meeting them.

Most of the first season dealt with John's attempts to stay sober, with episodes representing each of the AA program's Twelve Steps. John constantly struggled to maintain control of the station, with regular conflicts with his secretary, Mahalia, the janitor, Heavy Gene, and most strongly with sandwich bar attendant Dexter, who had been turned down for the position to which John was appointed. Adding sexual tension to John's life was high class escort Carly, who was a friend of Dexter's.

Beginning with the second season, Hemingway (and the entire cast) changed from the night shift to the daytime hours, and the alcoholism sub-plot was de-emphasized.

The series is about a group of lucha libre wrestlers led by Lobo Fuerte who, along with Turbine, Maria Valentine, and Laurent, fought to protect Union City from a slew of different enemies Led by the Whelp and the bumbling antics of Mayor Potts. The series title is translated as "The Wrestlers" or "The Fighters" from Spanish.

On vacation, Nora Davis (Letícia Román) arrives by plane in Rome to visit her elderly ailing aunt. Nora's aunt is being treated by Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon). Nora's aunt passes away on the first night of Nora's visit and she walks to the nearby hospital to notify Dr. Bassi. On the way, she is mugged and knocked out in Piazza di Spagna. When she wakes up, she sees the body of a dead woman lying on the ground near her; a bearded man pulls a knife out of the woman's back. Nora reports this to the police in the hospital, who don't believe her when they find no evidence and think that she is hallucinating.

Later, at a cemetery, Nora meets a close friend of her aunt's, Laura Torrani (Valentina Cortese), who lives in the Piazza di Spagna. Laura plans to vacation soon and allows Nora to stay in her house for the remaining time of the vacation. Nora explores Laura's closet and drawers and comes across newspaper clippings of articles on a serial killer dubbed the "Alphabet Killer" due to his having alphabetically killed people according to their surnames. The killer has already murdered victims whose last names begin with "A," "B," and "C". Nora also finds that the last victim is Laura's sister, whom Nora had seen in a vision. According to the reports in the paper, this murder took place ten years ago. Nora then receives a telephone call, in which an anonymous voice tells her that "'D' is for death," and informs her that she will be the killer's next victim.

Nora receives help from Dr. Marcello, who takes her on a trip to various Roman tourist sites to calm her down as they become more romantically interested in each other. When they return to the Craven house, she receives a call from a person who orders her to go to a particular address. Nora goes there, and she is guided to a vacant room. With Dr. Marcello, she discovers that the voice that guided her to this spot is tape recorded, and the voice warns Nora to leave Rome before it is too late. Nora and Marcello discover that the room is leased to Landini. After several unsuccessful attempts to locate Landini, Nora and Marcello go to the beach to relax. Upon their return to the Craven house, they find Landini, who has been told that they were inquiring about him. Investigative reporter Landini (Dante DiPaolo) has secretly been following them since he spotted Nora in the square.

The reporter wrote about the murder story when it first broke, but he believes that the police would catch the wrong person if he reported the details of the crime. Landini's refusal to publish a report of the murder has put him in financial need. Nora decides to help Landini, but, as they tour Rome, they find no clues. Nora visits Landini's apartment the next day, finding clues that lead her to think that he is the murderer and that she is his next intended victim, but Landini appears to have committed suicide. The same day, Laura returns to Rome from her vacation while Nora and Marcello plan to go to America the following morning. From reading the newspaper, Nora learns that the body of a young woman was found, and she recognizes it as the murdered woman she saw on the night of her arrival in Italy. After identifying the victim's corpse at the morgue, Nora believes that she has witnessed the murder. Alone in the house that night, Nora notices that the study door is open. On entering, she sees a man rising uncomfortably from his chair. Nora recognizes him as the man who had stood over the dead body she had seen after awakening from having been knocked unconscious upon her arrival in Italy. The man walks towards Nora but collapses to the floor, a knife in his back. Nora is then confronted by Laura who, enraged, confesses to the killings and explains that she stabbed her husband because of his attempts to turn her over to the police. Laura reveals that her desire to steal her sister's money compelled her to murder. Laura attempts to attack Nora, but Laura is suddenly shot dead by her husband. Nora finds that the bearded man she had seen in a daze actually was disposing of the body for his murdering wife. Nora then leaves Italy, happily reunited with Marcello.

Jane and Cathy are two young nurses from Nottingham who are taking a cycling holiday through rural France. While having lunch at a busy restaurant, Cathy notices a handsome man drinking alone at an adjacent table. Shortly after the women depart, the man also leaves the cafe on a Lambretta scooter. On a country road surrounded by farmland, the women are passed by the man on his scooter. Several minutes later, the women pass by him as he rests by a cemetery.

As the women pass through a small village, they encounter the man again. Cathy, who has grown tired of cycling, decides she wants to sunbathe, and stops at a wooded area along the road. Jane agrees to rest momentarily, but the two women get into an argument over the trip itinerary, and Jane decides to continue on alone. Jane soon arrives at a rural roadside cafe, where the proprietor, Madame Lassal, warns her that the area is dangerous and that she should not be travelling alone. Meanwhile, Cathy, still sunbathing, becomes unnerved and senses she is being watched. Upon trying to leave, she finds that someone has destroyed the wheel of her bicycle. Moments later, she is confronted by an unseen assailant.

Feeling guilty over leaving Cathy behind, Jane returns to the spot where she was sunbathing. She finds no sign of Cathy, apart from her camera lying in the grass. Moments later, the man the women saw earlier at the restaurant stops along the road on his scooter. He introduces himself as Paul, and Jane explains to him that she is looking for Cathy. Paul offers Jane a ride back to the village, where she believes Cathy may have gone. While questioning locals in town, Jane learns of an unsolved rape and murder of a young woman that occurred in the town the year before. Meanwhile, Paul rides into the woods on his scooter to search for Cathy.

Jane encounters a British schoolmistress in town who drives her part-way to meet the gendarme and report Cathy's disappearance. En route, the schoolmistress tells Jane the unsolved murder occurred in the same wooded area from which Cathy vanished. Unable to locate the gendarme, Jane returns to the roadside cafe and asks Madam Lassal for help, but she again urges Jane to leave the area. Jane again encounters Paul, who reveals he is a private investigator who researched the case of the murdered woman. The two get into an argument when Jane discovers Paul has taken the film from Cathy's camera as evidence. Convinced he has hurt Cathy, Jane parts ways with him.

Running through the town on foot, Jane finally locates the residence of the gendarme, and explains what has occurred. The gendarme goes to investigate the scene, leaving Jane alone at his residence. Paul arrives at the house, but Jane refuses to open the door. When he breaks into the gendarme's home, Jane flees into the woods, where she stumbles upon an abandoned trailer park. While hiding in a camper, Jane finds Cathy's corpse. Paul manages to corner Jane in the woods, but she beats him in the face with a rock. At the edge of the abandoned trailer park, Jane finds the gendarme. As she embraces him, the gendarme begins to fondle her sexually. He begins to attack her, revealing himself to be the perpetrator. Jane attempts to fend him off, and is rescued by an injured Paul, who hits the gendarme with a large branch.

The crew of ''Voyager'' are foraging for food on a planet, when the ship detects a cloaked Kazon vessel and they are ordered to return. Chakotay is left behind to search for Seska. As soon as he finds her, he is fired on by two Kazons, who are stunned by return phaser fire, allowing Chakotay and Seska to escape. Back on ''Voyager'', Seska serves Chakotay mushroom soup and tells him that she and other Maquis raided Neelix's kitchen to make the soup. Chakotay is furious and threatens harsh disciplinary measures. Seska, having once been romantically involved with Chakotay, attempts to placate him, but Chakotay rebuffs her and leaves.

Moments later, ''Voyager'' detects a distress call from a Kazon ship. On investigation, they discover that a piece of equipment on the Kazon ship has caused a catastrophic failure on board, killing all but one of the crew, who is comatose. Because the equipment bears similarities to Starfleet technology, the crew realize that the Kazon must have obtained it from someone on ''Voyager'', and Seska falls under suspicion. Seska takes matters into her own hands and beams over to the Kazon ship, explaining that she must retrieve the equipment to prove her innocence. While on the ship, Seska is injured and is reprimanded by her superiors when she returns.

Captain Janeway realizes that the comatose Kazon might be the only chance of finding out how the technology came into the Kazon's possession. Another Kazon ship arrives, whose captain, Culluh, demands to see his comrade. Culluh and his bodyguard arrive in sickbay where the Doctor is treating their compatriot. Suddenly, Culluh's bodyguard kills the patient. Disgusted, Janeway orders both Kazons off ''Voyager''.

Kes finds Seska has Cardassian blood, which Seska claims was the result of a bone marrow transplant from a friendly Cardassian woman. Investigations reveal that a message was sent to the Kazon from Engineering, and from the time of the message the two most likely suspects are Seska and Lt. Carey. The senior crew set a trap to identify the traitor, and Seska falls for it. She explains that the Kazon are a powerful race in this quadrant and by giving them technology, ''Voyager'' will gain a powerful ally. She escapes to a Kazon ship using a pre-programmed beam-out. Janeway orders a pursuit, but more Kazon ships arrive and ''Voyager'' retreats.

Later, Chakotay asks Tuvok if he was naive for being fooled by Seska. Tuvok admits being fooled as well, reassuring Chakotay.

An isolated castle on the Eastern European coast. Kurt (Christopher Lee), the older son of Count Menliff (Gustavo De Nardo), was in marriage preparations with Nevenka (Daliah Lavi). However, Kurt had an affair with Tania, the daughter of Menliffs' servant Giorgia (Harriet Medin), and Tania committed suicide because of Kurt's prospective marriage. Count Menliff rejected Kurt and he left the castle. Meanwhile, Nevenka married Cristiano (Tony Kendall), Kurt's younger brother.

One day, Kurt arrives at the castle, superficially to celebrate Cristiano and Nevenka but in fact he is to reclaim his title and fortune, which supposedly also includes Nevenka. During an evening on the beach and following a session of flogging and sex, masochistic Nevenka understands that she is still in love with Kurt. Frustrated, she does not return to the castle and is eventually found unconscious by the butler Losat (Luciano Pigozzi). On the same night, Kurt is killed under curious circumstances, with the same dagger Tania had committed suicide with. Now, Kurt is dead but a series of events hints that his ghost has started to haunt the castle for revenge.

In 1630s Moldavia, Asa Vajda, a vampiric witch, and her paramour, Javutich, are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother Griabi. Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on Griabi's descendants. Bronze masks with sharp spikes on the inside are placed over Asa and Javutich's faces and hammered into their flesh, but a sudden storm prevents the villagers from burning them at the stake.

Two centuries later, Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his assistant, Dr. Andrej Gorobec, are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one wheel on their carriage breaks. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel (and the cross above it) by accident while striking a bat. He removes Asa's death mask, revealing a partially preserved corpse. He cuts his hand on the broken glass, and some of his blood drips onto Asa.

Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia Vajda. She tells them she lives with her father and brother Constantine in a nearby castle that the villagers believe is haunted. Struck by her haunting beauty and sadness, Gorobec becomes smitten with Katia. The two men leave her and drive to an inn. Meanwhile, Kruvajan's blood brings Asa back to life. She contacts Javutich telepathically. He rises from his grave and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward off the reanimated corpse. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit he becomes paralyzed with fear. Constantine sends a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. Javutich brings Kruvajan to the castle under the pretext that his services are needed. Javutich leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt. The witch hypnotizes Kruvajan and says she needs the rest of his blood. Asa then kisses him, turning him into her servant. By Asa's command, Kruvajan follows up on the request to tend to Vajda. He orders the crucifix removed from the room, ostensibly so it will not upset Vajda; this allows Javutich to return later and murder him.

