From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== Al Denton was once known as the quickest draw in town, but riddled with increasing guilt over the losers in his gun duels (one of whom was a teenage boy), he became an alcoholic wreck and the laughingstock of the community. A mysterious salesman named Henry J. Fate causes Denton to inexplicably regain his expert shooting touch and once again inspire the respect and awe of the townsfolk; Denton explains to Liz, a saloon girl, that this will only cause reputation-hungry gunslingers from miles around to seek him out and, inevitably, kill him. He cleans himself up and goes sober but only, he says, so as to die with dignity. Just as Denton predicted, soon enough a challenge is delivered which Denton dares not refuse. The still-weary and not-so-sure-handed Denton practices in the desert for his suicidal duel, but he misses his targets miserably and concludes that he must skip town. As he packs his things and tries to flee under the cover of night, he strikes up a conversation with Fate, who seems to know things about Denton and offers him a way out. Fate offers him a potion guaranteed to make the drinker the fastest gun in the West for exactly ten seconds. Denton is skeptical but Fate goads him into drinking a free sample, after which Denton immediately realizes its benefits. At the appointed time, Denton faces his challenger, Pete Grant, a brash young gunfighter. Denton downs his potion only to find his opponent holding an identical empty bottle. Grant and Denton both realize that Fate tricked them, but it is too late to back out of the duel. Each man shoots the other in the hand, causing injuries which are minor but forever ruin both men's ability to pull a trigger. Denton tells his young opponent that they have both been blessed because they will never again be able to fire a gun in anger. He tells Liz that Grant is lucky because he was given this lesson early. Henry J. Fate tips his hat to Denton and rides quietly out of town. ===== Aging film star Barbara Jean Trenton secludes herself in her private screening room, where she reminisces about her past by watching her old films from the 1930s. In an attempt to bring her out into the real world, her agent Danny Weiss arranges a part for her in a new movie. Barbara and the man who runs the studio, Marty Sall, however, have historically had a contentious relationship; he is rather petty, small, and callous. He offers her the role of a mother, which she refuses. When Barbara returns home, she and Danny get into an argument when she decides to deny reality and throw a party for her friends (all have either moved away or have died). After the argument, Barbara has, according to her maid, chosen to stay in the screening room day and night. Danny decides to bring a former leading man—now also older, Jerry Herndon, many years retired from acting and managing a chain of grocery stores—to visit her. She is horrified by her friend's aged appearance and orders them both to leave. After the ill-fated visit, Barbara goes back into the projector room and puts on a movie that features Jerry's younger self. She will not accept that the present-day Jerry is the real one and voices her wish repeatedly to join the one on the screen; the screen blurs accordingly. Barbara's maid comes with a snack and coffee, only to find the room empty—and is horrified by what she sees on the screen. She calls Danny and, when he comes over, tells him that - to her mind - Barbara has vanished from the house. He runs the projector and sees, in the movie, the living room of the house filled with movie stars, looking as they did in the old films. Barbara descends the stairs, welcomes them to the party and says that dinner will be by the pool. As she starts off with Jerry, Danny tries to call her back to 1959 and reality. In response, she throws her scarf toward the camera and departs. The film ends. In the actual living room, Danny finds Barbara's scarf. "To wishes, Barbie", he says wistfully. "To the ones that come true." ===== While driving his car in the countryside on a summer afternoon circa 1959, 36-year-old New York advertising executive Martin Sloan stops to have his car serviced at a gas station within walking distance of Homewood, his hometown. After walking into town, he sees that it apparently has not changed since he was a boy. He visits the drugstore and is confused when he finds out that ice cream sodas are still only 10 cents. Martin walks to the town park, where he is startled to see himself as a boy of eleven, carving his name into the bandstand, exactly as he remembers doing. Grown-up Martin approaches, resulting in tweenage Martin becoming scared, believing himself to be in trouble, and he runs away. Following his tween self home, he meets his folks as they were in his childhood, but is turned away. He sees the next door neighbor, a teen boy working on his brand new roadster; Martin soon discovers that it is the year 1934. > A man can think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavements between > afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloan, to whom memory has > suddenly become reality, a resolve can come just as clearly and inexorably > as stars in the summer night. Martin Sloan is now back in time. And his > resolve is to put in a claim to the past. Confused and worried, Martin wanders around town and ends up at his former home again later that evening, where he again tries to convince his parents who he is by showing his identification, but is slapped by his mother and rejected. Martin wanders back to the park and finds his preteen self on a carousel. His advances again frighten the boy, who falls off the merry-go- round and injures his leg. Simultaneously, Martin experiences excruciating pain in his leg, due to the effect of the injury propagating through time to his adult self. The carousel is stopped, and Martin tries to tell his younger self to enjoy his boyhood while it lasts. After eleven-year-old Martin is carried away, adult Martin, sitting dejectedly on the carousel, is joined by his father who tells him young Martin will be all right, but will have a limp. He also tells him that having seen money with future dates and adult Martin's driver's license (with a 1960 expiration date) from Martin's wallet, which he had dropped at the house during the confrontation earlier, he now believes Martin's story. Martin's father advises his son that everyone has his time and that instead of looking behind him, he should look ahead; as delightful and rewarding as he may remember childhood to be, adulthood holds its own delights and rewards. When Martin walks back into the drugstore, he finds himself back in 1959, where ice cream sodas are now 35 cents. He discovers that he now has a limp from the carousel injury. Martin makes his way back to the gas station where he picks up his car. He drives away, content for once to live his life in his own age group. ===== Walter Bedeker, a paranoid hypochondriac, is convinced his wife and doctor (who insists Bedeker is in good health) are conspiring to kill him by purposely making him sick. After they leave, a rotund man named Cadwallader appears in Bedeker's room, offering him immortality and perpetual youth in exchange for his soul. Cadwallader inserts an escape clause allowing Bedeker to die at any time. Bedeker uses his newfound invulnerability to collect insurance money and cheap thrills by hurling himself into life- threatening accidents. After fourteen accidents, he concludes that removing risk and fear from his life was making life a dreadful bore. He purposely mixes a concoction of poisonous household liquids but, after he drinks it - shocking his wife - he states that it tasted "like lemonade to me... weak lemonade". Bedeker explains his situation to his wife, telling her that if she had any imagination, she would find some way for him to experience some excitement. He says he is going to jump off the roof of their apartment building; while trying to stop him, his wife accidentally falls off the edge herself. Unfazed by his wife's death, Bedeker phones the authorities and tells them he killed his wife, hoping to experience the electric chair. However, due to his lawyer's defense strategy, he is instead sentenced to life in prison without parole. Cadwallader visits Bedeker in his holding cell to remind him of the escape clause. Realizing he will face eternity in prison if he does not use it, Bedeker nods and immediately suffers a fatal heart attack. The guard discovers his lifeless body and sighs, "Poor devil..." ===== In 2046, an inmate named Corry, convicted of murder, is sentenced to fifty years' solitary confinement on a distant asteroid. On the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of incarceration, he is visited by the spacecraft (flown by a Captain Allenby) that brings him supplies and news from Earth four times a year. While Corry expects that perhaps he and Allenby will have time to play cards or chess, the captain informs the inmate that the ship and crew can stay only fifteen minutes this time; the asteroid's orbit is such that they would otherwise be stuck fourteen days at least, awaiting favorable orbital conditions to depart. Allenby's crew resent being away from Earth because of the likes of Corry. Allenby has been trying to make Corry's stay humanely tolerable by bringing him things to take his mind off the loneliness, like the components to build an old car. He believes Corry that the killing was in self-defense and sympathizes with him. On this particular trip, the transport crew delights in bringing news that Corry's pardon was rejected and that murder cases are not even being reviewed. This causes Corry to feel that there is no way he is going to last out the years and the loneliness. Before leaving, Allenby orders his men to fetch a large crate which the captain instructs Corry to not open until the transport crew is out of sight—they have no clue what is inside the box. Upon opening this special container, Corry discovers that Allenby has left him with a gynoid named Alicia to keep him company. Alicia is capable of emotions, memory and has a lifespan comparable to a human. At first, Corry detests her, rejecting her as a mere machine; synthetic skin and wires only capable of mocking him. However, when Corry hurts Alicia and sees that she is in fact capable of crying, he realizes that she has feelings. Over the next eleven months, Corry begins to fall in love with her. Alicia develops a personality that mirrors Corry's, and the days become bearable. When the ship returns, Captain Allenby brings news that the murder cases have been reviewed and Corry has been pardoned. He can return home to earth immediately but they only have twenty minutes before they must leave; the crew has been dodging meteors and are nearly out of fuel. Corry learns that, because there are seven other passengers from other asteroids on the ship, there is only room for him and fifteen pounds of luggage. He is initially unconcerned as he doesn't have fifteen pounds' worth of possessions that he cares about; then he realizes that Allenby does not consider Alicia human. The fifteen-pound limit is far too small to accommodate her. He frantically tries to find some way to take Alicia with him, arguing that she is not a robot, but a woman, and insisting that Allenby simply does not know Alicia as he does. At that point, just as the transport crew is surprised at the sight of Alicia, the captain suddenly draws his gun and shoots her in the face. The robot breaks down, malfunctioning, her face a mass of wire and broken circuitry which repeats the name "Corry". Allenby then takes Corry back to the ship, assuring him he will only be leaving behind loneliness. "I must remember that", Corry says tonelessly. "I must remember to keep that in mind". ===== Bank teller and avid bookworm Henry Bemis (Meredith) reads David Copperfield while serving a customer from his window in a bank. He is so engrossed in the novel he regales the increasingly annoyed woman with information about the characters, and shortchanges her. Bemis's angry boss (Taylor), and later his nagging wife (deWit), both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading "doggerel". As a cruel joke, his wife asks him to read poetry to her from one of his books; he eagerly obliges, only to find that she has inked over the text on every page, obscuring the words. Seconds later, she destroys the book by ripping the pages from it, much to Henry's dismay. The next day, as usual, Henry takes his lunch break in the bank's vault, where his reading cannot be disturbed. Moments after he sees a newspaper headline, which reads "H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction", an enormous explosion outside shakes the vault, knocking Bemis unconscious. After regaining consciousness and recovering the thick glasses required for him to see, Bemis emerges from the vault to find the bank demolished and everyone in it dead. Leaving the bank, he sees that the entire city has been destroyed, and realizes that, while a nuclear war has devastated Earth, him being in the vault has saved him. Finding himself alone in a shattered world with canned food to last him a lifetime and no means of leaving to look for other survivors, Bemis succumbs to despair. As he prepares to commit suicide using a revolver he has found, Bemis sees the ruins of the public library in the distance. Investigating, he finds that the books are still intact; all the books he could ever hope for are his for the reading, and time to read them without interruption. His despair gone, Bemis contentedly sorts the books he looks forward to reading for years to come, with no obligations to get in the way. Just as he bends down to pick up the first book, he stumbles, and his glasses fall off and shatter. In shock, he picks up the broken remains of the glasses without which he is virtually blind and bursts into tears, surrounded