Asa's plan is to revive herself by draining Katia of her life since Katia is physically Asa reincarnated. Puzzled to hear that Kruvajan abandoned his patient shortly before he died, Gorobec questions Sonya, a little girl who saw Javutich take Kruvajan to the castle. She identifies Kruvajan's escort with a painting of Javutich. A priest and Gorobec go to Javutich's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing he is now one of the undead, they kill him by driving a nail through his eye.

Javutich throws Constantine into a death pit and takes Katia to Asa. Asa drains Katia of her youth. When the witch goes to take her blood, the crucifix around Katia's neck thwarts her. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia, but Javutich attacks him and pushes him to the edge of the death pit. Constantine uses the last of his strength to pull Javutich into the pit and push Gorobec to safety. Gorobec finds Asa and Katia. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that Katia is the witch. Accordingly, he goes to kill Katia but notices the crucifix she is wearing has no effect on her. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with many torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored, and is reunited with Gorobec.

Students at Bratsky Monastery in Kyiv break for summer vacation. The impoverished students must find food and lodging along their journey home. They stray from the high road at the sight of a farmstead, hoping its cottagers would provide them.

A group of three, the kleptomaniac theologian Khalyava, attracted by a false target of wheat fields suggesting a nearby village, must walk extra distance before finally reaching a farm with two cottages, as night drew near. The old woman begrudgingly lodges the three travelers separately.

At night, the woman calls on Khoma, and begins grabbing at him. This is no amorous embrace; the flashy-eyed woman leaps on his back and rides him like a horse. When she broom-whips him, his legs begin to motion beyond his control. He sees the black forest part before them, and realizes she is a witch ( , ''ved'ma''). He is strangely envisioning himself galloping over the surface of a glass-mirror like sea: he sees his own reflection in it, and the grass grows deep underneath; he bears witness to a sensually naked water-nymph (''rusalka'').

By chanting prayers and exorcisms, he slows himself down, and his vision is back to seeing ordinary grass. He now throws off the witch, and rides on her back instead. He picks up a piece of log, and beats her. The older woman collapses, and transforms into a beautiful girl with "long, pointy eyelashes".

Later, rumour circulates that a Cossack chief (''sotnik'')'s daughter was found crawling home, beaten near death, her last wish being for Khoma the seminary student to come pray for her at her deathbed, and for three successive nights after she dies.

Khoma learns of this from the seminary's rector who orders him to go. Khoma wants to flee, but the bribed rector is in league with the Cossack henchmen, who are already waiting with the kibitka wagon to transport him.

;At the Cossack community

The Cossack chief Yavtukh (nicknamed Kovtun) explains that his daughter expired before she finished revealing how she knew Khoma; at any rate he swears horrible vengeance upon her killer. Khoma turns sympathetic, and swears to discharge his duty (hoping for a handsome reward), but the daughter killed turns out to be the witch he had fatally beaten.

The Cossacks start relating stories about comrades, revealing all sorts of terrible exploits by the chief's daughter, whom they know is a witch. One comrade was charmed by her, ridden like a horse, and did not survive long; another had his infant child's blood sucked out at the throat, and his wife killed by the blue necrotic witch who growled like a dog. Inexhaustible episodes about the witch-daughter follow.

The first night, Khoma is escorted to the gloomy church to hold vigil alone with the girl's body. Just as he wonders if it may come alive, the girl is reanimated and walks towards him. Frightened, Khoma draws a magic circle of protection around himself, and she is unable to cross the line. She turns cadaverously blue, and reenters her coffin making it fly around wildly, but the barrier holds until the rooster crows.

The next night, he draws the magic circle again and recites prayer, which render him invisible, and she is seen clawing at empty space. The witch summons unseen, winged demons and monsters, that bang and rattle and screech at the windows and door from the outside, trying to enter. He endures until the rooster's crow. He is brought back, and the people notice half his hair had turned gray.

Khoma's attempted escape into the brambles fails. The third and most terrifying night, the winged "unclean powers" ( ''nechistaya sila'') are all audibly darting around him, and the witch-corpse calls on these spirits to bring the Viy, the one who can see everything. The squat Viy is hairy with an iron face, bespattered all over with black earth, its limbs like fibrous roots. The Viy orders its long-dangling eyelids reaching the floor to be lifted so it can see. Khoma, despite his warning instinct, cannot resist the temptation to watch. The Viy is able to see Khoma's whereabouts, the spirits all attack, and Khoma falls dead. The cock crows, but this is already its second morning call, and the "gnomes" who are unable to flee get trapped forever in the church, which eventually becomes overgrown by weeds and trees.

The story ends with Khoma's two friends commenting on his death and how it was his lot in life to die in such a way, agreeing that if his courage held he would have survived.

A gang of dwarves team up with a gangster's mistress, played by Angel Tompkins, to go on a crime spree.

The novel is related in broad chronological order by the main protagonist, Herbert Badgery, but with frequent digressions that relate the circumstances and life history of Badgery himself, and of many of the characters he meets.

The story begins in 1919 when the thirty-three-year-old Herbert lands his aeroplane in a field close to the wealthy former bullock-herder Jack McGrath. Herbert befriends Jack and persuades him to invest in the construction of an aeroplane factory. Herbert also becomes the lover of Jack's teenage daughter Phoebe, who had previously been involved in a lesbian relationship with a teacher, Annette Davidson. Jack commits suicide following a violent argument between Herbert and some other potential investors. Herbert marries Phoebe and they bear two children, Charles and Sonia. After learning to fly Herbert's aeroplane, Phoebe steals it, abandoning her husband and children to live with Annette. Herbert briefly becomes the lover of Jack's widow, Molly, but goes out on the road to scrape a living, often as a confidence trickster, accompanied by his two children. He meets Leah Goldstein, a former medical student turned dancer who is married to the Communist agitator Izzie Kaletsky. She and Herbert become lovers and develop a variety act, but Leah returns to care for Izzie after he has both legs amputated following an accident.

Sonia dies, and Herbert is subsequently jailed for an assault on a Chinese man who had been his childhood mentor, Goon Tse Ying, whose finger is torn off. In prison, Herbert is presented with the preserved finger in a jar, and finds that looking into the jar presents the viewer with curious visions. Herbert, who for much of his life had been illiterate, begins studying, and eventually obtains a degree in Australian history.

Charles becomes a dealer in animals, and meets Emma Underhill when required to rescue her from the clutches of a frightened goanna. Charles falls in love with and weds Emma, despite warnings from her father about her fragile mental state. Charles builds a successful business selling animals and moves into larger and larger premises. Upon the outbreak of World War Two, he considers enlisting, but is rejected because of his hearing. Traumatised by his decision, Emma retreats into the goanna's cage and continues living in an adapted cage for the rest of her life. Leah returns to help Charles, but also begins living in a cage, as part of Charles' extended household.

After his release from prison, Herbert goes to live with Charles at the pet emporium. He attempts to rebuild part of Charles' shop, but the attempt ends in disaster. Herbert befriends Charles' youngest son, Hissao, who dreams of becoming an architect. Herbert suffers a stroke, and Charles is obliged to consider how his shop can continue to maintain the support of his American backers, who wish to export animals illegally against Charles' wishes. Emma comes into possession of the jar of Herbert's that contains Ying's finger and claims that she sees a reptile in the bottle that she also claims is Hissao's half-brother. Distraught by the claim, Charles shoots Emma's goanna, and turns the gun on himself.

Hissao claims he will not give up architecture in order to preserve the family business by becoming an animal smuggler, but does so, and becomes wealthy and much-travelled. He accidentally kills a rare bird he is smuggling, whereupon he sells much of his share in the business to Japanese investors and commences rebuilding the emporium to his own design, according to which it becomes a bizarre and controversial museum of the Australian nation.

The story is set in 1885 and concerns Dr. Bernard Hichcock (Robert Flemyng), a necrophiliac whose "horrible secret" of the title involves drugging his wife, Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello), for sexual funeral games. One day he accidentally administers an overdose of a new drug which slows the heart rate and thinks he has killed her. After burying her in a crypt, he leaves London.

Twelve years later, he remarries and returns to his old home. His new wife, Cynthia (Barbara Steele), starts to believe that she sees Margaretha around the house. After Cynthia falls victim to Dr. Hichcock's old parlour games, she suspects he is trying to kill her, but she finds that the truth is much worse. Having realised that Margaretha is still alive but looking haggard from her ordeal, Dr. Hichcock plans to kill Cynthia and use her blood to restore Margaretha's beauty.

Set in the regions of northern Middle-earth, the game focuses on the events of the War in the North. For the sake of gameplay, the game takes several liberties with Tolkien's works and the film trilogy. Some characters were altered in their appearances, abilities, and roles; for instance, a combat role in the game is given to Tom Bombadil, a merry and mysterious hermit who appears in ''The Lord of the Rings'' but does not take part in the war. In addition, Tolkien's earlier novel ''The Hobbit'' lends several elements to the game, including characters such as the Giant Spiders from Mirkwood. The story for ''The Battle for Middle-earth II'' is divided into Good and Evil Campaigns. Both campaigns focus on the battles fought by the newly introduced factions: the Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins. The player goes through nine fixed missions on either Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty mode. Narrated cutscenes provide plot exposition between missions.

Good Campaign

The Good Campaign opens after the Fellowship of the Ring has set out on their mission to unmake the One Ring of Power, with Elrond and Glóin planning the War in the North. The Elven hero Glorfindel discovers an impending attack on the Elven sanctuary of Rivendell. Thanks to the early warning, Elrond's forces in Rivendell manage to repel the Goblins' attacks. Following the battle, Elrond realizes that the Elves and Dwarves must join forces to purge the threat of Sauron's forces in the North.

The next battle takes place in the Goblin capital of Ettenmoors, where the Goblin fortress is destroyed, and Gorkil the Goblin King is killed.

After their victory, the heroes are informed that the Goblins, on Sauron's command, enlisted the service of a Dragon named Drogoth who is laying waste to the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. The heroes make their way to the Blue Mountains and help the Dwarven army defeat Drogoth and his Goblins.

The Grey Havens, an Elven port on the western shores, is attacked by the Corsairs of Umbar, allies of Sauron. The Dwarves, who have been reluctant to ally with the Elves, eventually decide to come to the aid of the Grey Havens. With the Goblins defeated and all of Eriador pacified, the Dwarven-Elven alliance is tested by Sauron's forces.

Mordor's overwhelming forces besiege the Lake Town of Esgaroth and the Dwarven city of Erebor. The Dwarven king Dáin leads a small group of Dwarves and men of Dale to defend their homeland and manage to eliminate the Mordor presence in Esgaroth but are forced to retreat back to Erebor to defend themselves against an overwhelming army led by the Mouth of Sauron. After a long battle against the Mouth of Sauron's army, Elven reinforcements from Mirkwood led by the Elven king Thranduil arrive and save the Dwarves, defeating the Mouth of Sauron and his army. Elrond leads the first attack, but later, Thranduil, Glorfindel, Glóin, Arwen, and King Dáin all unite under the Dwarven-Elven alliance for a final battle in Dol Guldur, the stronghold of Sauron in Mirkwood, aided by the Ents and Eagles. The Good forces and its three combined armies overcome the defenses and destroy the fortress, eliminating the last threat in the North.

Evil Campaign

The Evil Campaign follows an alternative version of the War in the North. Sauron sends the Mouth of Sauron and the Nazgûl to the North to muster wild Goblins. His lieutenants lead the Goblin army and the Trolls and launch an assault on the Elven forest of Lórien while freeing three trapped Mountain Giants. Despite heavy resistance, the forest is overrun with Celeborn slain and Galadriel having fled to Rivendell; even Caras Galadhon collapses under the sheer force of the massive invasion. The Mouth peers eagerly into the captured Mirror of Galadriel for his next attack, as his Goblins celebrate their triumph over the Elves amidst the ruins of the once-mighty ancient stronghold.

Another group of Goblins, led by the Goblin King Gorkil, attacks the Grey Havens by land and sea. The Elven port is destroyed and captured, and the march across Eriador begins.

The Hobbits of the Shire are chosen as the next target. Gorkil's horde manages to crush the Hobbits and burn their country to the ground, but Saruman's servant Gríma Wormtongue, suddenly appears with a large army of Isengard Uruks and claims the land for his master. The Goblins annihilate the well-trained army and kill Wormtongue, taking the Shire for themselves.

Gorkil continues marching west and besieges Fornost, the fortified ruins of the ancient capitol of Arnor. The defenders, consisting of the Dúnedain and Dwarves led by Glóin, crumble under the relentless Goblin attacks, and Eriador falls under Goblin control.

Sauron launches a concurrent campaign east of the Misty Mountains. The orcs from Dol Guldur eliminate the Elves and the Ents that guard the Forest Road in Mirkwood, defeating the Elven lord Thranduil.

After the fall of Mirkwood, the Mouth of Sauron leads his horde to Withered Heath to recruit the Dragon Lord Drogoth, after destroying the Dwarves in the area. To finally rid Sauron and Middle Earth of the Dwarves, The Mouth of Sauron attacks the human city of Dale and the Dwarven stronghold of Erebor, led by King Dain.

For the final battle against the Good factions in the North, the Goblin horde and Sauron's forces from Mordor converge at Rivendell, the last surviving stronghold against Sauron in Middle-earth. Eagles, the Dead Men of Dunharrow, Galadriel and her surviving Elves, and the remnants of the Fellowship of the Ring arrive to help Arwen and Elrond, but Sauron (having attained full power through recovering the One Ring from the dead Frodo) and all his gathered forces of goblins, orcs, trolls, mountain giants, spiders, dragons, and Fellbeast enter the battle and completely destroy the remaining Good forces in the North.

''Los Angeles Times'' undercover reporter Irwin M. "Fletch" Fletcher (who writes as "Jane Doe") is writing an article exposing drug trafficking on the beaches of Los Angeles. While posing as an addict, he is approached by Boyd Aviation executive vice president Alan Stanwyk, who assumes Fletch is a real junkie. Stanwyk claims to have bone cancer with only months left to live, and wishes to avoid the suffering. Stanwyk offers $50,000 for Fletch to kill him at his mansion in a few days' time, stage the scene as a burglary, then flee to Rio de Janeiro.

Fletch, not completely convinced on the truth of Stanwyk's story, agrees to the plan. Along with his colleague Larry, he begins investigating Stanwyk instead of completing his drug exposé, much to the chagrin of his authoritarian editor Frank Walker. Disguised as a doctor, Fletch accesses Stanwyk's file at the hospital and learns he does not have cancer.

Fletch visits Stanwyk's wife Gail at her tennis club. Pretending to be a tennis instructor and Alan's friend, he flirts with her during a tennis lesson. Looking into Stanwyk's finances, Fletch finds that Gail recently converted $3 million of her personal stock in Boyd Aviation into cash for her husband, to buy a ranch in Provo, Utah. Fletch travels to Provo and breaks into the realtor's office and discovers the sale price was only $3,000.

Meanwhile, LAPD Chief Jerry Karlin learns of Fletch's drug report. He warns Fletch that the article will jeopardize his undercover operation on the beach. Karlin threatens to kill Fletch unless he agrees to drop the investigation.

At the tennis club, Fletch witnesses arrogant club member Mr. Underhill shouting at a waiter, and decides as revenge to use Underhill's tab to treat Gail to an expensive lunch in her private cabana. Fletch reveals Alan's murder scheme to her and tells her the true price of the ranch.

Fletch watches Stanwyk making a suspicious briefcase exchange with Chief Karlin, but is unable to deduce the nature of their meeting. When he is chased by LAPD officers lying in wait at his apartment, Fletch goes into hiding, returning to Provo. Posing as an insurance investigator, he interviews Stanwyk's parents, learning that Stanwyk has been married to another woman for eight years; his bigamous marriage to Gail allowed him access to her vast wealth.

Fletch arrives at Stanwyk's mansion on the night of the planned murder, but finds Stanwyk waiting to kill him instead. Fletch reveals his discovery of Stanwyk's real plan to fake his own death by killing Fletch (whose skeletal build is similar to Stanwyk's) and burning his body beyond recognition, then escape to Brazil with his first wife and Gail's $3 million. Stanwyk was also using his private jet to smuggle drugs from South America to supply Chief Karlin, who blackmailed ex-convicts Fat Sam and Gummy to distribute it on the beaches. Karlin arrives unexpectedly; learning of Stanwyk's intention to flee with nearly $1 million of the Chief's drug money, he kills Stanwyk. Karlin and Fletch fight over the gun until Gail strikes Karlin from behind, rendering him unconscious.

Karlin is indicted after Fletch's article, with testimony from Fat Sam and Gummy. Fletch begins dating Gail, taking her to Rio on Stanwyk's tickets and using Underhill's American Express Card.

As Lois prepares dinner, Stewie puts the final touches on his mind-control device, only for it to be taken away from him by Lois, who won't allow 'toys' at the table. Later, Peter asks Lois for permission to attend an upcoming stag party. After he promises he won't drink, Lois lets him go. Unfortunately, Peter forgets his promise to Lois and plays such drinking games as "Drink the beer". He goes to work the next day with a hangover and falls asleep on the job as a safety inspector in a toy factory. Peter misses dangerous objects such as a butcher knife, a surge protector, a gasoline can, razor blades, a porcupine, a toaster with forks inside, and plug-in water. The company receives bad press after releasing unsafe toy products, and Peter is promptly fired by Mr. Weed.

At dinner, Peter breaks the news to his children but decides to keep it from Lois. He tries different jobs, such as cereal mascot and sneeze guard, but fails miserably. Brian pressures him to tell her the truth, but all he manages to do is to tell Lois how fat she is. Brian insists that Peter must look out for his family's welfare. With the word "welfare" in his mind, Peter soon applies for government assistance at a welfare office. But a processing error creates a weekly check for $150,000, which is based on a remark former President Ronald Reagan made of a woman called Linda Taylor from Chicago, Illinois, calling her a "welfare queen" by making assumptions of earning such proportions from government benefits in 1974. Telling Lois he received a big raise, Peter spends his money on many foolish and extravagant things, such as renting the Statue of David, treating Meg to cosmetic surgery and even going so far as to surround his house with a moat to protect them from the Black Knight.

Unfortunately, Lois is given the welfare check by the mail lady and storms at Peter for lying to her. Peter decides to return the money to the taxpayers by dumping it from a blimp during Super Bowl XXXIII while Brian accompanies him. After the commotion they cause, they are immediately shot down.

Eventually, Lois receives the bad news and goes to court, still angry at Peter for lying to her in the first place. After Peter apologizes for lying to Lois and accepting the money instead of reporting the welfare error, the judge sentences him to 24 months in prison for welfare fraud. Lois, Brian, Chris, and Meg exclaim, "Oh no!" but the Kool-Aid Man bursts through the courthouse wall and exclaims, "Oh yeah!" Lois tries to explain he's not that bad and she loves him and insists that, no matter what, she will always stand by her husband. The judge agrees and sends her to jail with him. Stewie, being a baby, must have his parents by his side, regardless of his burning hatred for them, especially Lois. He then whips out his mind control device and forces the judge into letting his father go free and get his job back.

Peter states that he has learned his lesson and will never do it again. Instead, he is going to try for such things as a minority scholarship, a sexual harassment suit, and a disability claim.

In the cold open, Stewie plays with his ''Sesame Street'' telephone. As the telephone says to count to three, Stewie uses his laser gun to destroy the telephone three times.

Annoyed that Peter spends more time watching television than with his own family, Lois suggests he teach Meg how to drive. Peter reluctantly agrees, and unwittingly gives Meg a list of bad driving tips, including instructing her to "rev" her engine twice at traffic lights and challenge other drivers to a race, which causes her to eventually fail her driving test. As Peter drives them home from the DMV, he notices that a show he wanted to watch is on television in a nearby house. Distracted by the show, he crashes the car into the main cable television transmitter, breaking out reception for the entire town of Quahog. As Peter and Meg realize this, angry citizens of Quahog approach. In response, Peter promises to Meg that if she takes the blame for breaking the cable transmitter, she would get a new convertible when she finally gets her license. Once they arrive home with the transmitter still attached to the car, Lois becomes furious with Peter for placing the blame on his own daughter. Meg, of course, is blamed, and is about to admit the truth, but then decides to keep quiet, reflecting with an inner voice, a reference to ''The Wonder Years'', at school. Meanwhile, Stewie, (seeing the opportunity of the dish attached to the car), steals the satellite dish in a plan to create a weather control device capable of destroying the world's supply of broccoli, since Lois had forced him to eat the vegetable earlier that day.

Suffering withdrawal syndrome from the lack of cable, Peter straps a television-sized cardboard cutout to himself, making it appear as though his entire world is actually a television program. When Meg cannot deal with the public scorn, she reveals that her father is truly responsible for Quahog's loss of television, causing the town to turn against him. In an attempt to save Peter from further scorn and verbal attacks, Lois gives a heartfelt speech to the community about how television has kept them all from enjoying one another. Inspired by the speech, Peter drags the family to one outdoor activity after another, which quickly exhausts them. Once the family cannot keep up with him, Peter decides to go off with William Shatner, who has appeared on the Griffin family doorstep after experiencing a flat tire, to a nearby festival. Meanwhile, Stewie's weather machine creates a huge storm. The storm's lightning strike destroys Stewie's weather machine and blows Stewie off the roof and on the ground. While Meg is practicing driving with Lois, the storm causes her to accidentally hit Shatner and Peter, killing Shatner and hospitalizing Peter. As her father recovers, in a full-body cast, he is forced to watch television, causing him to become addicted once again, much to his family's relief.

During the credits, Stewie tries (and fails) to imagine he is eating his broccoli by pouring it onto Brian's plate.

When Los Angeles police force a down-on-her-luck businesswoman-turned-prostitute named "Princess" to help capture a murderous pimp named "Ramrod", it's Princess' life that is put on the line. Soon, the escaped killer is after her, and vice squad detective Tom Walsh and his team are hard pressed to keep the woman safe.

In Light City, a prole can remember details from the Information which have not yet been shown, about the three characters the Doctor, Charley and C'rizz, and is brought before the Editor for daring to ask Questions, a terrible Thought Crime.

On December 31, 1999, Quahog prepares for New Year's Day and the new millennium, and the Griffins have been invited to Quagmire's millennium party. At a store, a man wearing a chicken suit asks Peter if he wants a coupon, but Peter refuses, recalling an incident in which he got an expired coupon from Ernie the Giant Chicken, resulting in a destructive fistfight. The man then warns Peter that the world will end because of the Y2K problem, so Peter locks himself and the family in their basement in hazmat suits, despite Lois' objections. Just after midnight, the Y2K bug hits. This causes a worldwide nuclear attack, with vehicles crashing and missiles self-launching, destroying much of the world, and mutating, injuring, or killing most of its inhabitants. The Griffins remain safe, though their house has been severely damaged. Starving, Peter immediately eats all the dehydrated meals, without adding water. Peter recalls that the snack food Twinkies are the only food that can survive a nuclear holocaust, so the family prepares to travel to Natick, Massachusetts, in hopes that the Twinkie factory has survived.