by books he now can never read. ===== Edward Hall (Conte), a man with a severe heart condition, believes that if he falls asleep, he'll die. On the other hand, keeping himself awake will put too much of a strain on his heart. He believes that his overactive imagination is severely out of control, to the point where he's been able to see and feel something that was not there. Due to this, his heart condition is especially dangerous. He seeks the aid of psychiatrist Dr. Eliot Rathmann. When he first enters the doctor's office, so tired he is barely able to stand, Rathmann helps him to the couch. Hall begins to drift into sleep, but suddenly jolts awake and gets up. He explains that, when he has allowed himself to sleep he has been dreaming in chapters, as if in a movie serial. In his dreams, Maya, a carnival dancer, lures him first into a funhouse and later onto a roller coaster in an attempt to scare him to death. Feeling that Rathmann cannot help him, Hall starts to leave, but stops when he sees that Rathmann's receptionist looks exactly like Maya. Terrified, he runs back into Rathmann's office and jumps out of the window. In reality, the doctor calls his receptionist, who does in fact look exactly like Maya, into his office, where Hall lies on the couch, his eyes closed. Rathmann tells the receptionist that Hall came in, lay down, immediately fell asleep, and then a few moments later let out a scream and died. "Well, I guess there are worse ways to go," the doctor says philosophically. "At least he died peacefully..." ===== Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin all work together in the same office. None is married (Edwin being a widower) and each is nearing retirement age. Letty has plans to share a country retreat with her long-time friend, Marjorie. Her hopes are dashed when Marjorie suddenly announces that she is to marry a clergyman some years younger than she. After Marcia and Letty retire, each is faced with challenges. Letty suddenly has to move and Marcia has to deal with a loss of the routine that was an essential part of her life. Marcia gradually withdraws from the outside world, while Letty has to engage with it. Marcia eventually gives up eating and dies in pathetic circumstances. She has unexpectedly left her estate to Norman, in whom she had indulged a brief and secret semi-romantic interest. When Marjorie's fiancé deserts her for a younger widow, Letty and her friend decided to take the country cottage after all. By now she has come to terms with retirement, her world has expanded, and so she does not immediately move. She realizes that she has opportunities to make her own choices. Norman and Edwin play less central roles in the "quartet", as their characters develop in response to the absences and actions of Marcia and Letty. At the end of the book, Letty is looking forward to inviting Norman and Edwin to meet Marjorie in the country. She thinks this would be a huge "opportunity" for the quartet, which was previously so urban and parochial, even though they have lost Marcia. ===== The novel details the lives of two sisters, Belinda and Harriet Bede, both spinsters in their fifties. University-educated Belinda is in love with the local Archdeacon, with whom she studied English poetry many years ago, but who is now married. Harriet, her more attractive sister, is constantly pursued by an Italian count, but she is more interested in the young curates who come to work in the village. During the course of the novel, both Belinda and Harriet meet various men who may be a potential love match. However they must also consider the conflict between entering into marriage at last, or remaining in their comfortable existences. ===== All eleven novels in the series are narrated by the character Lewis Eliot. The series follows his life and career from humble beginnings in an English provincial town, to reasonably successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement. The New Men deals with the scientific community's involvement in (and reaction to) the development and deployment of nuclear weapons during the Second World War. The Conscience of the Rich concerns a wealthy, Anglo-Jewish merchant- banking family. Time of Hope and George Passant depict the price paid by clever, poor young men to escape their provincial origins. Snow analyses the professional world, scrutinising microscopic shifts of power within the enclosed settings of a Cambridge college, a Whitehall ministry, a law firm. For example, in the novels set in the Cambridge college (a thinly veiled Christ's), a small, disparate group of men is typically required to reach a collective decision on an important subject. In The Masters, the dozen or so college members elect a new head (the Master) by majority vote. In The Affair, a small group of dons sets out to correct a possible injustice: they must convince the rest of the college to re-open an investigation into scientific fraud. In both novels, the characters strongly resist letting in the external world, whether it be the press, public opinion, the college "Visitor", or outside experts. ===== In 1999, a city-sized alien spacecraft crashes in South Ataria Island on Earth. Over the course of 10 years the military organization U.N. Spacy reverse- engineers its technology and rebuilds the spacecraft, naming it the SDF-1 Macross. In 2009 at the launch ceremony of the Macross, a young civilian pilot, Hikaru Ichijyo, comes to visit the Macross upon U.N. Spacy pilot Roy Focker's request. During the launch ceremony, a space war fleet from an alien race of humanoid giants arrives into the solar system and identifies the Macross as a former battleship used by their enemies, the Supervision Army. As the aliens, known as the Zentradi, approach the Macross, the original systems override the crew's commands and fire its main cannon, wiping out the advance alien scouts and starting a war. While Hikaru takes the new VF-1 Valkyrie on a test flight the aliens retaliate. He then encounters Lynn Minmay and rescues her from the aliens. The Macross crew attempts to use the experimental "Fold System" (Faster-than-light drives) to escape to the Moon's orbit, but instead it accidentally takes the Macross and South Ataria Island to the edge of the solar system. The people from the Macross salvage everything they can, including the city surrounding the ship and its civilians (who have survived in special safety shelters, which were transported along intact), and attach two aircraft carriers to the ship. Since the fold systems have vanished after the jump, the Macross is forced to make its way back to Earth by conventional power. The Zentradi suspect the humans might be their creators, the Protoculture. Under the command of Britai Kridanik and Exsedol Folmo, they plot ways to understand them. Fearful of their old combat directives of not interfering with Protoculture, the Zentradi perform attacks to test their theories about the people on board the Macross, and even have their Zentradi soldiers "micloned" (miniaturized) to learn more about their culture. The Zentradi capture several Macross personnel including Officer Misa Hayase and Hikaru to study. Boddole Zer, Supreme Commander of the Zentradi, is puzzled over things such as relationships amongst males and females. He confirms that the Miclones "are" protoculture during a demonstrated kiss between Hayase and Hikaru. After escaping, Hikaru and the others report their findings to their superiors, who have trouble accepting the reasons behind the Zentradi attacks as well as the huge forces the aliens possess. After much difficulty returning to Earth, the UN Spacy refuses to allow the Macross and the civilian passengers to return to land. Minmay's cousin, Lynn Kaifun, decides to join the Macross to see his parents and also look after Minmay. Because of Kaifun's relationship and constant contact with Minmay, the pair eventually enter a romantic relationship. After deliberation, the UN Spacy orders the Macross to leave Earth as a means to get the Zentradi away from them. During all these events, a female Zentradi ace fighter pilot, Milia Fallyna, is micloned and attempts to assassinate Maximilian Jenius, an ace UN Spacy pilot. Attempting to kill him during a knife duel, Milia is defeated and falls in love with Max, and the two are subsequently married. Their wedding aboard the Macross is broadcast to the Zentradi as a message that aliens and humans can co-exist. Since the Zentradi's exposure to culture and to Lynn Minmay's songs, some of them become eager to join the humans. Believing the "miclone contamination" is becoming a threat to all Zentradi forces, Boddole Zer orders his entire army to exterminate the human race and all those Zentradi previously exposed to human culture. Because Britai Kridanik was "contaminated" as well, he works with the humans to defeat the main Zentradi forces. The resulting battle culminates in the large scale devastation of Earth, but the people of the SDF-1 survive. After Boddole Zer is killed and his armada defeated, the surviving humans and their Zentradi allies begin rebuilding Earth. Two years after the end of the first Space War the transition into the Human ways becomes difficult to some Zentradi who can't stand the idea of a pacified life. Quamzin Kravshera constantly incites conflicts towards the civilians. He repairs a damaged Zentradi warship to return to his old ways and attacks the new Macross City built around the SDF-1. Moments before the final Zentradi attack, Misa Hayase tells Hikaru Ichijyo of her feelings for him and her decision to leave to space in a colonization mission to preserve human culture across the galaxy. Lynn Minmay, who was left by Kaifun and now loves Hikaru, doesn't want him to leave to join the fight. However, Hikaru still goes to defend the city anyway. Eventually Quamzin is killed. After a long emotional conflict Hikaru finally decides to be with Misa and join the colonization mission, but the two remain good friends with Minmay in the end. ===== In the city of Everytown in southern England, businessman John Cabal (Raymond Massey) cannot enjoy Christmas Day, 1940, with the news everywhere of possible war. His guest, Harding (Maurice Braddell), shares his worries, while another friend, the over-optimistic Pippa Passworthy (Edward Chapman), believes it will not come to pass, and if it does, it will accelerate technological progress. An aerial bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilisation and then global war. Months later, Cabal, now a Royal Air Force airman piloting a Hawker Fury, shoots down an enemy aircraft dropping gas on the British countryside. He lands and pulls the badly injured enemy pilot (John Clements) from the wreckage. As they dwell on the madness of war, they put on their gas masks, as poison gas drifts in their direction. When a young girl runs towards them the wounded pilot insists she take his mask, choosing to accept death to save her life. Cabal takes the girl to his aeroplane, pausing to leave the doomed man a revolver. The pilot dwells on the irony that he may have gassed the child's family and yet he has sacrificed his own life in order to save her. A gun shot is then heard. The war continues into the 1960s, long enough for the people of the world to have forgotten why they are fighting. Humanity enters a new Dark Age. Every city in the world is in ruins, the economy has been devastated by hyperinflation, and there is little technology left apart from weapons of war. By 1966 the enemy's armies and navies have been defeated, but their greatly depleted air force is deploying a biological weapon called the "wandering sickness" in a final desperate bid for victory. Dr. Harding and his daughter struggle to find a cure, but with little equipment it is hopeless. The plague kills half of humanity and extinguishes the last vestiges of government. By 1970, the warlord Rudolf (Ralph Richardson), known as the "Boss", has become the chieftain of Everytown and eradicated the pestilence by shooting the infected. He has started yet another war, this time against the "hill people" of the Floss Valley to obtain coal and shale to render into oil so his ragtag collection of prewar planes can fly again. On May Day 1970, a sleek new aeroplane lands in Everytown, startling the inhabitants who have not seen a new machine in many years. The pilot, John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of engineers and mechanics known as "World Communications" have formed a civilisation of airmen called "Wings Over the World", based in Basra, Iraq. They have outlawed war and are rebuilding civilisation throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. Cabal considers the Boss and his band of warlords to be brigands, but offers them the opportunity to join them in rebuilding the world. The Boss immediately rejects the offer and takes Cabal prisoner, forcing him to work for his mechanic Gordon, who struggles to keep the Boss's biplanes airworthy. Gordon takes an Avro 504K up for a test flight and heads for Iraq to alert World Communications. Gigantic flying wing aircraft arrive over Everytown and saturate its population with sleeping gas globes. The Boss orders his air force to attack, but the obsolete fighters inflict little damage. The people awaken shortly thereafter to find themselves under the control of Wings Over the World and the Boss dead from a fatal allergic reaction to the sleeping gas. Cabal observes, "Dead, and his old world dead with him ... and with a new world beginning ... And now for the rule of the Airmen and a new life for mankind". A montage follows, showing decades of technological progress, beginning with Cabal explaining plans for global consolidation by Wings Over the World. By 2036, mankind lives in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown. Civilisation is at last devoted to peace and scientific progress. All is not well, however. The sculptor Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke) incites the populace to demand a "rest" from all the rush of progress, symbolised by the coming first manned flight around the Moon. The modern-day Luddites are opposed by Oswald Cabal, the head of the governing council and grandson of John Cabal. Oswald Cabal's daughter Catherine (Pearl Argyle) and Maurice Passworthy (Kenneth Villiers) insist on manning the capsule. When a mob later forms and rushes to destroy the space gun, used to propel the projectile toward the Moon, Cabal launches it ahead of schedule. Later, after the projectile is just a tiny light in the immense night sky, Oswald Cabal delivers a stirring philosophical monologue about what is to come for mankind to his troubled and questioning friend, Raymond Passworthy (Chapman), the father of Maurice. He speaks passionately for progress and humanity's unending quest for knowledge and advancement as it journeys out into immensity of space to conquer the stars and beyond. He concludes with the rhetorical questions, "All the universe or nothing? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be? ..." ===== Andy Kaufman is a struggling performer whose act fails in nightclubs because, while the audience wants comedy, he sings children's songs and refuses to tell conventional jokes. As the audience begins to believe that Kaufman may have no real talent, his previously timid "foreign man" character puts on a rhinestone jacket and does a dead-on Elvis impersonation. The audience bursts into applause, realizing Kaufman had tricked them. Kaufman catches the eye of talent agent George Shapiro, who signs him as a client and immediately lands him a network TV series, Taxi, much to Kaufman's dismay, since he dislikes sitcoms. Because of the money, visibility, and a promise that he can do his own television special, Kaufman accepts the role, turning his foreign man into a mechanic named Latka Gravas. Secretly he hates doing the show and expresses a desire to quit. Invited to catch a different act at a nightclub, Shapiro witnesses a performance by a rude, loud-mouthed lounge singer, Tony Clifton, whom Kaufman wants to guest-star on Taxi. Clifton's bad attitude is matched by his horrible appearance and demeanor. But backstage, when he meets Shapiro in person, Clifton takes off his sunglasses and reveals that he is actually Kaufman. Clifton is a "villain character" created by Kaufman and his creative partner, Bob Zmuda. Once again, the gag is on the audience. Kaufman's profile increases with appearances on Saturday Night Live, but he has problems with his newfound fame. When performing live, audiences dislike his strange anti- humor and demand that he perform as Latka. At one show, he deliberately antagonizes attendees by reading The Great Gatsby aloud from start to finish. Kaufman shows up on the Taxi set as Clifton and proceeds to cause chaos until he is removed from the set. He relates to Shapiro that he never knows exactly how to entertain an audience "short of faking my own death or setting the theater on fire." Kaufman decides to become a professional wrestler — but to emphasize the "villain" angle, he will wrestle only women (hired actresses) and then berate them after winning, declaring himself "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion." He becomes smitten with one woman he wrestles, Lynne Margulies, and they begin a romantic relationship. Problems arise when, during an appearance on ABC's live TV comedy show Fridays, Kaufman refuses to speak his lines. Kaufman feuds publicly with Jerry Lawler, a male professional wrestler, who challenges him to a "real wrestling match", which Kaufman accepts. Lawler easily overpowers and appears to seriously injure Kaufman. Lawler and an injured Kaufman (wearing a neck brace) appear on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, ostensibly to call a truce, but Lawler insults Kaufman, who spews a vicious tirade of epithets and throws coffee at the wrestler. It is later revealed that Kaufman and Lawler were in fact good friends and staged the entire feud, but Kaufman pays a price when he is banned from SNL by a vote of audience members, weary of his wrestling antics. Shapiro advises Kaufman and Lawler not to work together again, and later calls Kaufman to inform him that Taxi has been canceled. After a show at a comedy club, Kaufman calls together Lynne, Zmuda, and Shapiro to disclose that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer and may die soon. They aren't sure whether to believe this, thinking it could be yet another stunt, with Zmuda actually believing a fake death would be a fantastic prank. With little time to live, Kaufman gets a booking at Carnegie Hall, his dream venue. The performance is a memorable success, culminating with Kaufman inviting the entire audience out for milk and cookies. As his health deteriorates, a desperate Kaufman heads to the Philippines to seek a medical miracle through psychic surgery only to find it a hoax, laughing at the irony. He dies soon after. At Kaufman's funeral, friends and loved ones sing along to "This Friendly World" with a video of Kaufman. One year later, in 1985, Clifton appears at Kaufman's tribute at The Comedy Store's main stage, performing "I Will Survive". Zmuda watches in the audience. ===== A man is seen standing aboard the deck of a British cargo liner crossing the Atlantic in 1942. The man's name is Carl Lanser and he appears disoriented, with no idea of how he got aboard or who he really is. Later, sitting with the captain and several passengers, Lanser dismisses fears of the ship being hunted by a U-boat "wolfpack" with an unusually-comprehensive knowledge of submarine warfare tactics. He is unable to explain how he knows any of this and recalls only that he was born in Germany but says that he finds the ship, its crew and passengers oddly familiar. When called to the bridge by the captain he cannot provide proof of his identity. Still confused, Lanser is sent back to his cabin with a steward, where he finds a Kriegsmarine officer's cap among his possessions with his name written on the inside. The captain is forced to stop the ship for repairs when the overworked engines break down at 12:05. Lanser becomes increasingly restless, haunted by an inescapable sense of impending doom. Convinced that everyone aboard the ship will die at 1:15, Lanser eventually panics and runs through the passageways, attempting to raise an alarm. He suddenly finds the ship is mysteriously empty and when he finally locates some of the passengers, they silently stare at him as he desperately tries to convince them to abandon ship and then they suddenly vanish. At exactly 1:15, as a searchlight illuminates the ship. Lanser watches in horror as a surfaced U-boat, commanded by a Captain lieutenant Carl Lanser, opens fire. The ship quickly sinks, leaving no survivors. Some time later, Captain Lanser is in his cabin aboard his U-boat, recording that night's kill. His second-in-command, Lt. Mueller, is deeply troubled by the vicious and cruel actions they have undertaken, not warning the people on board the ship before firing upon them, and wonders "if we are not all damned now". Lanser dismissively says he is sure the British Admiralty thinks so, but Mueller clarifies that he meant damned in the eyes of God. Despite Lanser's skepticism and sarcasm, Mueller grows more convinced that the crew of the U-boat may one day answer for their crime by reliving the act for all eternity. Granted his own private hell as the man who ordered the massacre, the former U-boat commander re-materializes on the deck of the ship and the nightmare begins again... ===== United States Air Force Colonel Clegg Forbes arrives at a military hospital to visit his friend and co-pilot Major William Gart. The two had recently piloted an experimental spaceplane, the X-20 DynaSoar, on a mission that took them 900 miles beyond the confines of the Earth's atmosphere, the first time man had been that far out in space. During their voyage the men blacked out for four hours and the craft itself disappeared from radar screens for a full day before reappearing and crash landing in the desert, leaving Gart with a broken leg. Gart inquires as to the status of the plane, but Forbes is clearly agitated and asks Gart if he remembers how many people were on the mission, producing a newspaper with a front page showing the likenesses of the two men and a headline stating that two astronauts were rescued from the desert crash. Gart confirms that only he and Forbes piloted the plane, but Forbes insists that a third man – Colonel Ed Harrington, his best friend for 15 years – accompanied them. In a flashback, on the previous morning, Harrington and Forbes are shown joking with Gart as they are discharged from the hospital after passing their physical exams, leaving the Major to recuperate alone. The same newspaper that Forbes would later show Gart is present but, accompanied by a photo depicting a crew of three, the headline instead asserts three astronauts were recovered from the crash of the X-20. Harrington and Forbes visit a bar downtown. While there, Harrington is suddenly overcome by a feeling that he no longer "belongs" in the world. Disturbed, he phones his parents who tell him they have no son named Ed Harrington and believe the person calling them to be a prankster. Harrington then mysteriously vanishes from the phone booth and no one in the bar but Forbes remembers his existence. Increasingly desperate, Forbes searches for any trace of his friend but can find nothing in the bar. His girlfriend, Amy, does not remember Harrington, and neither does his commanding officer. Returning to the closed bar, he breaks-in by smashing through the glass door looking for Harrington, calling his name repeatedly. He then breaks down in the phone booth where his friend vanished. Back in the hospital in the present, Forbes finishes recounting the story to Gart and is dismayed by his friend's claim that he doesn't know anyone named Harrington. Forbes then glances at a mirror and discovers he casts no reflection, causing him to flee the room in terror. Gart tries to hobble after him only to find that Forbes has disappeared. Calling the duty nurse to ask if she saw where Forbes went, Gart is stunned by the nurse's claim that nobody named Forbes has been in the building and that Gart was the only man who was in the hospital room. After getting back into bed, he notices the newspaper headline has changed. It now says that Gart was the sole pilot of the X-20 – all mention of Forbes, including his photo, is gone. Horrified, Gart also disappears. An officer enters the building and asks the duty nurse if there are any unused rooms available to accommodate new patients. The nurse takes him to the now completely empty room which hosted the three astronauts, telling him that it has been unoccupied. The officer affirms that it will be appropriate for malaria patients and orders that new beds be installed. The hangar which previously housed the X-20 is then shown, with the sheet that covered the craft lying on the ground. There is no trace of the plane. ===== Pedott, a peddler, has the curious ability to give people exactly what they need before they need it. He enters a bar, where he first gives a woman a vial of cleaning fluid. Then he gives a down-on-his-luck ex-baseball player a bus ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Moments later, via the establishment's pay phone, the ball player receives a job offer in Scranton. He is to meet the General Manager of a team he has been hired to coach and wishes the spot he notices on his jacket could be cleaned away, so he could look his best. The woman approaches and offers to use her cleaning fluid to remove it. The two are clearly drawn to each other. Fred Renard, a frustrated, arrogant loser- type, asks Pedott to give him what he needs, and the peddler gives him a pair of scissors, which save Renard's life when his scarf later gets caught in an elevator's doors. Renard shows up at Pedott's apartment, asking for another thing he "needs", and the peddler produces a leaky fountain pen which predicts a winning racehorse when a drop of its ink lands on a newspaper racing column. Renard continues menacing Pedott for more and then helps himself to a pair of new shoes from the peddler's case. The shoes are too tight and the soles are slippery, but Renard insists Pedott clarify if they are what he needs and what he should do now that he is wearing them. The peddler makes cryptic remarks that do not satisfy Renard; he advances threateningly on the older man. In the wet street, he slips for a moment and, as he is regaining his footing, a car approaches. Renard cannot get out of the way and is struck and killed. The shoes, Pedott explains to Renard's corpse, were what Pedott needed, because he foresaw that Renard would try to kill him. Shortly, as people gather at the scene, Pedott gives a man a comb, which he uses to groom himself just before he and his wife are photographed as witnesses for a newspaper story covering the accident that has killed Renard. ===== Arch Hammer (Harry Townes) is a con man who can change his face to look like anyone he chooses. He walks into a nightclub, where he impersonates deceased trumpeter Johnny Foster (Ross Martin) to steal Foster's grieving girlfriend Maggie (Beverly Garland), a sultry singer. Next, while impersonating murdered gangster Virgil Sterig (Phillip Pine), Hammer pays a visit to Mr. Pennell (Bernard Fein), to extort money; Pennell is the man who had Sterig killed. Pennell sends his men after Hammer. Trying to escape down an alley, Hammer sees a poster of boxer Andy Marshak (Don Gordon), and changes his face to the fighter's. Pennell's men are fooled. Thinking he is in the clear, he runs into Marshak's father (Peter Brocco) at a street newsstand, who mistakes him for the son who broke his mother's heart and "did dirt to a sweet decent little girl who would've cut off an arm" for him. As