The Griffins' car runs out of gas, so they must walk to Natick. When they get there, there is no factory. Stewie berates Peter for costing them their lives before tripping and getting covered in nuclear waste; his arms soon mutate into tentacles. Upon sunrise, the factory is revealed to still be standing and in perfect condition. Expecting to be able to live off the snack food, they establish the town of New Quahog around the factory, with Peter as mayor. In time, New Quahog becomes a thriving community, complete with houses and wells. However, when Brian points out that New Quahog is a peaceful place with no violence, Peter deems that they are completely defenseless; to the outrage of the citizens, he makes guns using the pipes from the city's irrigation system. Meanwhile, Stewie's body has completely transformed into an octopus, and lays hundreds of eggs.

Despite Peter's insistence that he is fit to remain as mayor, the townspeople throw him out of New Quahog, and his family follows him. The citizens destroy the guns, only to be overpowered by hundreds of newly-hatched Octopus-Stewies, which destroy the city. As the family walks away, oblivious to New Quahog's destruction, they decide to continue to a Carvel factory in Framingham.

In a live action epilogue parodying ''Dallas'', the episode is revealed to have been a dream experienced by Pam Ewing (Victoria Principal); disturbed, she tells her husband Bobby (Patrick Duffy) that she dreamt about a strange episode of ''Family Guy''. Bobby comforts her, but then pauses and asks "What's ''Family Guy''?", and the two turn and look with confusion to the audience.

Seasoned undercover narcotics officer Jim Raynor is told by his superior, Lt. Dodd, to choose a partner from a group of recent police academy graduates for a planned undercover investigation. Raynor chooses the only woman applicant, Kristen Cates. Though uneasy, Dodd approves Raynor's choice.

Raynor explains to Cates that they will be deep undercover, dependent on each other to try not to get killed during the investigation. Though initially startled by Raynor's intensity, Cates insists she is capable of doing whatever it takes to get the job done. Later at Raynor's apartment, he teaches Cates how to inject drugs, claiming that he is using a harmless powder for demonstration purposes. Raynor informs Cates that she will be put in situations where she will have to take the drugs in order to convince dealers she is not a cop. He insists that if she tries to fake drug use in front of dealers, she will get both of them killed.

The main target of the operation is a local bar owner and pornographer, Will Gaines. The chief of police insists that Gaines is the main drug boss in the town, but Gaines is deeply mistrustful of Raynor and Cates.

As Raynor predicted, Cates is put into a position where she is forced to inject drugs in front of a dealer. Over the course of the investigation, buying drugs all over town, Cates and Raynor begin using drugs for more reasons than maintaining their cover.

Though they have successfully infiltrated the town's drug underworld, Raynor and Cates are unable to make a buy from Gaines. Under pressure from the chief and sergeant, they falsify evidence against Gaines in order to secure his arrest.

The night before Gaines trial is to begin, Cates is startled awake by a double barrel shotgun caressing her face. A gunfight ensues, in which Raynor is shot in the thigh, striking his femoral artery. Cates returns fires and runs to a neighbor's house shouting for help, then returns to the trailer to find Raynor barely conscious. He dies in her arms.

At the grand jury, Cates is on the witness stand. During her testimony, she mentions that she has resigned from the police force. Her testimony sticks to the fabricated story Raynor and she concocted. Gaines is later indicted. However, at trial, Cates takes the stand to testify. When she looks directly at Gaines, he slides two fingers down the bridge of his nose, mimicking the movement of the shotgun that eventually killed Raynor. Stunned, Cates retracts her statements about Gaines's involvement in the drug trade, and testifies that they were ordered to fabricate evidence by the Chief of Police. This secures Gaines's acquittal.

Freed from police custody, Gaines gets into his car a few nights later. As he drives down the road, he notices someone hiding in the backseat. Gaines pulls over, and as he turns to confront them, he is killed by a double barrel shotgun blast to the face. The killer is never shown, but it is implied that it is Cates.

Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil wake up to find themselves chained to pipes in a bathroom. Their host, Billy the Puppet, reveals that the room is slowly filling with nerve gas with the only way out being to make a basket and get the saws, which have to be used on their feet. Unfortunately, Dr. Phil saws the wrong foot and faints, leaving the two to die.

Meanwhile, Cindy Campbell visits her brother-in-law, Tom Logan in New York City. Her husband George has died, and her nephew Cody has enrolled in military academy, leaving her broke and lonely. Tom's attempted suicide results in his ingesting viagra, which greatly swells his penis and causes his death when he falls off the railing. Afterwards, Cindy takes a job to care for Mrs. Norris, who lives in a haunted house. Next door is Tom Ryan, who runs into George's friends Mahalik and CJ, learning about their homosexual one-night stand. He is greeted at home by the arrival of his estranged children, Robbie and Rachel. Over the following day, Cindy bonds with Tom, confiding to him about George's death in a fateful boxing match. The two realize their newfound love, but are interrupted by a gigantic triPod which disables electricity and starts vaporizing the town residents.

Cindy converses in mock Japanese with the haunted house's ghost, Toshio, learning that the answer of the invasion is his father's heart. While Tom leaves the city with his children, Cindy reunites with her friend, Brenda Meeks, inexplicably alive after her death. Following Toshio's directions, the two head to the countryside and end up in a mysterious, isolated community. They are captured and put to trial headed by Henry Hale. The result allows them to live but never leave the village. Meanwhile, an emergency United Nations meeting, headed by the eccentric U.S. President Baxter Harris, who is reluctant to stop reading "My Pet Duck", goes awry when a weapon scavenged from the aliens renders everyone stark-naked.

Tom and his children drive and find themselves in the middle of a war between the U.S. military and the aliens. Excited with the conflict, Robbie runs away, while Tom and Rachel are taken by the triPod. Back at the village, Henry is killed by the village loon, Ezekiel, revealing to Cindy that he fathered Toshio, who was killed during Cindy's boxing match. Cindy and Brenda are soon taken by the triPod and sent to the bathroom seen in the prologue, and they get stuck into the Venus flytrap. Cindy manages to get through Billy's challenge, but is threatened with the safety of Tom and his children, who are put to traps. Looking at a toilet with the "heart" nearby, Cindy realizes that Billy, through Henry's wife, is the true biological father of Toshio. Seeing how far Tom would go to save his children, Billy, who realizes his mistakes, apologizes for the invasion and releases them. Robbie and Rachel are successfully returned to their mother, who is revealed to have married a much older man. Brenda also becomes romantically involved with Billy's brother, Zoltar.

An epilogue set one month afterwards, narrated by James Earl Jones who is subsequently hit by a bus, reveals Brenda's giving birth to her child with Zoltar, Mahalik and CJ resuming their relationship, and President Harris being contented with his duck. Meanwhile, Tom appears in ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' and wildly professes his love for Cindy by jumping around, throwing Cindy across the room, then breaking Oprah's wrists and hitting her with a chair afterwards.

The story opens with Mustafa of Mudge, a turbaned desert monarch with blue whiskers, who collects lions. Mustafa demands one more lion — he already has nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine and a half lions, but there are no more lions in Mudge, and Mudgers are forbidden by Ozma, on penalty of death, to travel beyond the desert borders of Mudge. However, when Notta Bit More, a clown from the circus in Stumptown (somewhere in the humdrum backblocks of the United States of America), and a serious-minded orphan boy called Bobbie Downs (but renamed as Bob Up, by the cheerful Notta) drop into Mudge together, this seems to Mustafa to be his chance to send a non-Mudge person out to bring the famous Cowardly Lion to be the ten thousandth lion in Mudge. Using a magic ring, he enchants Notta and Bob and compels them to set out on a quest to capture the Cowardly Lion.

Meanwhile, in the Emerald City, the Cowardly Lion believes that he has depleted the reserve of courage imbued in him by the Wizard (as told in ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz''). The mischievous Patchwork Girl, Scraps (who was first introduced in an earlier Baum-written title), misdirects the Lion into thinking that he can replenish his courage by eating a courageous man. Since the Lion dislikes the notion of harming anyone, he resolves to do the deed as quickly as possible, and so embarks on his quest to find, and eat, the bravest man in Oz.

Unbeknownst to the Cowardly Lion, he is being hunted by Notta Bit More and Bob Up. Accidentally, the three meet each other. Concealing their objective from the lion, Notta and Bob resolve to trick him into going to Mudge.

The three adventurers fall into a trap and are transported to the unexpected and unhappy Island of Un, which floats in the sky. The feathery, bird-headed people of Un are all thoroughly “unish“, or negative: unfriendly, unkind, ungrateful, and so on. The travellers meet a remarkable bird called Nickadoodle who tells them that if they remain on the isle of Un, they will grow feathers and become bird-like creatures themselves. Together, they escape the Island of Un in a flyaboutabus, which is a flying machine fitted with whirling feathered wheels.

The Cowardly Lion, Notta, and Bob become fast friends, and reveal their secret plans to each other. The Cowardly Lion rejects his former plan to eat a brave man, and the travelers separate, the lion making his way to Mudge to appease Mustafa and prevent him from using his magic ring against Notta and Bob. Notta and Bob set out for the Emerald City to appeal to Ozma for help.

The Cowardly Lion encounters Crunch, a stone giant, who joins him. Together they reach Mudge, where the giant transforms the Cowardly Lion into a stone statue to keep him company. However, Notta, Bob, Ozma, and the Wizard of Oz arrive and reverse the giant's transformation. Ozma takes away Mustafa's magic ring and order is restored.

A space station manufactory attempts to become commercially independent from its government backers by exporting super-strong nanowire that can only be manufactured in free-fall.

Following an attempt to sabotage their first delivery and hijack the cargo, the intrepid crew realizes they can escape the hijackers. Their shuttle ''Anansi'' can become a modern-day version of its namesake, an African spider-god, by descending to Earth on a thread.

The physics of tidal forces are explained, and the possibilities of orbital tethers to accelerate payloads into higher orbits (or indeed de-orbit shuttles without retro-rockets) are woven into a hard science fiction thriller.

Things are going from bad to worse in the dilapidated kingdom of Ragbad; even the rag crop is failing. To top it all off (or not), King Fumbo's head is blown away in a ferocious storm (with "ten thousand pounds of thunder"). Prince Tatters of Ragbad, and Grampa, a former soldier and the bravest man in the kingdom (population 27), set out on a three-fold quest: for King Fumbo's lost head, a fortune to save the bankrupt kingdom, and a princess for Tatters to marry. They are joined by Bill, an iron weathercock from Chicago, who was brought to life by an electrical storm and blown to Oz.

Meanwhile, in Perhaps City in the Maybe Mountains, the Princess Pretty Good has a problem: the prophet Abrog (also known as Gorba) foresees her marrying a monster if she does not marry in four days. (He suggests himself as her bridegroom.) When Pretty Good resists, Abrog kidnaps her and tries to transform her into a clod of earth; but since she is, in fact, ''more'' than just pretty good, as princesses go, Pretty Good turns into the beautiful flower fairy Urtha.

Wide-ranging adventures—from Fire Island to Isa Poso to Monday Mountain — culminate in the location and restoration of King Fumbo's head. Dorothy (with the help of Percy Vere the forgetful poet) manages to restore order. Prince Tatters ends up married to Princess Pretty Good — which is pretty good for him.

Old Mombi, formerly the Wicked Witch of the North, is now a cook in the land of Kimbaloo. One day she comes across Pajuka, the former prime minister of Oz, transformed by Mombi into a goose years before. She sets out to find Pastoria, the king of Oz, whom she also enchanted in the past. However, she has forgotten what shape she transformed Pastoria into. She kidnaps a local boy called Snip as her unwilling assistant and bearer of burdens. Eventually deciding, however, that he knows too much, Mombi throws Snip down a well; he ends up in Blankenburg, populated by the invisible Blanks. Snip meets and soon rescues Tora, an amnesiac old tailor. Tora has been held prisoner for many years by the Blanks, to do their tailoring; he has compensated by sending his detachable ears flying about the countryside to hear the news.

Meanwhile, Dorothy is accidentally transported to Hollywood, where she meets Humpy, a live stunt dummy, whom she brings back to Oz. They escape the Back Talkers in Eht Kcab Sdoow (by running backwards), and meet the Scooters who help scoot them on their way. Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant shows up to provide transport (of the mundane sort). Dorothy's party encounters Snip and Tora, and Mombi and Pajuka too. They come to the conclusion that Humpy the dummy is the enchanted Pastoria.

Eventually, matters are clarified and settled: Pajuka is restored to humanity, but Humpy proves not to be the missing king after all. Old Tora is disenchanted and turns out to be Pastoria. He spurns any notion of returning to his throne, however; he is content to settle down as a humble tailor in the Emerald City, with Snip as his apprentice and Humpy as his tailor's dummy.

In a rare act of Ozite capital punishment, Mombi is ruthlessly doused with water and melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West, so that nothing is left of her but her buckled shoes.

Thompson begins with a usurping tyrant, Irasha the Rough, the Pasha of Rash, a tiny kingdom in the southwest of Ev. The Pasha has a problem: his prison is too full to cram any more Rashers in. His Vizier's solution is to obtain a ferocious animal from nearby Oz to devour the luckless prisoners. Travelling to the Emerald City by his magical "hurry cane", the Vizier lures the Hungry Tiger (first seen in ''Ozma of Oz'') to Rash. As might be expected from his history, however, the Hungry Tiger is too tenderhearted to eat prisoners.

Meanwhile, through an unfortunate series of events involving a winding road and a pair of Quick Sandals, Betsy Bobbin (introduced in ''Tik-Tok of Oz'') and her new acquaintance, Carter Green, the Vegetable Man, end up in Rash, and no sooner do they arrive than they're thrown into the crowded prison. There they meet the Scarlet Prince Evered (known as Reddy), the rightful ruler of Rash. Together with the Tiger, they escape, and have varied adventures with Big Wigs and Gnomes in their search for three magic rubies.

Back in Oz, Princess Ozma has troubles of her own: she is confronted by Atmos Fere, a balloon-like being who lives in the upper stratosphere. His plan is to kidnap her up to his own kingdom, to prove to his skeptical fellows that living beings can exist on the surface of the Earth. Ozma, however, has a secret weapon (a pin).

In time, the adventurers recover the magic rubies, and Reddy is restored to the Rashian throne. The Pasha and his evil Vizier end up stranded on a desert island in the Nonestic Ocean.

An example of the film's comedic tone comes in the opening monologue, which spoofs the opening of ''COPS:'' "TROOPS is filmed on location with the men of the Imperial Forces. All suspects are guilty--period! Otherwise, they wouldn't be suspects, would they?" Adding to the comic tone are the accents from the stormtoopers which is very reminiscent to the accents heard in the movie ''Fargo''.

A small visual gag near the beginning of the film is that the stolen Imperial droid recovered from the Jawas is a replica of Tom Servo from ''Mystery Science Theater 3000''.

In ''TROOPS'' there is a notable alternate (tongue-in-cheek) take on the deaths of Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, presenting their fate as the end result of a domestic dispute gone too far, rather than execution at the hands of Imperial forces. Indeed, the spotlighted members of Black Sheep Squadron attempt to mediate the dispute before Beru makes a disastrous move with a thermal detonator.

The film ends with an incoming message about a possible disturbance in Mos Eisley Cantina.

The tiny kingdom of the Ozure Isles, perched on five islands in Lake Orizon, surrounded by high mountains in a remote region of Munchkin Land, has little contact with the outside world—of Oz. The evil witch Mombi has turned her malice in the Ozure direction. After kidnapping Queen Orin, Mombi has left a fire-breathing lake monster named Quiberon in Lake Orizon to keep the natives prisoner. Even after Mombi was vanquished, Quiberon remains.

Conditions grow worse when Quiberon orders the Ozurites to kidnap a mortal maiden to keep him company. Since Oz is a fairyland, the only mortal maidens are three American girls living in the Emerald City: Dorothy Gale, Betsy Bobbin, and Tiny Trot. Two Ozurites respond to the crisis in two separate ways. The heroic Prince Philador escapes from the islands to seek the aid of the Good Witch of the North, whose name is Tattypoo. The unheroic Akbad, the Ozure Isles soothsayer, steals a pair of magic wings, flies to the Emerald City, and kidnaps Trot. He also accidentally kidnaps the Scarecrow and an animated statue called Benny (short for "public benefactor") along with Trot.

In his search for Tattypoo, Prince Philador teams up with High Boy, a giant horse with telescoping legs, Herby the Medicine Man, an eighteenth-century doctor with a medicine chest in his own chest due to an incomplete disenchantment, and Jo King, a monarch with a sense of humor. Various adventures ensue, in strange locations like Cave City, and with even stranger beings like the Roundabouties and Shutterfaces. Eventually, matters are sorted out satisfactorily: the Wizard turns Quiberon into a great bronze and silver statue, and the good Witch Tattypoo is revealed to be the missing and amnesiac Queen Orin. She is restored to her family and kingdom. Trot becomes a princess of the Ozure Isles, welcome in their Sapphire City whenever she chooses to visit. By Ozma's decree, Jo King is made ruler of the entire Gillikin Country of Oz.

Sir Hokus of Pokes grows tired of the Emerald City, and he and the Comfortable Camel set out for some adventure. Sir Hokes wants to rescue a damsel in distress, or at least find a monster to fight. Sir Hokus visits Marshland and befriends Ploppa, a giant mud turtle. Ploppa would like to accompany Sir Hokus on his adventures, but cannot leave the swamp. Sir Hokus is joined by the Comfortable Camel.

Meanwhile, a boy named Speedy blasts his way to Oz in a homemade rocket ship, where he finds himself in the underground kingdom of Subterranea. At his touch, a golden statue of a beautiful girl comes to life. She is called Marygolden, and she accompanies Speedy on his further adventures. Sir Hokes and Speedy join forces and, using the power of a bag of magic dates, they counter the magic of the evil Sultan of Samandra and restore the Corumbian Kingdom, which the Sultan had conquered and enchanted. Sir Hokus learns his true identity: he is actually the young and handsome Yellow Knight of Corumbia, transformed into old, absent-minded Sir Hokus by the Sultan's magic. Using the power of the magic dates, Sir Hokus regains his youthful form and vacates the Emerald City to rule as Prince of Corumbia.

Peter returns for a third time, washing up on the Octagon Isle after a shipwreck. He joins King Ato of the Octagon Isle, who has been abandoned by his subjects, and Captain Samuel Salt, who has been abandoned by his crew of pirates. Together, they sail on the Nonestic Ocean (which surrounds the continent which includes Oz and its neighbor countries).

Meanwhile, Ruggedo, the deposed Gnome King, is back. He had been cursed with loss of speech by a magical "Silence Stone" at the end of his previous appearance in ''The Gnome King of Oz'', and is scraping out a living as a peddler and beggar. He decides to answer an advertisement for the position of King of the Land of Menankypoo, whose people are also mute. These people demand "a dumb king" and Ruggedo meets this requirement. While serving as king, he recovers his ability to speak, joins forces with an ambitious magician, and also becomes leader of Captain Salt's mutinous pirates and Ato's rebellious subjects. He trains these followers into a military force, and attempts once again to conquer Oz.

This is one of the few Oz books in which Ruggedo appears as a sympathetic character. The reader faces danger, overcomes obstacles, and experiences gratifying moments of triumph with him. Of the two narrative threads in the book, his is the more complex and suspenseful. (The other is Peter and Captain Salt and King Ato sailing around the Nonestic Ocean, visiting small islands.)

Besides Captain Salt, this book introduces two notable characters: Clocker, a clockwork man who is not as trustworthy as Tik-Tok, and Pigasus, a flying pig whose riders are magically compelled to speak in rhyming jingles. Pigasus returns as a principal character in ''The Wishing Horse of Oz'' while Captain Salt and King Ato return in ''Captain Salt in Oz''.

Janey is on vacation with her brother Jim, mother Kate, and father Ed, at their beach house on the Mahurangi Peninsula in New Zealand. Ed and Kate, who are on the verge of divorce, sit in the backyard all day drinking whisky, leaving their young children to amuse and fend for themselves. Cady, a local boatie who is having an affair with Kate, catches Janey's pubescent eye. In response to his wife's problems with alcohol and infidelity, Ed turns to alcohol, neglecting his children almost as much as his wife. When Janey sees Cady photographing Kate on his boat, she persuades him to take pictures of her as well. Then, like her mother, she wants something else from him.

Leaving little Jim alone on the beach, Janey leads Cady high into the woods. After posing for him, she takes his camera and tells him how to pose. She adjusts his shirt and tells him to strip off. Then she puts his camera aside and starts touching him all over. They kiss, her head tilts back, and the screen goes black-and-white.

In the next scene, A camera shot from far above shows Janey as she lies alone in the woods naked. She is next seen walking back down the woody hillside to the beach with her clothes on. Off in the distance she sees her brother's little body. She runs the length of the beach to him, screaming his name.

When she reaches him she launches into frenzied CPR: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, breathe! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, breathe!" Her father arrives and takes over the CPR. Janey begs him, "Make him breathe!" and when he says he is trying, she yells at him that he is not. They eventually have to realize that they are too late to save Jim and to save the family.

After a car accident knocks him unconscious, a man awakens from a coma, his face fully bandaged, to find that he has been admitted to a dilapidated sanitarium and that he cannot remember who he is or where he came from, or how he came to be there, though his fellow inmates seem to know him simply as "Max". As he delves deeper into the asylum's corridors in search of answers, Max finds himself transported to various obscure and otherworldly locations: a small town inhabited only by malformed children and overseen by a malevolent alien entity known only as "Mother", a demented circus surrounded by an endless ocean and terrorized by a squid-like individual, an alien hive overrun by cyborg insects, and an Aztec village devastated by the return of the god Quetzalcoatl. Between each episode, Max returns to the asylum grounds, blending real and unreal, each time closer to regaining his memory and unraveling the truth surrounding the mysterious Dr. Morgan, head of the asylum. He remembers the death of his younger sister Sarah years ago and the real reason behind his institutionalization. It is revealed that Max was working on a cure for a deadly disease, but his rival, Jacob Morgan, didn't like this. He sabotaged Max's car and caused him to have an accident. Max is in a coma, trapped in a dreamworld. He must wake up and expose Dr. Morgan's crimes.

''The Beloved Returns'' is the story of one of Goethe's old romantic interests, a real historical figure by the name of Charlotte Kestner née Buff, who has come to Weimar to see him again after more than 40 years of separation. Goethe had romanced Charlotte when they were young, but she had already been engaged (and then married) to another man whom she truly loved. Ultimately, the romance ended unconsummated; afterwards, Goethe wrote a fictional depiction of these events, with some artistic changes, and published it under the title ''The Sorrows of Young Werther''—a still famous book, which brought early renown to Goethe. The real Charlotte became inadvertently and unwillingly famous, and remained so for the rest of her life to a certain degree.

Her return in some ways is due to her need to settle the "wrongs" done to her by Goethe in his creation of ''Werther''; one of the underlying motifs in the story is the question of what sacrifices both a "genius" and the people around him/her must make to promote his/her creations, and whether Goethe remained distanced even to friends and family members, exploited others' talents and sympathy, and was ultimately guided only by his interests. Most of the novel is written as dialogues between Charlotte and other residents of Weimar, who give their own opinions on the issue of Goethe's genius. Only in the last third of the book, starting with the internal monologue in the seventh chapter, is the reader finally directly confronted with Goethe and what he himself thinks of the entire affair.