Mr. Marshak reels off the reasons why he hates Andy and his punk behavior, Hammer pushes the old man out of the way and returns to his hotel room. A detective comes by to pick him up for questioning; together, they leave for the police station. As they enter the hotel's revolving door, Hammer again assumes the boxer's appearance. The detective rushes back into the building to find Hammer. Marshak's father is standing on the street, with a gun on Hammer. The con man tries to demonstrate that he is not who the old man thinks he is, but before he can concentrate and change his face, Mr. Marshak shoots him. As Hammer lies dying, his face shifts from one person to another until he dies wearing his own face. Marshak's father looks on in shock before dropping to floor and remorsefully crys. ===== Will Sturca, a scientist who works at a military base, has been producing a great number of H-bombs alongside other staff members who are manufacturing various devastating weapons in preparation for imminent nuclear war. Sturca realizes that there is only one way to escape—steal an experimental, top-secret spacecraft stored at another base up north. He plans to bring his friend Jerry Riden, who is trained as a pilot of the spacecraft, along with their wives and Sturca's daughter Jody. The two plot for months, secretly supplying the ship and making arrangements for their departure. One afternoon, Sturca engages in conversation with a co-worker, Carling, who gleefully tells him that he's heard a rumor the war will start in 48 hours. When Sturca voices his disgust at the potential holocaust, Carling is dismayed and cautions him, saying Sturca should watch what he says, and what he thinks. At home, Sturca confides in his family, trying to assuage his guilt over helping to create weapons by rationalizing he's only one part in a much larger machine though he recognizes that he still maintains partial responsibility. His daughter comments that there's a terrible feeling in the air, that something dreadful is coming and that everyone can feel it. Sturca realizes that time is running out. Sturca and Riden decide to put their plan in action—take their families to the site where the spacecraft is held, getting in with help from their contact working at the site whom Riden has bribed and take off in the ship, leaving the planet for good. Carling, suspicious of Sturca since their chat, eavesdrops on them at Sturca's house and overhears their plan. Later that night, everyone gathers for a game of cards where Riden reveals that while he was test flying the spacecraft, the military had discovered a small planet 11 million miles away with a civilization similar to theirs—the perfect place to escape. During the game, Carling unexpectedly appears at the door and hints that he knows what the group is plotting. He also hints at trouble: "A lot can happen in forty- eight hours." After Carling leaves, Sturca receives a call from his superiors, commanding him to return to the base. He and Riden inform the women that they must leave that very moment. When the five arrive at the site of the spacecraft, Sturca and Riden spot their contact, who flashes a light. When the contact steps forward, he is revealed to be Carling, armed with a gun. He forces Sturca and Riden away from the gate and prepares to call the authorities. The women, who have been waiting in the car, watch as Carling orders them out. Jody suddenly throws the car's door open, knocking the gun from Carling's hand and giving the men enough time to overpower him and knock him out. The group rushes into the ship, fighting off the guards that chase after them. Later that evening, the group has safely escaped their doomed planet and are on course. Sturca says it's hard to believe there are people living on the alien world where they're headed. Riden points out on the ship's viewer their mysterious destination, 11 million miles away—the third planet from the Sun, called "Earth". ===== The film opens in 2016 BCE with Sarman, a young man from the village of Amri, who lost his parents at a young age. Sarman kills a crocodile that has been terrorizing his village's fishermen and is hailed as a hero. He asks his uncle, Durjan, to allow him to go to Mohenjo Daro to trade their family's goods, but his uncle refuses. Sarman attempts to sneak away to the city at night with his friend Hojo, but is caught by Durjan, who relents and allows both friends to go. He gives Sarman a seal that contains an inscription of a unicorn that Sarman often sees in his dreams, suggesting he use it only once in a life or death situation. Arriving in Mohenjo Daro, Sarman learns that the city is ruled by the tyrannical Senate Chief Maham and his wicked son Moonja. He also learns that the unicorn he sees in his dreams is the symbol of the city, and feels as if the city is oddly familiar to him. While Sarman is trading, Maham proposes to impose an additional tax on the farmers so that the city may grow, but Sarman leads the farmers to oppose the taxes so that their families don't starve to death. Sarman gains access to the upper city by showing his uncle's amulet and meets Chaani, the elegant and gorgeous daughter of the head priest of Mohenjo Daro. Sarman is enchanted by Chaani's heavenly beauty and charm and falls in love with her. Upon meeting, the head priest strangely appears to recognize Sarman. Chaani reveals that she has been forcibly betrothed to Moonja, Sarman's enemy, who is cruel and ruthless. Maham discovers Sarman and Chaani love each other and that Sarman is the leader of the tax revolt, and so he challenges Sarman to fight Bakar and Zokhar, his two champions. Sarman proposes that if he wins, Chaani will be released from her engagement, and Maham accepts the terms. The head priest reveals to Sarman how Maham was expelled from Harappa for illegal trade with the Sumerians. Maham entered Mohenjo Daro as a trader and quickly rose to become the trade chief. Maham had discovered that the mighty Sindhu River held vast gold deposits, so he decided to place a dam on the river and divert its course to mine the gold. The wise Senate Chief Srujan, who is revealed to be Sarman's father, opposed this but Maham won the vote to build the dam. He had Srujan framed and arrested for hoarding gold. Chaani's father and Durjan – Sarman's uncle – were coerced by Maham to betray Srujan, and the latter was killed. Maham then took Srujan's place as the new Senate Chief. It is now up to Sarman to defeat the evil Maham and gain avenge for his father. In the arena, Sarman faces the ferocious Tajik mountain cannibals Bakar and Zokar in an arena before the city. After a vicious battle, he kills one of the cannibals but spares the other and the people of Mohenjo Daro surge even stronger behind him. Enraged, Maham urges Moonja to finish off Chaani and the priest. Moonja kills the priest but Sarman saves Chaani and kills Moonja. Chaani exposes Maham's plan to use the gold from the Sindhu to enrich himself and to smuggle in weapons from the Sumerians. All the chiefs now stand against Maham. The people elect Sarman as the new chief but Sarman suggests Mohenjo Daro needs a people's government, not a chief. With the arrival of a heavy thunderstorm, Sarman realizes that the dam will burst and the Sindhu River will flood the city. He rallies the people to lash boats together and form a floating bridge. They evacuate Mohenjo Daro and cross to the other side of the river. The dam collapses, and Maham, chained in the city square, is drowned. The once renowned Mohenjo Daro is no more. The survivors migrate to another river, where Sarman sees the unicorn of his dreams and names the river Ganga. ===== Maggie (Liane Curtis) is a shy high school girl that isn't very good with men. This changes after she's possessed by Satan, who uses Maggie's body to seduce the souls out of various men. Satan is followed by an angelic Chaser (Dana Ashbrook), who is intent on capturing her once and for all. ===== Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgl) is a 98-pound weakling who works as a janitor at a health club in the fictional town of Tromaville, New Jersey, where the customers—particularly Bozo (Gary Schneider), Slug (Robert Prichard), Wanda (Jennifer Babtist) and Julie (Cindy Manion)—harass him constantly. His tormentors become more violent, even deliberately killing a young boy on a bike with their car and taking photos of the carnage afterward. One day, they trick Melvin into wearing a pink tutu and kissing a sheep. He is chased around the health club and out a second story window. He lands in a drum of toxic waste, which sets him on fire. After running down the street in a ball of flames, Melvin douses the flames in his bathtub. The chemicals cause him to transform into a hideously deformed creature, but he is also gifted with superhuman size and strength. A group of drug dealers, led by the criminal Cigar Face (Dan Snow), are harassing a police officer named O'Clancy (Dick Martinsen), trying to buy him off. When he refuses to accept the money, Cigar Face and his gang prepare to castrate him. Melvin appears out of nowhere and violently kills the criminals, then leaves a mop on their faces as a call sign. Cigar Face manages to escape, promising to return to take revenge. Melvin then tries to return home, but his mother is terrified of him and will not let him in the house; so Melvin, publicly dubbed "The Monster Hero" (also known as "The Toxic Avenger" or "Toxie") and hailed as a hero, builds a makeshift home in the junkyard. Elsewhere in Tromaville, a gang of three men are holding up a Mexican restaurant and attack a blind woman named Sarah (Andree Maranda). They kill her guide dog and attempt to rape her, but are stopped by Melvin, who wreaks bloody vengeance on them. Toxie takes Sarah back to her home, where they begin to get to know one another and subsequently become romantically involved. Melvin continues to fight crime, including drug dealers and pimps for underage prostitutes, and also takes revenge on the four tormentors who caused his transformation. First, he attacks Wanda in the health club's sauna and burns her backside on the heater. He later returns to the club, pursues Julie into the basement, and cuts off her hair. He then confronts Bozo and Slug after they brutally stole a car, ending in Slug getting thrown out of the moving car and Bozo driving off the side of a cliff, killing him. As Melvin gives aid to the people in the city, Mayor Belgoody (Pat Ryan Jr.), the leader of Tromaville's extensive crime ring, is horrified of what is happening to his goons. He is worried that it will lead back to him and wants Melvin to be taken care of. A group of men, led by Cigar Face, surround Melvin with guns. Just before they fire on him, he leaps up to a fire escape, so that they end up shooting each other. When Melvin kills a seemingly innocent old woman in a dry cleaning store (she is in fact a leader of an underground human trafficking ring), Belgoody uses this opportunity to call in the United States National Guard. Back in his junkyard home, Melvin is terrified of what he has become, and he and Sarah decide to move away from the city and take a tent into nearby woods. They are eventually discovered, and the Mayor and the National Guard come to kill him, but the people of Tromaville will have none of it. The Mayor's evil ways are revealed, and Melvin proceeds to rip out Belgoody's organs to see if he has "any guts". The movie ends with a reassurance that the Toxic Avenger will continue to combat crime in Tromaville. ===== The film follows the events that unfold at Tromaville High School in New Jersey, which is conveniently located next to a nuclear power plant. An accident at the nuclear plant is covered up by plant owner, Mr. Paley, who does not want the facility shut down by the safety commission. The accident causes a radioactive water leak which ends up gruesomely killing a student at the school after the tainted water reaches the drinking fountain. The gang of the school, called "The Cretins," who were originally part of the honor society, torments the school, and it's implied that they have been turned into violent psychopaths by the runoff from the plant. They pick leaves from a radioactive marijuana plant located in the yard of the nuclear plant and sell it to Eddie for $10. At his "indoor bikini beach party" that night, Eddie pressures his friend Warren and Warren's girlfriend Chrissy into smoking the radioactive joint, but it is accidentally ruined by the dancers before anyone else can try it. The mutated drug shows itself to have potent aphrodisiac effects, leading to Warren and Chrissy having sex in Eddie's loft. However, that same night, both of them have disturbing nightmares about hideously mutating, though these effects are seemingly gone by morning. Some time later, Chrissy discovers that she is pregnant, and spits a little monster into a nearby toilet. The creature travels through the water pipes and lands in a barrel filled with radioactive waste, and mutates into a bigger creature. The Nuclear Plant orders a lock down of the school, and begins an investigation into the student who died at the beginning of the film. One of the Nuclear workers begins to investigate the basement. Though his equipment shows signs of a spill, he can't find any evidence, outside of a foul odor. After hearing for a second time a sound he'd previously dismissed, he investigates. As he's observing a barrel, the monster's arm reaches out and claws his face, disfiguring him. As the worker screams out in pain, the monster pulls him into the barrel and eats him, only to cough up his left hand and I.D. badge, making the worker the monster's first kill. Meanwhile, Warren, tired of the Cretins' constant harassment, ends up going on a radiation-fueled rampage, killing two of them, with no memory of the event once he comes to his senses. The Cretins, expelled from the school and cut off from their customer base, assault the principal and