''Lotte in Weimar'' echoes in subtle ways both Mann's respect for and his demythologizing approach to Goethe.

The game starts with Oliver arriving at the Blackstone Asylum, which has been purchased and is being turned into a Museum of Psychiatric History. That doesn't sit well with Malcolm Metcalf, Oliver's father and last superintendent of the Asylum, who died some forty years before. All of the activity involved in transforming the Asylum has awakened its residents. For reasons not yet known to Oliver or the player, his father's spirit has taken his son, Joshua, and hidden him somewhere in the Asylum, apparently to coerce Oliver there.

Exploring the mansion, Oliver encounters several spirits of patients who are bound to the asylum by their possessions, including a teenage girl with hysterical pregnancy, a schizophrenic who believes she's English royalty, and a depressed woman who was treated with steam baths and hydrotherapy. Oliver discovers that his father psychologically tortured to suicide or allowed several of his patients to be killed under the guise of accidents during treatment. This is counterpointed by the sterile and rose-tinted explanations from the museum equipment for the same procedures or implements (lancets are described as an attempt to bring the bodies humours into balance, where the spirit of a patient with Alzheimer's disease declares they were used liberally so patients could not defend themselves). Disheartened by the failure of traditional medicine, Oliver's father gradually turned to more and more extreme methods, including totally dismembering and vivisecting an 8-year-old boy to cure his illness. Eventually his treatments turned to outright torture, as a punishment of undesirable behaviors to eventually remove them.

Over the course of the game, Oliver collects several personal items that influence him, causing him to nearly kill himself in several psychiatric methods (ECT, self-injecting neuro-toxins, locking himself in a steam box). His father Malcolm implies this is caused by the inherent evil contained within the items, although its heavily implied that Oliver developed these traps himself while under Malcolm's control, through a long, complicated sequence of post-hypnotic suggestions.

Oliver's father eventually reveals his plan. While Oliver has been trapped in the asylum and continued to refuse Malcolm's demands that Oliver take vengeance on Malcolm's enemies, Malcolm returned Joshua home, and instructs him to murder his mother with a straight razor, as a punishment of Oliver for his disobedience to his father and to make Joshua a monster with Malcolm's similar outlook. With the help of the spirits trapped in the asylum, Oliver destroys the artifacts of his father throughout the asylum, banishing his fathers spirit.

The skill of sword-fighting is known to two tribes, the Tribes of Light (which consists of humans living on the world's surface) and Shadow (largely part-human-part-animal creatures and monsters living in an underground city, who enjoy a lifespan five times as long as the Tribe of Light and age one-fifth as quickly). The two tribes lived in peace and harmony, their domains separated by the "Words Worth" tablet—a huge monolith slab erected by an almighty creator. Although the tablet has writing on it, neither Tribe can read the text. One day, Words Worth was mysteriously destroyed by an unknown entity; its fragments were scattered among the domain of the Tribes of Shadow. The two Tribes blamed each other for the tablet's destruction, and started a war that has continued for 150 years (100 in the anime). Astral, prince of the Tribe of Shadow, desires to become a Swordsman of Shadow. However, his father, King Wortoshika, forbids him to do so. He is engaged to Sharon, a beautiful swordswoman and Astral's childhood friend, who has feelings for Astral but wishes he were stronger.

In the small West Virginia mining town of Electric Park, a self-proclaimed teenage pacifist named Dick buys what he thinks is a toy gun. When he learns from a co-worker that it is not a replica, but a functioning antique gun, the two form a friendship based around recreational target shooting and studying firearms history. Other disaffected teens join them, and they begin to call themselves "the Dandies". Dick becomes more and more attached to his gun, naming it "Wendy" and writing it love letters. The Dandies adopt an affected, anachronistic style of dressing and speaking, for example replacing the word "killing" with "loving". They treat their antique firearms as elaborate props, giving them names and backstories, playing games with them, and target shooting in an abandoned mining shaft that they decorate and call the Temple. They carry their guns at all times, but make a point of never showing off their guns in public.

Dick's childhood nanny Clarabelle introduces him to her troubled grandson Sebastian, an African-American youth from out of town who is on probation for a weapons-related crime. The town's sheriff, Sheriff Krugby, appoints Dick as an informal probation officer for Sebastian, believing that Dick is a good role model. Dick allows Sebastian to break probation and asks him to join the Dandies, but only if he follows their idiosyncratic rules. One day, Sebastian gives the group a suspicious box full of guns, and soon breaks a club rule by firing another member's gun. The group's sole female member, Susan, becomes interested in Sebastian. Dick becomes upset by the changes Sebastian's presence has triggered.

Sebastian tells Dick that his grandmother is too scared of "gang violence" to walk down the street to her cousin's home, and Dick proposes that the Dandies escort her there. Clarabelle panics when they encounter a deputy sheriff and ends up shooting him after a scuffle. The sheriff asks the Dandies to hand over Clarabelle, telling them they can keep their guns if they do so. The Dandies believe that they are being set up, and flee to the Temple with Clarabelle just as several other police officers arrive. Despite the fact that they are now wanted by police, the Dandies decide to finish taking Clarabelle to her cousin's, treating it as a suicide mission. Sebastian discovers Dick's final letter to Wendy, which ends with the coded threat: "And now, it's the time of the season for loving." Armed, they head outside to face the team of shotgun-toting police officers.

A gunfight ensues, during which most of the Dandies are killed or wounded, and Clarabelle is hit in the leg by a ricocheting bullet. Although he is also wounded, Dick manages to get Clarabelle to her cousin's house, but loses his gun Wendy in the confusion. Police officers surround the home. Sebastian, unhurt, remains hidden outside. Noticing Wendy on the street, he picks it up and runs into Clarabelle's cousin's home, where he shoots Dick with Wendy. The police on the roof across the street open fire on the building.

The film follows gentleman thief Arsène Lupin from a small boy, through the death of his father, and his adult years when he meets the strange woman, Joséphine, who appears to be immortal and uses a hypnotic drug to enslave people to her will. Arsène's ethos is to steal from the rich and deserving crooks. In this film he comes up against two parties, a secret society and Joséphine, who are intent on gathering three crucifixes which will reveal the secret of a lost treasure which contains secrets about Mehdi.

Maximilian Webber, a former SAS , gives a speech denouncing an extreme eco-terrorist organisation known as Force Three. After the speech, he is contacted by an unknown man who declares him an enemy of Force Three. The phone explodes, killing him.

Meanwhile, Alex Rider is recuperating in a hospital after being shot at the end of his previous mission. He meets Paul Drevin, the son of a Russian billionaire Nikolei Drevin. One night, four men break into the hospital and attempt to kidnap Paul, but Alex manages to overpower them. However, he is captured by Kaspar, the leader, and imprisoned in an abandoned building where the men reveal themselves as members of Force Three. The men set fire to the building after realising that Alex deliberately foiled their plan. Alex escapes from the fire by tightrope walking to an adjacent building, and returns to the hospital, where he is debriefed by John Crawley, MI6 Chief of Staff, and later discharged. Back home, Nikolei Drevin invites Alex to stay with him for two weeks as thanks for preventing his son's kidnapping. As Alex's doctor has recommended that he take a holiday, he accepts.

Alex meets Drevin and his jobsworth assistant, Tamara Knight, at a hotel where Drevin is holding a press conference about his space project, Ark Angel; it is set to be the first-ever space hotel. Alex is treated well by Drevin, but starts suspecting him after realizing that Paul had been given no protection before the Force Three attack, despite claims of always being "a target". Stumbling into Drevin's private study, Alex discovers that Drevin owns the building where Alex was interrogated and nearly killed by Force Three. The following day, Alex participates in a race on Drevin’s private go-kart track; Alex beats Drevin when the man attempts to cheat, revealing his hatred of losing. Later, Alex watches a football match at Stamford Bridge with the home team, Chelsea, up against a team owned by Drevin, Stratford East, which loses. Alex encounters Force Three members giving a medal to the team captain who missed the final penalty, and is briefly taken by one of the Force Three men, but manages to get away. Alex tells Tamara Knight about Force Three, but the footballer is killed when the medal, made of caesium, catches fire in the shower.

Drevin, Tamara, Alex and Paul fly to New York City, but Alex is apprehended at the airport by an immigration official who claims that his passport is expired. This turns out to be a ruse by the CIA to bring Alex to Joe Byrne, the chief of the CIA. Byrne reveals that the CIA have investigated Drevin's wealth and found it to be attained through underworld contacts; they plan to arrest him for money laundering. Worried that Drevin will slip away, Byrne assigns Alex to report to him if he sees anything amiss at Flamingo Bay, Drevin's private island, from where Ark Angel rockets are launched. Smithers, the gadget master at MI6, arrives and provides Alex with gadgets, including mosquito repellent that attracts all manner of insects, an asthma inhaler that can be used as a grenade or a knockout gas dispenser, and an iPod that allows him to listen to phone calls. On Flamingo Bay, Alex intercepts a phone call from Drevin, who will be meeting someone the following night. Later, however, Drevin finds out about Alex's identity from the security chief, Magnus Payne, and decides to have him killed by sending him to dive into a shipwreck, in which he is locked in. Right when Alex is about to run out of air, Tamara appears and saves him, revealing that she has been Joe Byrne's inside man all along. The two go undercover to investigate Drevin's meeting, and see him meeting with Force Three, but are caught when Tamara accidentally sets off an alarm.

Alex is brought to Drevin, who reveals his intention to destroy Ark Angel with a bomb and send its wreckage crashing down on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. As the project has gone over budget and Drevin stands to lose money if he continues to finance it, he plans to recoup his losses with a large insurance payout from the station's destruction, while at the same time destroying the CIA's evidence of his criminal activities. Force Three are revealed to be hired hands, formed to act as scapegoats for Ark Angel's destruction. Payne then kills all members of Force Three, and reveals himself to be Kaspar, the leader of Force Three, with a tattoo of a globe on his head. Alex and Tamara are imprisoned, but Alex escapes and meets the CIA team stationed in Barbados, but the Atlas rocket with the bomb launches off to Ark Angel. The CIA team storm Flamingo Island and Drevin attempts to shoot Alex in the chaos, but Paul gets hit instead. Drevin leaves Paul and tries to escape, but his plane crashes, killing him instantly.

As there is no way to stop the bomb on the ground, Alex is to travel up to Ark Angel in a second Soyuz-Frigat rocket to deal with it manually. He encounters Kaspar aboard Ark Angel but manages to overpower him using the effects of zero-gravity and the sun, and Kaspar is stabbed to death by his own knife. Alex then moves the bomb away so that the wreckage from the detonation will simply break up and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry. Ark Angel explodes and Alex falls back to Earth, landing a hundred miles off the coast of Australia.

In this episode, the Three Investigators almost run into Prince Djaro with their car. Djaro is the soon-to-be prince of the fictional European state of Varania, a country which is still very conscious of old traditions and fashions (around the 17th to 19th century). The Investigators form an instant friendship with him. Soon afterwards, they are asked by the United States Secret Service to travel to Varania to keep an eye on Djaro; there are rumors and indications that Djaro is to be dethroned. An important role in the plot is played by the title's Silver Spider, a piece of jewelry which is the most treasured item of Varanian history (comparable to the English Crown Jewels).

Soon, the Investigators find themselves actively involved, as the conspirators—headed by Duke Stefan, an ambitious nobleman and interim ruler of Varania—attempt to frame them for stealing the Spider, and by implication sully the name of Prince Djaro and endanger his coronation. Djaro cannot be crowned unless he is wearing the Silver Spider around his neck. Stefan and his men have stolen the real Silver Spider and left an imitation in its place. Bob suffers amnesia in their subsequent flight, and the Silver Spider goes missing. The Three Investigators and a pair of Djaro loyalists hide out, while scheming to expose Stefan's plot and help Djaro to prevail.