force him to use the school's Radiation Alarm to cause an evacuation, letting the Cretins bar the building and occupy it. In the process of doing this, the Cretins shoot and kill the principal's secretary, who happened to open the door just as the gang was torturing the principal. Capturing Chrissy as bait for Warren, the leader of the gang holds her hostage in the basement and plans to kill her in front of Warren, only to be interrupted by the now adult monster. Warren goes into the school to save her, and he discovers the adult monster, who kills every one of the Cretins. Warren finally zaps the beast with a laser in the physics laboratory, and he and Chrissy flee from the school, right after the monster explodes along with the school, also killing Mr. Paley inside. The students celebrate victory as over the loudspeakers that the school will be shut down for remodeling. While reconstruction is taking place, one of the monster "babies" appears squirming through the remains of the destroyed school. The screen freeze frames on the creature as the screen inverts, shortly before fading out and the credits roll. ===== Set in modern-day Manhattan, the film begins with the narrator (Lemmy of Motörhead) introducing two families: the Capulets and the Ques. At the center of these families are Tromeo Que and Juliet Capulet. Tromeo lives in squalor with his alcoholic father Monty and works at a tattoo parlor with his cousin Benny and friend Murray. Juliet is sequestered in her family's mansion, watched over by her abusive father Cappy, passive mother Ingrid, and overprotective cousin Tyrone, all the while being sexually satisfied by family servant Ness (Debbie Rochon). Both Tromeo and Juliet are trapped in cases of unrequited love: Tromeo lusts for the big-bosomed, promiscuous Rosie; Juliet is engaged to wealthy meat tycoon London Arbuckle as prelude to an arranged marriage. In the meantime, a bloody brawl between Murray and Sammy Capulet catches the attention of Detective Ernie Scalus, who gathers the heads of the two families together and declares that they will be held personally accountable for any further breaches of peace. Almost immediately afterwards, Monty and Cappy start threatening each other with weapons. Sammy gets caught in the window of Monty's speeding car, where he is thrown head-first into a fire hydrant and (very slowly) dies. On the insistence of Murray and Benny, Tromeo attends the Capulets' masquerade ball in the hopes of meeting Rosie, only to find another man performing cunnilingus on her. Tromeo staggers around the party in disillusion until he locks eyes with those of Juliet. The two instantly fall for each other and share a dance until an angry Tyrone chases him out of the house. Tromeo and Juliet continue to be enamored by one another from afar. Cappy, disgusted at his daughter's active libido, forcefully imprisons her in a plastic cage as punishment. Tromeo sneaks into the house of Capulet and the two meet once again. After proclaiming their love for each other both verbally and physically, they agree to be married. Juliet breaks her engagement with Arbuckle and, with the help of Father Lawrence, the two are married in secrecy the next day. Tyrone, upon discovering Juliet's secret affair, gathers his gang together and accuses Tromeo of bridenapping. Now a kinsman to the Capulets, Tromeo refuses to surrender Juliet back to Arbuckle, suggesting to both sides to bring the lifelong feud to an end. Murray tries to intervene to save Tromeo's life but, in the ensuing brawl, is mortally wounded by Tyrone's club. Tromeo, enraged by his friend's death, pursues Tyrone and slays him (through a series of car crashes which dismember him) and goes into hiding from the police. However, after receiving information from Ness, Detective Scalus declares a manhunt for Tromeo to ensure that Tyrone's sacrifice won't be in vain on Cappy's behalf. Learning that she is involved with Tromeo, Cappy savagely beats Juliet and forces her to reconcile with Arbuckle, or he will be threatened to disown her if she resists again. With the help of Cappy, Arbuckle accepts her re-proposal and the marriage is set. Juliet visits Father Lawrence, who reunites her with Tromeo and enlists the help of Fu Chang, the apothecary, who sells Juliet a special potion which will aid her predicament. On the day of her wedding, Juliet swallows the apothecary's potion, transforming her into a hideous cow monster (complete with a three-foot penis). The mere sight of her causes Arbuckle to leap out of Juliet's window in fright, committing suicide in the process. Enraged over the loss of his would-be son-in-law and meat inheritance, Cappy deems Juliet a disgrace to his whole family tree and sentences her to death, but Tromeo arrives just in time to chase Cappy out of her room before she can kill her, and bring Juliet's appearance back to normal by a single kiss. Cappy later returns to Juliet's room with a crossbow, holding the lovers at gunpoint. Eventually, Juliet performs one last act of defiance against her father by electrocuting him to death with a computer monitor. After the final battle, Detective Scalus is impressed of Tromeo and Juliet's teamwork of clearing his name and therefore satisfied to see the end of Cappy's criminal empire, pardoning Tromeo of murder while ordering for the rest of Cappy's goons, including Rosie, Peter, Ness, and Georgie, to be put in jail as his accomplices. With Cappy's criminal empire defeated, Tromeo and Juliet embrace victoriously until they are stopped short by Ingrid and Monty, who reveal to them the real reason behind the Capulet/Que feud: Long ago, Cappy and Monty were the owners of the successful Silky Films production company. Ingrid, married to Monty at time, struck up an affair with Cappy, eventually birthing a son which Monty raised as his own. Faced with a divorce from Ingrid and the threat of having his son taken away from him, Monty was forced to sign over all the rights of Silky Films to the Capulets in exchange for his son. After the initial shock at the revelation that they are siblings, Tromeo and Juliet are determined not to let their whole ordeal be for naught; they passionately embrace and drive off into the sunset. The film picks up six years later in Tromaville, New Jersey, where Tromeo and Juliet, now married, have become suburban yuppies with a house and (birth defected/deformed) children of their own. The film ends with the narrator's brief poem for the lovers: "And all of our hearts free to let all things base go/As taught by Juliet and her Tromeo". A brief shot of William Shakespeare laughing uproariously is shown before the end credits. ===== 26-year-old Mark Renton is an unemployed heroin addict living with his parents in the suburbs of Edinburgh, Scotland. He regularly partakes in drug use with his friends: Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson, a treacherous, womanising James Bond fanatic; Daniel "Spud" Murphy, an outwardly docile confidence trickster; and Swanney, "Mother Superior", their dealer. Renton is warned about the dangers of his drug habit by his other friends, Francis "Franco" Begbie, an aggressive psychopath, and Tommy Mackenzie, a footballer, who both abstain from drugs. Growing tired of his reckless lifestyle, Renton attempts to wean himself off heroin with opium suppositories given by dealer Mikey Forrester. At a nightclub, Renton notices that his cessation of heroin use has increased his libido. He woos a girl named Diane Coulston and they have sex in the apartment owned by her parents, but is horrified to learn that she is below the age of consent. Diane uses this as a threat against Renton to continue their relationship. After several unsuccessful attempts to reintegrate into society, Renton, Sick Boy and Spud relapse into heroin use. Tommy also begins to dabble in drug use, after becoming depressed due to being dumped by his girlfriend. Even the negligence- induced death of Dawn, the infant daughter of Sick Boy and his girlfriend Allison, does not persuade the group to recover. Later, Renton, Sick Boy and Spud are caught shoplifting; Renton and Spud are arrested while Sick Boy narrowly escapes by running down Princes Street. Spud receives a six-month custodial sentence at HMP Saughton, while Renton avoids jail time by entering a drug rehabilitation programme. Renton quickly relapses and nearly dies of an overdose at Swanney's home. Upon returning home after revival at a hospital, Renton's parents lock him in his childhood bedroom and force him to go cold turkey. Following a difficult withdrawal, Renton is released upon condition that he have an HIV/AIDS test. Despite years of sharing syringes with other addicts, Renton tests negative. Renton is now clean, but bored and devoid of a sense of meaning in his life. He visits Tommy, who is now severely addicted to heroin and has tested HIV-positive. On Diane's advice, Renton moves to London and takes a job as a property letting agent. He begins to enjoy his new life of sobriety and corresponds with Diane, who keeps him up to date with developments back home. However, to Renton's exasperation, Begbie, who is wanted for armed robbery, tracks him down and takes up refuge with him. They are soon joined by Sick Boy, now a pimp and drug dealer. Begbie and Sick Boy later attack two of Renton's clientele, resulting in him losing his job, and the trio return to Edinburgh for the funeral of Tommy, who has died of AIDS- related toxoplasmosis. Following the funeral, Sick Boy asks Renton, Begbie and Spud (who has been recently released from prison) help in buying two kilograms of heroin for £4,000 to later resell at a higher price. Renton reluctantly covers the remaining cost, and the group returns to London to sell the heroin to a major dealer for £16,000. As they celebrate in a pub, Renton secretly suggests to Spud that they could both leave with the money, but Spud, motivated by fear of Begbie and loyalty, refuses. However, Sick Boy indicates he would happily do so, and Begbie brutally beats a man after a petty confrontation. Concluding that Begbie and Sick Boy are unpredictable and cannot be trusted, Renton quietly steals the bag of money and leaves. Spud witnesses him, but does not warn the others. Renton leaves £4,000 in a safe deposit box for Spud, who "never hurt anybody". Begbie, discovering Renton and the money are gone, angrily destroys the hotel room where the four stay, prompting the police to arrive and arrest him as Sick Boy and Spud flee. While Spud claims his share of the money, Renton walks towards his future, at last "choosing life." ===== Cher Horowitz lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with her wealthy father Mel, a gruff litigator; her mother died during a liposuction procedure when Cher was a baby. Cher is attractive, stylish, good-natured and popular. She attends Bronson Alcott High School with her best friend, Dionne Davenport, who is also wealthy and beautiful. Dionne has a long-term relationship with popular student Murray; Cher claims that this is a pointless endeavor for Dionne. Josh, Cher's socially conscious ex-stepbrother, visits her during a break from college. They spar continually but playfully. She mocks his idealism, while he teases her for being selfish, vain and superficial, saying that her only direction in life is "toward the mall". After receiving a poor grade, Cher decides to play matchmaker for two hard-grading teachers at her school, Mr. Hall and Miss Geist. She orchestrates a romance between the two teachers to make them relax their grading standards so she can renegotiate a bad grade on her report card. After seeing their newfound happiness, Cher realizes that she enjoys doing good deeds. She then decides to give back to the community by "adopting" a "tragically unhip" new girl at school, Tai Frasier. Cher and Dionne give Tai a makeover, which provides Tai with confidence and a sense of style. Cher tries to extinguish the attraction between Tai and Travis Birkenstock, an amiable but clumsy slacker, and to steer her towards Elton, a handsome and popular student. However, Elton has no interest in Tai and instead tries to make out in his car with Cher, who rebuffs him. A fashion-conscious new student named Christian attracts Cher's attention at school and becomes her target boyfriend. When he comes over to watch some movies at her home, she tries to seduce him, but he deflects her advances. Murray subsequently explains to Cher and Dionne that Christian is gay. Despite the failure of her romantic overtures, Cher remains friends with Christian, primarily due to her admiration of his good taste in art and fashion. Cher's privileged life takes a negative turn when Tai's newfound popularity strains their relationship. Cher's frustration escalates after she fails her driving test and cannot change the result. When Cher returns home in a depressed mood, Tai confesses her feelings for Josh and asks Cher for help in pursuing him. Cher says that Tai is not right for Josh, leading to a quarrel which results in Tai calling Cher a "virgin who can't drive". Feeling "totally clueless", Cher reflects on her priorities and her repeated failures to understand or appreciate the people in her life. After thinking about why she is bothered by Tai's romantic interest in Josh, Cher finally realizes that she is actually in love with him. Cher begins making awkward but sincere efforts to live a more purposeful life, including captaining the school's Pismo Beach disaster relief effort. Cher and Josh eventually follow through on their feelings for one another, culminating in a tender kiss. Ultimately, Cher's friendships with Tai and Dionne are solidified, Tai and Travis are dating, Mr. Hall and Miss Geist get married, and Cher catches the wedding bouquet – helping Josh win a $200 bet. She then embraces Josh and they kiss. ===== Darius II takes place sometime after the first Darius game. The colonized planet Darius is recuperating from its invasion from the alien Belser Army thanks to that game's heroes Proco and Tiat. Darius' inhabitants have since situated themselves on the planet Olga while Darius' societies, architecture and attacked areas were being repaired. The space flight Headquarters established on Olga picks up an SOS signal coming from Earth, where the first colonists originated before colonizing Darius. The signal included the description of alien ships similar to those of the Belser Army. Suspecting that these might be their remaining Earthling ancestors, the people of Darius sends both Proco Jr. and Tiat Young to help them. ===== In 1978, narcissistic actress Madeline Ashton performs a poorly received musical of Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway. She invites long-time friend Helen Sharp, an aspiring writer, backstage along with Helen's fiancé, plastic surgeon Ernest Menville. Ernest is smitten with Madeline, and breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry her instead. Seven years later, Helen is obese, depressed and committed to a psychiatric hospital where she begins plotting revenge on Madeline. Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live in Beverly Hills, but they are miserable: Madeline's acting career has declined and Ernest is an alcoholic reduced to working as a reconstructive mortician. Receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen's new book, Madeline rushes to a spa where she regularly receives facial treatments. Understanding Madeline's desperation, the spa owner gives her the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman, a mysterious, wealthy socialite who specializes in rejuvenation. Madeline and Ernest attend the party for Helen's novel, Forever Young, and discover that somehow, Helen is slim and youthful. Dumbfounded and depressed by Helen's appearance, Madeline secretly witnesses Helen tell Ernest that she blames her for his career decline. After the soiree, Madeline visits her young lover, but discovers he is with a woman his age. Dejected, Madeline drives to Lisle's home. Lisle, claiming to be 71, but looking decades younger, reveals the secret of her beauty and youth—an expensive potion that promises eternal life and an everlasting youthful appearance. Madeline purchases and drinks the potion and is rejuvenated, regaining her beauty. As a condition of purchase, Lisle warns Madeline to disappear from the public eye after ten years to keep the existence of the potion secret, and to take good care of her body. Helen seduces Ernest and convinces him to kill Madeline. When Madeline returns home, she and Ernest argue, during which she falls down the stairs, breaking her neck. Believing Madeline dead, Ernest phones Helen for advice, initially not seeing Madeline stand and approach him with her head twisted backward. At Madeline's request, Ernest drives her to the emergency room. Madeline is told she is technically dead, and faints. She is taken to the morgue due to her body having no pulse and a temperature below 80 °F. After rescuing Madeline, Ernest considers her resurrection a miracle and uses his skills as a mortician to repair her body at home. Helen demands information about Madeline's situation. Overhearing Helen and Ernest discussing their plot to kill her, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun. Although the blast creates a hole in her abdomen, Helen survives, revealing that she drank the same potion. The two briefly fight before apologizing and reconciling their friendship. Fed up with the pair, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline convince him to do one last repair on their bodies. They realize they will need regular maintenance and scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure he will always be available. After bringing Ernest to Lisle, she offers to give him the potion free of charge in exchange for his surgical skills. Ernest refuses to drink it when he realizes the pitfalls of immortality. He pockets the potion and flees, but becomes trapped on the roof. Helen and Madeline implore Ernest to drink the potion to survive an impending fall. Ernest, realizing that they only need him for their own selfish reasons, refuses and drops the potion to the ground, but after falling he lands in Lisle's pool and escapes. Lisle banishes Madeline and Helen from her group, leaving the pair to rely on each other for companionship and maintenance. Thirty-seven years later, Madeline and Helen attend Ernest's funeral, where he is eulogized as having lived an adventurous and fulfilling life with a large family and friends. The two women are parodies of their former selves, with cracked, peeling paint and putty covering most of their grey and rotting flesh. Helen trips at the top of a staircase. When Madeline hesitates to help her, Helen grabs Madeline and the two tumble down the stairs, breaking to pieces. As their disembodied heads totter down together, Helen sardonically asks Madeline where she parked their car. ===== ===== Best friends Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) set out for a weekend vacation at a fishing cabin in the mountains to take a break from their dreary lives in Arkansas. Thelma, a ditzy housewife, is married to a disrespectful and controlling carpet salesman, Darryl (Christopher McDonald), while sharp-tongued Louise works as a waitress in a diner and is on–off dating an easygoing musician, Jimmy (Michael Madsen), who spends most of his time on the road. On the way, they stop for a drink at a roadhouse bar, where Thelma meets and dances with a flirtatious stranger, Harlan (Timothy Carhart). Later in the parking lot, he starts kissing her and taking her clothes off without her consent. Thelma resists, but Harlan becomes violent and then attempts to rape her. Louise finds them and threatens to shoot Harlan. Harlan stops, but, as the women walk away, he yells that he should have raped Thelma, before further insulting Louise. In a fit of rage, Louise shoots Harlan in the chest, killing him instantly. A horrified Thelma ushers Louise to the car and the pair flee the scene. At a motel, they discuss how to handle the situation. Thelma wants to go to the police, but Louise fears that no one will believe Thelma's claim of attempted rape since Thelma was drinking and dancing with Harlan, and they will be subsequently charged with murder. They decide to go on the run, but Louise insists that they travel from Oklahoma to Mexico without going through Texas. Heading west, the women come across an attractive young drifter, J.D. (Brad Pitt), who Thelma quickly falls for, and Thelma convinces Louise to let him hitch a ride with them. Louise contacts Jimmy and asks him to wire transfer her life savings to her. Jimmy surprises her by delivering the money in person, and the two spend the night together. Jimmy proposes to Louise, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Thelma invites J.D. to her room, and they sleep together. She learns he is a thief who has broken parole. The following morning, the two discover that J.D. has stolen Louise's life savings and fled. Louise is distraught, so a guilty Thelma takes charge and later robs a nearby convenience store using tactics she learned from listening to J.D. Meanwhile, the FBI closes in on the fugitives after witnesses at the bar identify Louise's 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible. Arkansas State Police Investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel), leading the investigation, questions both J.D., who was caught, and Jimmy and taps into the phone line at Darryl's house. He sympathizes with the pair's situation and understands why they did not report Harlan's murder (partly due to Louise's own experience in Texas). During a couple of brief phone conversations with Louise, Hal expresses his sympathy but is unsuccessful in persuading her to surrender. Thelma tells Louise she understands if she wants to go back home, knowing she has Jimmy waiting for her, but explains she cannot go back to Darryl. Louise promises they will keep going together. While back on the road, Thelma reflects on what Harlan had done with her and tries to ask Louise if what happened with her also happened to Louise in Texas. Louise responds angrily and tells Thelma to never bring it up again. Later, they are pulled over by a New Mexico state trooper for speeding. Knowing he will soon discover their true identity, Thelma holds him at gunpoint and locks him in the trunk of his police car. Driving further west, they encounter a foul-mouthed truck driver who repeatedly makes obscene gestures at them. They pull over and demand an apology from him; when he refuses, they fire at his fuel tanker, causing it to explode. The women leave him stranded in the desert with the tanker's wreckage. Thelma and Louise are finally cornered by the authorities only one hundred yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon. Hal arrives on the scene, but he is refused the last chance to talk the women into surrendering. Rather than be captured and spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma proposes that they "keep going". Louise asks Thelma if she is certain, and Thelma says yes. They kiss and then hold hands, Louise steps on the gas, and they accelerate over the cliff as Hal desperately pursues them on foot. ===== Nick Marshall, a Chicago advertising executive, was raised by his Las Vegas showgirl mother. Nick is a chauvinist skilled at selling products to men and seducing women. He expects a big promotion at the advertising firm Sloane Curtis, but his manager, Dan, instead announces that he is hiring Darcy McGuire to broaden the firm's appeal to women. Meanwhile, Nick's estranged 15-year-old daughter, Alex, is staying with him while his former wife, Gigi, is on her honeymoon with her new husband Ted. Nick embarrasses Alex, who resents his over-protectiveness when he meets her boyfriend, Cameron, who is 18 years old. Darcy tasks the staff, including Nick, to develop advertising ideas for a series of feminine products she distributes at the staff meeting. While testing a few items at home, Nick falls into his bathtub while holding an electric hairdryer, shocking himself, and is knocked unconscious. The next morning Nick awakens to discover he has a new gift: he can hear women's thoughts. He has an epiphany, realizing that most women, especially at work, dislike him and consider him sleazy. He makes an impromptu visit to his former therapist, Dr. Perkins (who also disliked him), and she encourages him to use his new-found ability to his advantage. Nick telepathically eavesdrops on Darcy and purloins her ideas to use as his own, but gradually becomes attracted to her. Alex resents Nick's years of neglect, but they start to bond while he takes her shopping for a prom dress. After Nick telepathically finds out that Alex intends to sleep with Cameron the night of the prom, Nick attempts to give her some advice. He tells her Cameron is not interested in her for who she is, just for what he can do with her in bed. Alex, thinking Nick is being over-protective and trying to sabotage her prom, rejects his advice. Nick and Darcy spend more time together, becoming romantic. However, he steals Darcy's idea for a new Nike ad campaign aimed at women, though he later regrets his actions, especially as it leads to Dan firing Darcy. Nick persuades Dan to rehire Darcy, saying the ad was her idea and is eventually successful. Over time, Nick succeeds in repairing his relationships with female acquaintances, especially those at work. Nick loses his gift during a severe thunder and lightning storm while on his way to see company secretary, Erin, who (telepathic ability revealed) has been contemplating suicide. He offers her a position for which he had previously turned her down; she accepts. When Cameron dumps Alex at the prom for refusing to have sex, Nick finds and consoles her, cementing their newly- repaired relationship. Nick visits Darcy and explains everything. She fires him, but then forgives him – and they share a kiss. ===== Following the ousting of the central government in 1993 amid the civil war in Somalia, the United Nations Security Council authorizes a military operation with a peacekeeping mandate. After the bulk of the peacekeepers withdraw, the Mogadishu-based militia loyal to Mohamed Farrah Aidid declares war on the remaining UN personnel. In response, the U.S. Army deploys three of its special operations forces - 75th Rangers, Delta Force counter-terror operators, and 160th SOAR - Night Stalkers aviators - to Mogadishu to capture Aidid, who has proclaimed himself president. To consolidate his power and subdue the population in the south, Aidid and his militia seize Red Cross food shipments. The UN forces are powerless to intervene directly. Outside Mogadishu, Rangers and Delta Force capture Osman Ali Atto, a faction leader selling arms to Aidid's militia. The US then plans a mission to capture Omar Salad Elmi and Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid, two of Aidid's top advisers. The U.S. forces include experienced men as well as new recruits, including 18-year-old Private First Class Todd Blackburn and Specialist John Grimes, a desk clerk. Staff Sergeant Matthew Eversmann receives his first command, of Ranger Chalk Four, after his lieutenant suffers a seizure. Eversmann responds to mocking remarks about Somalis from fellow soldiers by saying he respects the Somalis and has compassion for the terrible conditions of civil war for the Somali people, saying there are two things they can do, "We can help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN." The operation begins, and Delta Force operators capture Aidid's advisers inside the target building, while the Rangers and helicopters escorting the ground-extraction convoy take heavy fire. Blackburn is severely injured when he falls from one of the Black Hawk helicopters, so three Humvees led by Staff Sergeant Jeff Struecker are detached from