Despite the fact that all seems hopeless, they finally prevail when Jupe recalls an important piece of Varanian history, which allows them to alert and rally Varania's loyal citizenry. The effort is wrapped up when Jupiter finds the Silver Spider as "nothing more than a spider", hidden ingeniously by Bob in a real spider's web.

Chi Mo Sai (Yuen Wah) meets Wong (Roger Kwok) in Auntie Fei's (Yuen Qiu) cafe and learns that Wong has a photographic memory. He decides to exploit this by teaching him how to play Mahjong, but Fei, Wong's boss, strongly objects. Despite Fei's objections, Wong learns Mahjong from compulsive gambler Chi Mo Sai. He impresses triad boss Tin Kau Ko (Wong Jing), but falls in love with Tin's mistress (Theresa Fu) and is beaten by his men. Wong goes crazy. Luckily, Fei cures him using Mahjong. Fei wants Wong to beat Tin in the climatic "King of Mahjong" competition.

It is the only 2005 film to boast of having a sequel made in 2005. The budget of the first two films are considerably smaller than ''Kung Fu Hustle''.

Ten-year-old Devon Stockard, a precocious and lonely young girl, has recently moved into the gated community Camelot Gardens in the Louisville, Kentucky suburbs with her parents, Morton and Clare. Recently recovered from open heart surgery, Devon is encouraged by her parents to make friends, and is pushed to sell cookies for a charity event for the summer.

While selling the cookies, Devon leaves the gated community against her mother's instructions, and meets Trent Burns, a landscaper living in a trailer in the woods, who works in Camelot Gardens. Imaginative, Devon pretends her life is like the fable of Baba Yaga.

Devon, at first annoying Trent, continues to come to his property and slowly befriends him. Despite the innocence of their friendship, he insists that she keep it a secret because of their age difference. While working in Camelot Gardens, Trent has altercations with two young men who live there; Brett, who is fooling around with Devon's mother; and Sean, a closeted homosexual who flirts with him.

During a family barbecue, exploring her father's car in their garage, Devon finds his handgun in the SUV's glove compartment. Brett discovers her with the it and attempts to molest her, but she escapes. Telling her parents about the incident, they respond by stressing over the social implications and how influential Brett's father is. So, Devon changes the story to that Brett was only trying to tickle her.

Clare begins to notice Devon's friendship with Trent when he comes to do lawn work at their house, and becomes alarmed. Meanwhile, Brett and Sean vandalize Trent's lawnmower, pouring sugar in the fuel tank and start a fight with him after accusing him of stealing CDs from Sean's car.

Devon and Trent's friendship grows, and they visit Trent's mother and his father, a Korean War veteran dying of a lung disease. After leaving their house, Trent and Devon go for a drive in the country. While stopped in a field, she insists that as they are "best friends", she can show him the surgical scar on her chest. Insisting he touch it to his reluctance, she then demands he show her the abdominal scar he sustained in a shooting. After this, they see Sean's escaped dog, running through the field. While trying to chase it down in the truck, they accidentally run him over. Trent kills the badly injured dog although Devon pleas for him not to, and she runs home in a panic.

Clare and Morton, concerned over Devon's frantic behavior, ask her what happened. She won't provide details, only saying that Trent killed Sean's dog and mentions she and Trent took turns showing each other their scars. Assuming that Trent molested her, Morton drives out to Trent's property with Devon, assisted by Sean and the ex-cop security guard of Camelot Gardens. The three confront Trent while Devon sits in the car.

Morton and Sean take turns beating Trent, and Morton accuses him of sexually abusing Devon. He attacks Trent with a piece of wood, beating him to the ground, handing it to Sean; but before he can hit him, Devon exits her father's car with his gun, shooting him in the abdomen. As Sean bleeds on the ground, Devon urges Trent to leave, and they say their goodbyes.

Armed with her father's gun, Devon orders her dad to lift her up into the tree she and Trent had decorated with ribbons, and she imagines a river and a forest rising up behind Trent as he drives away, protecting him as he escapes.

The novel is set in Nethermere (fictional name for real-life Eastwood) and is narrated by Cyril Beardsall, whose sister Laetitia (Lettie) is involved in a love triangle with two young men, George and Leslie Temple. She eventually marries Leslie, even though she feels sexually drawn to George. Spurned by Lettie, George marries the conventional Meg. Both his and Lettie's marriages end in unhappiness, as George slides into alcoholism at the novel's close.

Popular rock singer and aspiring revolutionary Max Frost (Christopher Jones) was born Max Jacob Flatow Jr. His first public act of violence was blowing up his family's new car. Frost's band, the Troopers, live together with him, their women, and others, in a sprawling Beverly Hills mansion. The band includes his 15-year-old genius attorney Billy Cage (Kevin Coughlin) on lead guitar, ex-child actor and girlfriend Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi) on keyboards, hook-handed Abraham Salteen (Larry Bishop) on bass guitar and trumpet, and anthropologist Stanley X (Richard Pryor) on drums. Max's band performs a song noting that 52% of the population is 25 or younger, making young people the majority in the country.

When Max is asked to sing at a televised political rally by Kennedyesque Senate candidate Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook), who is running on a platform to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, he and the Troopers appear – but Max stuns everyone by calling instead for the voting age to become ''14'', then finishes the show with an improvised song, "Fourteen or Fight!", and a call for a demonstration. Max's fans – and other young people, by the thousands – stir to action, and within 24 hours protests have begun in cities around the United States. Fergus's advisors want him to denounce Max, but instead he agrees to support the demonstrations, and change his campaign – if Max and his group will compromise, accept a voting age of 15 instead, abide by the law, and appeal to the demonstrators to go home peaceably. Max agrees, and the two appear together on television – and in person the next day, using the less offensive mantra "Fifteen and Ready".

Most states agree to lower the voting age within days, in the wake of the demonstrations, and Max Frost and the Troopers campaign for Johnny Fergus until the election, which he wins by a landslide. Taking his place in the Senate, Fergus wishes Frost and his people would now just go away, but instead they get involved with Washington politics. When a Congressman from Sally LeRoy's home district dies suddenly, the band enters her in the special election that follows, and Sally – the eldest of the group, and the only one of majority age to run for office – is voted into Congress by the new teen bloc.

The first bill Sally introduces is a constitutional amendment to lower the age requirements for national political office to 14, and "Fourteen or Fight!" enters a new phase. A joint session of Congress is called, and the Troopers – now joined by Fergus's son, Jimmy (Michael Margotta) – swing the vote their way by spiking the Washington, D.C. water supply with LSD, and providing all the Senators and Representatives with teenaged escorts.

As teens either take over or threaten the reins of government, the "Old Guard" (those over 40) turn to Max to run for president, and assert his (their) control over the changing tide. Max again agrees, running as a Republican to his chagrin, but once in office, he turns the tide on his older supporters. Thirty becomes a mandatory retirement age, while those over 35 are rounded up, sent to "re-education camps", and permanently dosed on LSD. Fergus unsuccessfully attempts to dissuade Max by contacting his estranged parents (Bert Freed and Shelley Winters), then tries to assassinate him. Failing at this, he flees Washington, D.C. with his remaining family, but they are soon rounded up.

With youth now in control of the United States, politically as well as economically, similar revolutions break out in all the world's major countries. Max withdraws the military from around the world (turning them instead into ''de facto'' "age police"), puts computers and prodigies in charge of the gross national product, ships surplus grain for free to Third World nations, disbands the FBI and Secret Service, and becomes the leader of "the most truly hedonistic society the world has ever known".

Ultimately however, Max and his cohorts may face future intergenerational warfare from an unexpected source: pre-teen children. When a young girl finds out Max's age (which is now 24), she sneers, "That's old!" Later, after Max kills a crawdad that was a pet to several young kids, then mocks their youth and powerlessness, one of the kids resolves, "We're gonna put everybody over 10 out of business."

The game starts when the producer notices that the film has been stolen by Bela Lugosi's double. The player must carry out an epic search of the locations where ''Plan 9 from Outer Space'' was filmed to find the six missing reels.

From the back of the DOS version box:

:'''Plan 9.''' The critics hated it. Bela Lugosi died during it. And his double has stolen it.

:Lugosi's replacement is still bitter after 33 years from critics' reviews dubbing his only movie "The Worst Film of All-Time". Even though he remained faceless, he intends to bring glory to the cult classic using more footage of himself and ... '''colorizing''' it. As the studio's Private Eye you'll search over 70 locations, find the 6 reels and screen the film, frame-by-frame, to ensure that the warped actor did not cut Bela from the flick. Using actual digitized film footage, you'll sweat each scene, examining '''Plan 9''' with slow motion, freeze frame, fast forward and rewind. It's up to '''you''' to preserve its original awfulness.

Set in AD. 2023, Tokyo the government is concerned about the increase in major criminal organizations, terrorists and other threats to the security of society. This leads to the formation of special extralegal police team from within the Metro Police Section 8 Branch called Warrior. Under their Commander, the team combines the talents of martial arts expert Rio Kinezono and skilled marksman and gun expert Maya Jingu. They are joined later by the shy Lilica Evette who uses her psychic powers to assist them in their crime-solving adventures. Later, the Police Council create obedient New Warriors to replace the original Warriors. These New Warriors are genetically modified humans with superhuman strength gained via drugs and based on data obtained from monitoring Rio and Maya's missions.

The series is centered around the adventures of Flint Hammerhead, a boy from the prehistoric era who was resurrected from his fossil prison and became a Time Detective for the Time Police, although his competency as a detective is dubious. Much like ''Inspector Gadget'', much of the heavy thinking is done by Flint's friends Sarah and Tony Goodman who accompany him on his adventures. Flint, however, pulled his weight in battle when he would fight with the aid of his father Rocky Hammerhead whose partial resurrection left him a sentient talking rock with a face. Rocky, fashioned into a stone axe for Flint, served Flint as both sturdy weapon and adviser, the latter both in and out of battle. Flint's job as a Time Detective was to go back in time and convince Time-Shifters, cute, collectible creatures to ally with him to protect the timeline.

Usually, he fought against Petra Fina and her cronies Dino and Mite (very reminiscent of Marjo, Grocky, and Walther from ''Time Bokan''), servants of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord himself sought to use the Time-Shifters' powers to invade the Land of Time, the creatures' home realm from whence he had scattered them. Similar to ''Pokémon'' or ''Digimon'', Time-Shifters originate as small, cute creatures who can "shape-shift" into much stronger forms for a time before reverting. This usually took two forms: an evil form (induced by the Petra Stamp, Uglinator's mark, or Dark Lord's magic) called a Con form and a good one brought forth by Flint and his team called a Master form.

The novel begins with the murder of Bill Tanner by Klaus Doberman, a German-South American drug lord. Enraged by his friend's death, Bond disobeys his official orders to get revenge. According to the cover blurb on the back of the book, "In this new high voltage spy thriller, Secret Agent 007 must "liquidate" ruthless billionaire kingpin Klaus Doberman. But James Bond has his hands full as he battles a luscious lady assassin who offers lethal love Russian style and a slit-eyed Oriental sadist who is an elusive and deadly Ninja. Aided by his confederate Lotta Head and his old CIA buddy Felix Leiter, 007 is pitted against Klaus Doberman in his heavily armed fortress high in the Mexican Sierra Madres ... in the most bloodcurdling death duel in the great Bond saga."