the convoy to return Blackburn to the UN-held Mogadishu Airport. Sergeant Dominick Pilla is shot and killed just as Struecker's column departs, and shortly thereafter Black Hawk Super Six-One, piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Clifton "Elvis" Wolcott, is shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. Wolcott and his co-pilot are killed, the two crew chiefs are wounded, and one Delta Force sniper on board, Busch, escapes in an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter but dies later from his wounds. The ground forces are rerouted to converge on the crash site. The Somali militia erects roadblocks, and Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight's Humvee column is unable to reach the crash area and sustains heavy casualties. Meanwhile, two Ranger Chalks, including Eversmann's unit, reach Super-Six Ones crash site and set up a defensive perimeter to await evacuation with the two wounded men and the fallen pilots. In the interim, Super Six-Four, piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, is also shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashes several blocks away. With Captain Mike Steele's Rangers pinned down and sustaining heavy casualties, no ground forces can reach Super Six-Fours crash site nor reinforce the Rangers defending Super Six-One. Two Delta Force snipers, Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart and Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, are inserted by helicopter to Super Six-Fours crash site, where they find Durant still alive. The site is eventually overrun, Gordon and Shughart are killed, and Durant is captured by Aidid's militia. McKnight's column relinquishes their attempt to reach Six-Ones crash site, and returns to base with their prisoners and the casualties. The men prepare to go back to extract the Rangers and the fallen pilots, and Major General Garrison sends Lieutenant Colonel Joe Cribbs to ask for reinforcements from the 10th Mountain Division, including Malaysian and Pakistani armored units from the UN coalition. As night falls, Aidid's militia launches a sustained assault on the trapped Americans at Super Six-Ones crash site. The militants are held off throughout the night by strafing runs and rocket attacks from AH-6J Little Bird helicopter gunships, until the 10th Mountain Division's relief column is able to reach the American soldiers. The wounded and casualties are evacuated in the vehicles, but a few Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are forced to run on foot from the crash site to reach the Safe Zone at the stadium. The end titles recount the immediate aftermath of the mission and end of US military operations in Somalia: Michael Durant was released after 11 days of captivity, after which President Bill Clinton withdrew all US forces from Somalia. During the raid more than 1000 Somalis died, and 19 American soldiers lost their lives. The names of the 19 soldiers who died, including Delta Sgts. Gordon and Shughart, who were the first soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor posthumously since the Vietnam War, were listed by name. Mohamed Farah Aidid was killed in 1996. The following day, General Garrison retired. ===== The Jarretts are an upper-middle-class family in suburban Chicago trying to return to normal life after the accidental death of their older teenage son, Buck, and the attempted suicide of their younger and surviving son, Conrad. Conrad, who has recently returned home from a four- month stay in a psychiatric hospital, feels alienated from his friends and family and begins seeing a psychiatrist, Dr Berger. Berger learns that Conrad was involved in the sailing accident that took the life of Buck, whom everyone idolized. Conrad now deals with post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt. Conrad's father, Calvin, tries to connect with his surviving son and understand his wife. Conrad's mother, Beth, denies her loss, hoping to maintain her composure and restore her family to what it once was. She appears to have loved her older son more, and because of the suicide attempt, has grown cold toward Conrad. She is determined to maintain the appearance of perfection and normalcy. Conrad works with Dr Berger and learns to try to deal with, rather than control, his emotions. He starts dating a fellow student, Jeannine, who helps him to begin to regain a sense of optimism. Conrad, however, still struggles to communicate and re-establish a normal relationship with his parents and schoolmates, including Stillman, with whom he gets into a fistfight. He cannot seem to allow anyone, especially Beth, to get close. Beth makes several guarded attempts to appeal to Conrad for some semblance of normality, but she ends up being cold towards him. Mother and son often argue while Calvin tries to referee, generally taking Conrad's side for fear of pushing him over the edge again. Things come to a climax near Christmas when Conrad becomes furious at Beth for not wanting to take a photo with him, swearing at her in front of his grandparents. Afterwards, Beth discovers Conrad has been lying about his after-school whereabouts. This leads to a heated argument between Conrad and Beth in which Conrad points out that Beth never visited him in the hospital, saying that she "would have come if Buck was in the hospital." Beth replies, "Buck never would have been in the hospital!" Beth and Calvin take a trip to see Beth's brother in Houston, where Calvin confronts Beth, calling her out on her attitude. Conrad suffers a setback when he learns that Karen, a friend of his from the psychiatric hospital, has committed suicide. A cathartic breakthrough session with Dr. Berger allows Conrad to stop blaming himself for Buck's death and accept his mother's frailties. Calvin, however, emotionally confronts Beth one last time. He questions their love and asks whether she is capable of truly loving anyone. Stunned, Beth leaves for a while and goes back to Houston. Calvin and Conrad are left to come to terms with their new family situation. ===== In 1945, 13-year- old Loretta Webb is one of eight children of Ted Webb, a Van Lear coal miner raising a family with his wife in the midst of grinding poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky (pronounced by locals as "Butcher Holler"). In 1948, at the age of 15, Loretta marries 22-year-old Oliver "Mooney" (aka Doo, short for Doolittle) Lynn, becoming a mother of four by the time she is 19. The family moves to northern Washington State, where Doo works in the forest industry and Loretta sings occasionally at local honky-tonks on weekends. After some time, Loretta makes an occasional appearance on local radio. By the time Loretta turns 25, Norm Burley, the owner of Zero Records, a small Canadian record label, hears Loretta sing during one of her early radio appearances. Burley gives the couple the money needed to travel to Los Angeles to cut a demo tape from which her first single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," is made. After returning home from the sessions, Doo suggests he and Loretta go on a promotional tour to push the record. Doo shoots his own publicity photo for Loretta, and spends many late nights writing letters to show promoters and to radio disc jockeys all over the South. After Loretta receives an emergency phone call from her mother telling her that her father had died, she and Doo hit the road with records, photos, and their children. The two embark on an extensive promotional tour of radio stations across the South. En route, and unbeknownst to the couple, Loretta's first single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," hits the charts based on radio and jukebox plays, and earns her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. In the summer of 1961, after 17 straight weekly performances on the Opry, she is invited to sing at Ernest Tubb Record Shop's Midnite Jamboree after her performance that night. Country superstar Patsy Cline, one of Loretta's idols, who had recently been hospitalized from a near-fatal car wreck, inspires Loretta to dedicate Patsy's newest hit "I Fall to Pieces" to the singer herself as a musical get-well card. Cline listens to the broadcast that night from her hospital room and sends her husband Charlie Dick to Ernest Tubb Record Shop to fetch Loretta so the two can meet. A close friendship with Cline follows, which abruptly was ended by Cline's death in a plane crash on March 5, 1963. The next few years are a whirlwind. The stress of extensive touring, keeping up her image, overwork, and trying to keep her marriage and family together cause Loretta a nervous breakdown, which she suffers onstage at the beginning of a concert. After a year off at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, Loretta goes back on the road, returning to establish herself as the "First Lady of Country Music." The film closes with Loretta recounting the story of her life through her 1970 hit song "Coal Miner's Daughter" to a sold-out audience. ===== Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital, finds Joseph Merrick in a Victorian freak show in London's East End, where he is kept by Mr. Bytes, an greedy, sadistic, psychopathic, despicable, violent and heartless ringmaster. His head is kept hooded, and his "owner", who views him as intellectually disabled, is paid by Treves to bring him to the hospital for examination. Treves presents Merrick to his colleagues and highlights his monstrous skull, which forces him to sleep with his head on his knees, since if he were to lie down, he would asphyxiate. On Merrick's return, he is beaten so badly by Bytes that he has to call Treves for medical help. Treves brings him back to the hospital. Merrick is tended to by Mrs. Mothershead, the formidable matron, as the other nurses are too frightened of him. Mr. Carr Gomm, the hospital's Governor, is against housing Merrick, as the hospital does not accept "incurables". To prove that Merrick can make progress, Treves trains him to say a few conversational sentences. Carr Gomm sees through this ruse, but as he is leaving, Merrick begins to recite the 23rd Psalm, and continues past the part of the Psalm that Treves taught him. Merrick tells the doctors that he knows how to read, and has memorized the 23rd Psalm because it is his favourite. Carr Gomm permits him to stay, and Merrick spends his time practising conversation with Treves and building a model of a cathedral he sees from his window. Merrick has tea with Treves and his wife, and is so overwhelmed by their kindness, he shows them his mother's picture. He believes he must have been a "disappointment" to his mother, but hopes she would be proud to see him with his "lovely friends". Merrick begins to take guests in his rooms, including the actress Madge Kendal, who introduces him to the work of Shakespeare. Merrick quickly becomes an object of curiosity to high society, and Mrs. Mothershead expresses concerns that he is still being put on display as a freak. Treves begins to question the morality of his actions. Meanwhile, a night porter named Jim starts selling tickets to locals, who come at night to gawk at the "Elephant Man". The issue of Merrick's residence is challenged at a hospital council meeting, but he is guaranteed permanent residence by command of the hospital's royal patron, Queen Victoria, who sends word with her daughter-in-law Alexandra. However, Merrick is soon kidnapped by Bytes during one of Jim's raucous late-night showings. Bytes leaves England and takes Merrick on the road as a circus attraction once again. A witness reports to Treves who confronts Jim about what he has done, and Mothershead fires him. Merrick is forced to be an "attraction" again, but during a "show" in Belgium, Merrick, who is weak and dying, collapses, causing a drunken Bytes to lock him in a cage and leave him to die. Merrick manages to escape from Bytes with the help of his fellow freakshow attractions. Upon returning to London, he is harassed through Liverpool Street station by several young boys and accidentally knocks down a young girl. Merrick is chased, unmasked, and cornered by an angry mob. He cries, "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I ... am ... a ... man!" before collapsing. Policemen return Merrick to the hospital and Treves. He recovers some of his health, but is dying of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Treves and Mothershead take Merrick to see one of Mrs Kendal's shows at the theatre, and Kendal dedicates the performance to him. A proud Merrick receives a standing ovation from the audience. Back at the hospital, Merrick thanks Treves for all he has done, and completes his church model. He lies down on his back in bed, imitating a sleeping child in a picture on his wall, and dies in his sleep. Merrick is consoled by a vision of his mother, who quotes Lord Tennyson's "Nothing Will Die". ===== Sally Matthews is a young waitress in an Atlantic City casino who has dreams of becoming a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo. Sally's pregnant sister and estranged husband David return to her one day with the intention of selling a large amount of cocaine that he has stolen in Philadelphia. Sally is outraged to see him, as he had impregnated her sister and run off with her. Dave meets Lou, an aging former gangster who lives in Sally's apartment building and runs a numbers game (an illegal lottery) in poor areas of the city; he also acts as a caretaker for Grace, a seemingly bedridden, aging beauty whose gangster husband he used to work under, and who constantly berates and demeans him. Dave convinces Lou to sell the cocaine for him, but as Lou sells the first batch, Dave is attacked and killed by the mobsters from whom he had stolen the drugs. Lou is left with the remaining cocaine and continues to sell it to impress Sally, whom he has long pined for, with money. Sally and Lou make love one day, but she returns to her apartment to find it trashed; she has been tracked down by Dave's killers, who beat her to find out if she has the drugs. They leave, but Lou laments not being able to protect her. Grace also reveals that Lou was a small-time crook and nowhere near as competent as he pretends he was. Sally is fired from the casino when her late husband's criminal record is discovered. Lou sells most of the remainder of the cocaine, while both Sally and the mobsters discover Lou's affiliation with Dave. The mobsters corner them one night, but are killed when Lou produces a gun and shoots them. He and Sally then steal their car and leave the city. That night, from a motel outside Atlantic City, they watch the TV news reporting on the killing. A police sketch of the suspect is shown. It looks nothing like Lou. Lou is overjoyed with relief and pride. He confesses to Sally that this was the first time he has ever killed anyone. At the motel the next morning, Lou takes the phone to the bathroom to call Grace and brag about the killings. Sally also wakes and takes half of the money with the intention of sneaking off; Lou witnesses this, allowing her to leave and giving her the car keys so she can escape to France, rather than go to Miami with Lou. Lou returns to Atlantic City to be with Grace. Working together, they sell the remaining portion of the cocaine, and walk off arm in arm with renewed respect for each other. ===== Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) arrives in Chile to search for his son Charlie (John Shea), who worked as a journalist and disappeared during the recent military coup. Ed meets his daughter-in-law, Beth (Sissy Spacek), with whom he has a strained relationship and they fight over politics. Ed blames his son and daughter-in-law's radical political views for Charlie' disappearance, while Beth blames the American government. Ed uses his connections to meet with various government officials to find out the truth about his son's disappearance. As he investigates, Ed finds that the American embassy is not as helpful as he thought they would be and he suspects them of hiding information about Charlie. One U.S. diplomat is polite and friendly but constantly lies to him; a high-ranking American military attache is blunter and tells Ed that whatever happened to Charlie was his own fault, noting "You play with fire, you get burned." Together, he and Beth learn that the U.S. had many interests in the country that have been enhanced by the coup and its aftermath and that many military officials aided Pinochet in the coup. As Ed becomes disillusioned with the American government, he comes to respect the work Beth and Charlie were doing and he and Beth reconcile. When they receive proof that Charlie was murdered by the junta and that the U.S. let it happen, he tells the embassy officials "I just thank God we live in a country where we can still put people like you in jail!" The film ends with a postscript stating that after his return to the United States, Ed received the body of his son Charlie seven months later, making an autopsy impossible, and that a subsequent lawsuit against the US government was dismissed. It also adds that the State Department denies its involvement in the Pinochet coup, a position maintained to the present day. ===== Once-promising attorney Frank Galvin, framed for jury tampering years ago, was fired from his elite Boston firm and is now an alcoholic ambulance chaser whose practice is on the verge of collapse. As a favor, his friend and former teacher Mickey sends him a medical malpractice case in which it is all but assured that the defense will settle for a large amount. The case involves a young woman given an anesthetic during childbirth, after which she choked on her vomit and was deprived of oxygen. The woman is now comatose and on a respirator. Her sister and brother- in-law are hoping for a monetary award in order to give her proper care. Frank assures them they have a strong case. Frank visits the comatose woman and is deeply affected. Later, a representative of the Catholic hospital where the incident took place offers a substantial settlement. Without consulting the family, Frank declines the offer and states his intention to take the case to trial, stunning all parties including the presiding judge and the victim's relatives. Meanwhile, Frank, who is lonely, becomes romantically involved with Laura, a woman he had spotted earlier in a bar. Frank's case quickly experiences several devastating setbacks. His client's brother-in-law learns from "the other side" that Frank rejected the settlement and angrily confronts him. His star medical expert disappears, and a hastily-arranged substitute's credentials and testimony are called into serious question on the witness stand. His opponent, the high-priced attorney Ed Concannon, has at his disposal a large legal team that is masterful with the press. The presiding judge, who despises Frank, undermines his questioning of the substitute. No one who was in the operating room is willing to testify that negligence occurred. Concannon is revealed to be paying off a reluctant Laura. Frank's break comes when he discovers that Kaitlin Costello, the nurse who admitted his client to the hospital, is now a pre-school teacher in New York. Frank travels there to seek her help, leaving Mickey and Laura working together in Frank's office. Mickey discovers a check from Concannon in her handbag and infers that Laura is a mole, providing information to the opposing counsel. Mickey flies to New York to tell Frank about Laura's betrayal; confronting her in a bar, Frank strikes Laura hard enough to knock her to the floor. Mickey later suggests having the case declared a mistrial due to Concannon's ethics violations, but Frank decides to continue. Costello testifies that, shortly after the patient had become comatose, the anesthesiologist (one of the two doctors on trial, along with the archdiocese of Boston) told her to change her notes on the admitting form to hide his fatal error. She had written down that the patient had eaten a full meal only one hour before being admitted. The doctor had failed to read the admitting notes and, in ignorance, administered an anesthetic that should never have been given to a patient with a full stomach. As a result, the patient vomited and choked. Costello further testifies that, when the anesthesiologist realized his mistake, he met with Costello in private and threatened her job unless she changed the number "1" to the number "9" on her admitting notes. But before she made the change Costello had made a photocopy of the notes, which she brought with her to court. Concannon quickly turns the situation around by getting the judge to declare the nurse's testimony stricken from the record on the technicality that she possesses a copy, but for legal purposes the original is presumed to be correct. Afterwards a diocese lawyer praises Concannon's performance to the defendant bishop, who asks "but do you believe her?" and is met with embarrassed silence. Feeling that his case is hopeless, Frank gives a brief but passionate closing argument. In the end the jury finds in favor of Frank's clients. The foreman then asks the judge whether the jury can award more than the amount the plaintiffs sought; the judge resignedly replies that they can. As Frank is congratulated, he catches a glimpse of Laura watching him across the atrium. That night, Laura, in a drunken stupor on her bed, drops her whiskey on the floor, drags the phone toward her and calls Frank. As the phone rings, Frank sits in his office with a cup of coffee. He moves to answer but ultimately does not. ===== The majority of Ozs story arcs are set in "Emerald City", named for a setting from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In this experimental unit of the prison, unit manager Tim McManus emphasizes rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration, rather than carrying out purely punitive measures. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment, with a carefully managed balance of members from each racial and social group, intended to ease tensions among these various factions. Under McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, all inmates in "Em City" struggle to fulfill their own needs. Some fight for power – either over the drug trade or over other inmate factions and individuals. Others, corrections officers and inmates alike, simply want to survive, some long enough to make parole and others just to see the next day. The show's narrator, inmate Augustus Hill, explains the show, and provides context, thematic analysis, and a sense of humor. Oz chronicles McManus' attempts to keep control over the inmates of Em City. There are many groups of inmates throughout the show, and not everyone within each group survives the show's events. There are the African-American Homeboys (Wangler, Redding, Poet, Keane, Adebisi) and Muslims (Said, Arif, Khan), the Wiseguys (Pancamo, Nappa, Schibetta, Zanghi, Urbano), the Aryan Brotherhood (Schillinger, Robson, Mack), the Latinos of El Norte (Alvarez, Morales, Guerra, Hernandez), the Irish (The O'Reilly brothers, Kirk, Keenan), the Gays (Hanlon, Cramer, Ginzburg), the Bikers (Hoyt, Sands, Burns), the Christians (Cloutier, Coushaine, Cudney) and many other individuals not completely affiliated with one particular group (Rebadow, Busmalis, Keller, Stanislofsky). In contrast to the dangerous criminals, character Tobias Beecher gives a look at a usually law-abiding man who made one fatal drunk- driving mistake. ===== The game is set some time after a catastrophic comet impact, which brought a deadly virus onto the planet. The resulting plague caused deaths of millions of people, while other victims were mutated and began hearing the voice of a malevolent deity. They formed an organization called "The Order" and enslaved the rest of the populace. However, a rag-tag resistance movement, called "The Front", is trying to topple The Order's reign. The unnamed protagonist of the game is a wandering mercenary, captured by Order troops near the town of Tarnhill. After killing the guards and escaping, he comes in contact with a man named Rowan, who makes him an offer to join the Front. The protagonist receives a communication device through which he can remain in contact with a female member of the Front, codenamed Blackbird. From then on, Blackbird provides assistance and commentary throughout the game. The protagonist heads to the Front's base, where the rebel leader, Macil, sends him on a number of missions in order to weaken the Order. After several acts of sabotage, the Front proceeds to assault the Order's castle; the protagonist, accompanying them in the attack, finds and kills a major member of the Order called "The Programmer". He loses consciousness upon touching the weapon that the Programmer had been using. The mercenary wakes up in the castle, now taken over by the Front. Macil explains that the Programmer's weapon is one of the five fragments of the "Sigil", a powerful weapon worshipped by the Order. He orders the protagonist to find the remaining four. To this end, the mercenary visits a knowledgeable being called "The Oracle", who reveals that the next fragment is being held by another of the Order's leaders, The Bishop. After killing the Bishop and acquiring the second fragment, the protagonist returns to the Oracle only to be told that the third fragment is being held by Macil himself; the Oracle claims that Macil is a traitor who has been using the protagonist as a pawn in his scheme. At this point, the player must make a decision: either disbelieve the Oracle and kill it, or trust the Oracle and kill Macil. The choice has bearing on the rest of the plot. Assuming the player trusts Macil and kills the Oracle - acquiring the third fragment - he receives another task from Macil: to deactivate a factory, built on the comet's impact site, where the Order is turning captured people into "bio- mechanical soldiers." Upon completing his mission, the protagonist learns that Macil has gone insane; he returns to the base and attempts to speak to Macil, who declares in his madness that he wishes to free the "one god", then attacks the protagonist. Upon killing Macil, the protagonist receives the fourth Sigil fragment. He then returns to the factory, where lies the laboratory of the Loremaster, another of the Order's leaders. After killing Loremaster and thus acquiring the final Sigil piece, he proceeds to use the weapon to unlock a door leading to the comet's impact site. Inside, he finds an extraterrestrial spaceship. Within the ship waits an alien being known as "The Entity"; it is the one responsible for creating the Order and taking over the minds of mutated people. The mercenary kills it with the Sigil; its death means the end of the Order. He then finally meets Blackbird face to face. She tells him that his victory allowed mankind to create a vaccine for the virus, then kisses him. The plot takes a different direction if the player decides to trust the Oracle and immediately kill Macil. Once he does so (claiming Macil's Sigil piece in the process), the Oracle dispatches him to the Loremaster's laboratory. Having killed the Loremaster and obtained the fourth fragment of the Sigil, the protagonist returns to the Oracle, who then reveals that it was using him all along in a bid to acquire the complete Sigil, use it to free the "one god", and attain eternal life. The mercenary kills the Oracle and, with all five fragments of the Sigil now in his possession, heads to the alien ship. There he encounters the Entity; however, the being speaks with Blackbird's voice, and implies that it was manipulating the protagonist throughout the game in order to regain freedom and take over the planet. After killing the Entity, the ending sequence is shown, this time less optimistic: the cure for the virus has not been invented and mankind's future is uncertain. =====