The book follows the story of the Bloggs, a couple previously seen in the book ''Gentleman Jim''. One afternoon, the couple hears a message on the radio about an "outbreak of hostilities" in three days' time. Jim immediately starts construction of a fallout shelter (in accordance with a government-issued ''Protect and Survive'' brochure, which he has collected from a public library), while the two reminisce about the Second World War. Their reminiscences are used both for comic effect and to show how the geopolitical situation has changed, but also how nostalgia has blotted out the horrors of war. A constant theme is Jim's optimistic outlook and his unshakeable belief that the government knows what is best and has the situation under full control, coupled with Hilda's attempts to carry on life as normal.

During their preparations the action is interrupted by two-page dark illustrations. With the first being a nuclear missile on a launch pad, labelled "MEANWHILE, ON A DISTANT PLAIN....", the second a squadron of Warthogs, labelled "MEANWHILE, IN THE DISTANT SKY....", and third a nuclear submarine labelled "MEANWHILE, IN A DISTANT OCEAN...."

The Bloggs soon hear of enemy missiles heading towards England and make it into their shelter before a nuclear explosion. They spend all the first day within the fallout shelter, on the second day however, they start suffering from aches and pains in their bodies and still feeling tired, hinting that they have already started being exposed to radiation and start moving about the house, exposing themselves to more radioactive fallout. Undaunted, they try to continue life as normal, as if it was the Second World War again. They find the house to be in shambles, with both the water and the electricity cut off. On the third day, misreading advice given in government leaflets, they come to believe that they must stay in the fallout shelter for just two ''days'' rather than two weeks. Thus, they go outside, to find that their garden and likely the whole area, has essentially been reduced to a wasteland with dead trees and grass in their garden, and that there is no sounds such as the trains that would usually be running, Hilda also thinks that the bomb has caused nice weather, as the day is bright, hot and near-cloudless (different from the nuclear winter seen in the film). While out, they notice the smell of cooking meat, unaware that it comes from the burning corpses of their neighbours.

Jim and Hilda exhibit considerable confusion regarding the serious nature of what has happened after the nuclear attack; this generates gentle comedy as well as darker elements: amongst them, their obliviousness of the fact that they are probably the only people left of their acquaintance. For instance, they repeatedly state that they should go out and purchase supplies. As the novel progresses and their emergency water supply runs out, they resort to collecting rainwater. Though they are wise to boil it, it is still contaminated with radiation, and thus their situation becomes steadily more hopeless, beginning to suffer more effects of radiation sickness. At first they suffer headaches and shivering, moments after the bomb. Then, from the second day, Hilda suffers from vomiting and diarrhoea. On the fourth day, Hilda's gums begin to bleed, and she finds blood in her diarrhoea, which they mistake for haemorrhoids. On the fifth day, Jim also shows bleeding gums; both are suffering blue bruising but mistake these for varicose veins. Finally, Hilda's hair begins to fall out. From then on, she insists that they go back into the fallout shelter and wait for help to arrive (though it never does).

The book ends on a bleak night, when Hilda insists Jim, who has now lost the last of his optimism, should pray; he begins uttering phrases from Psalm 23, which pleases Hilda. However, forgetting the lines, he switches to ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'', whose militaristic and ironic undertones distress the dying Hilda, who weakly asks him not to continue. Finally, James's voice mumbles away into silence as he finishes the line, "...rode the Six Hundred..."

The paper potato sacks they have wrapped themselves in then darken, in line with their ebb of consciousness, growing debility and ultimate deaths. This is then followed by the final blank white page.

Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are in Paris. Modesty is being wined and dined by René Vaubois, head of the Deuxième Bureau (the French Intelligence Service), on a floating restaurant on the Seine. René asks Modesty for advice regarding a new protection racket. High-level people worldwide are receiving death threats, and those who don't pay end up dead. The really crazy thing is that most of the deaths are apparently natural deaths.

Willie, waiting on the river bank for Modesty's return, encounters Chuli, a criminal whose speciality is planting bombs. René Vaubois' car has been wired with explosives. And when Modesty, Willie, René and Stephen Collier (making his first appearance) leave the scene they are followed by a car full of underworld killers, all bent on putting René down.

This is the start of a rather strange story about Lucifer, a "young man with a godlike body, dark hair and a ruined mind" who had been studying to go into the church when he was seduced by a woman and suffered a nervous breakdown, becoming convinced that he was the source of all sin, and therefore the devil himself. A pair of ageing puppeteers, Seff and Regina, unable to get work when the music halls closed down, turned to crime. After discovering Lucifer's uncanny ability to predict forthcoming natural deaths Seff has created an incredible worldwide protection racket.

The action heats up when Modesty is taken prisoner at their base on Sylt and a radio-controlled cyanide capsule is surgically implanted under her skin. The final confrontation takes place on a remote island in the Philippines. First Modesty and Willie are forced to fight a duel to the death against each other. Later the machine guns are blazing in a major battle between good guys and bad, with Modesty risking everything to try and save Lucifer.

Category:1967 British novels Category:Modesty Blaise books Category:Fiction about the Devil Category:Souvenir Press books

In 1887 London, Dr. Henry Jekyll is performing research experiments on the possibility of separating the good and evil aspects of human nature. Jekyll is in love with Beatrix Emery, but her father, Sir Charles, is skeptical of Jekyll's radical ideas. Jekyll develops a serum that he attempts to use on Sam Higgins, a patient who went insane after suffering a gas works explosion, but the plan fails when Jekyll learns Sam has died. Instead, Jekyll impulsively takes the serum himself, and is transformed in mindset and countenance into a malevolent alter ego. Jekyll takes an antidote to reverse the serum's effects, but not before experience an auditory hallucination in which a voice speaks: "Mr. Hyde."

Beatrix departs England on a trip with her father, leaving Jekyll alone. When Beatrix's vacation is extended, Jekyll continues to experiment with the serum, ingesting another dose. In his alter ego of Mr. Hyde, he ventures into a music hall where he sees attractive barmaid Ivy Peterson, whom he saved from an attacker in the streets some weeks before. Ivy does not recognize him, and becomes frightened when approaching his table. A brawl ensues among the patrons, after which Hyde convinces the hall owner to fire Ivy. Hyde takes a reluctant Ivy home with him, and rapes her in the carriage.

While Beatrix grows concerned after receiving no correspondence, Hyde provides Ivy housing in a flat, though she lives in fear of his unpredictable behavior. Ivy's friend Marcia suspects Ivy is being abused when she sees bruises on her. Upon learning that Beatrix has returned to England, Jekyll vows not to take the serum again. He sends Ivy an anonymous gift of money before destroying the key to the street entrance of his laboratory, the entrance that he had been using while under the influence of Hyde. Later, Ivy visits Jekyll as a patient, and recognizes him as the man who helped her in the street. When she shows him her injuries and he realizes what Hyde has done to her, Jekyll is ashamed.

Later that night, as Jekyll ventures to meet Beatrix, who has returned to England, he unexpectedly transforms into Hyde without having ingested the serum. Hyde instead ventures to Ivy's flat and finds her drunk and celebrating her freedom from him. When Hyde repeats phrases that Jekyll spoke to her, she grows terrified and begins screaming, resulting in Hyde strangling her to death. Hyde flees to the laboratory, but cannot enter as Jekyll destroyed the key; instead, Hyde visits Dr. John Lanyon, a friend of Jekyll. Lanyon provides him the medication that works as the antidote, and Hyde reverts back to Jekyll, much to Lanyon's horror.

Jekyll confesses to Lanyon everything that has transpired, and proceeds to visit Beatrix to end their engagement. Beatrix is distraught by the incident, and is horrified when he returns transformed as Hyde. Beatrix screams before losing consciousness. Her father, roused by Beatrix's scream, enters the room, only to be bludgeoned to death by Hyde with Jekyll's cane. Hyde flees back to the laboratory, and, unable to enter through the street door, pushes past Jekyll's butler, Poole. Meanwhile, as police investigate Sir Charles's body, Lanyon arrives and observes that Jekyll's cane was the murder weapon. Realizing Jekyll committed the crime while in his alter ego state as Mr. Hyde, Lanyon convinces police to accompany him to Jekyll's home.

Lanyon and the authorities arrive at Jekyll's home moments after Hyde has ingested the antidote and turned back into Jekyll. Breaking down the door to the laboratory, they confront him about Sir Charles's murder. The psychological stress of the situation triggers Jekyll into returning back into Mr. Hyde, and he becomes violent. While attempting to fight police, Hyde is shot by police. As he dies, his demeanor and countenance slowly morphs back into that of Jekyll.

Years after the events of the first film, Val McKee has moved away and married Rhonda LeBeck, while Earl Basset has squandered his fortune on a failing ostrich ranch. He is approached by Carlos Ortega, who informs him that Graboids are killing his workers at his oil field in Chiapas, Mexico, and hires him to hunt them down. Earl initially declines, but Ortega's taxi driver, Grady Hoover, convinces Earl to change his mind after mentioning that Ortega will pay $50,000 for each Graboid killed; both join the hunt. Upon arrival, Earl learns that the company would pay him double if he caught one of the creatures alive. He also meets geologist Kate Reilly, her assistant Julio, and a mechanic named Pedro, all of whom are scientifically investigating the Graboids.

Earl and Grady begin systematically killing the Graboids by using remote-controlled cars rigged with explosives. Though their strategy seems to work, the vast number of Graboids overwhelms them and Earl enlists the help of Burt Gummer, who arrives with a "deuce-and-a-half" truck loaded with firearms and explosives. The next day, Earl and Grady are surprised by one of the Graboids, causing them to drive backwards in a panic and crash the truck into an inclined ditch. Returning to where they saw the Graboid, Earl and Grady find that the creature looks sick and non-aggressive with all of its tentacles mysteriously dead. Realizing they have one of the creatures alive (which Ortega offered $100,000 if accomplished), they call Pedro to come and pick them up along with the Graboid. However, the Graboid later begins making horrific and painful sounds and is soon found dead with a huge hole torn open into its body. They see Pedro's truck approach from the distance but it suddenly stops, prompting Grady and Earl to investigate and discover the truck’s destroyed engine as well as Pedro’s remains. They make their way to a nearby radio broadcasting building which has similarly been destroyed, only to be met by strange bipedal graboid-like creatures. Earl successfully kills one as it charges him, but the two flee in a car they had found as more of the creatures arrive. Meanwhile, Burt's truck is ambushed by a pack of these new creatures while returning to base.

The following morning, the creatures have made their way to the oil refinery, where Julio is violently killed by one. Grady and Earl arrive before it can attack Kate, with Burt shortly arriving thereafter following a near-fatal firefight that has left him drained of ammunition. Through experimentation, the group discovers that these creatures (now dubbed 'Shriekers') are hermaphrodites that can replicate at an incredible rate after eating enough food. They also learn that the creatures cannot hear unlike their predecessors, but rather see heat through special infrared receptors on their heads. However, they are attacked by the Shriekers, who have discovered Burt's MRE food supply and have rapidly doubled their numbers in a matter of minutes. They run for Julio's car, but Burt accidentally disables it while killing a Shrieker.

Hiding from the Shriekers, Burt is trapped in a bulldozer bucket while Grady, Kate, and Earl are on top of an oil tower. The Shriekers work together in an attempt to climb the tower before Burt traps them in the storage shed with the truck. However, they discover rice flour is stored inside as well, enabling the Shriekers to continue eating and multiplying inside. Earl douses himself in CO₂ from a fire extinguisher to hide his body heat, and tries to find Burt's explosives amongst the Shriekers, who have multiplied into dozens of creatures. While the plan initially works, the quickly wears off and the Shriekers detect his body heat, forcing Earl to throw the detonator among Burt's supplies before escaping. The group manages to escape before a massive explosion devastates the entire facility, destroying all of the Shriekers with it. In the aftermath, Earl and Kate decide to pursue each other romantically, while Grady suggests opening a monster-themed theme park due to the money Ortega now owes them.