In this crime-thriller, Rome proves to be an unhappy destination for an American couple when the husband is kidnapped and his wife begins a desperate search for him.
Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him.
An undertaker who hasn't had any 'customers' in a long time is forced to pay one year's back-rent. To get money he starts to kill people, which brings absurd results.
A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
A policeman is accused of manslaughtering a 14-year-old boy but is acquitted of all charges. Still, he feels a lot of guilt and begins to doubt if he really is innocent after all.
Dr. Frank Harlow is in the process of trying to save a man badly beaten by two gangsters whom he identifies to the police. When the victim dies the charge becomes murder and Harlow hightails it to the far woods where he finds a job as clerk Roger Condon in a sporting-goods store. Harlow's plan is to lay low until the gangsters forget about him. But complications arise from two different sectors. First, Harlow falls in love with the local beauty Laurie Maitland and second, the murderers find out where he is hiding.
An ex-major forces a scientist to develop a invisibility formula, with which he plans to create an invisible army and sell it to the highest bidder. However there are side effects to the formula.
Gangster and cop killer Jack Martin is on the run from the law, and hides out in a small town. Low on funds, he engineers a clever bank robbery that yields him a big bundle. Now he has not only the cops and the FBI after him, but also the local crime boss, who's outraged that an outsider can pull off a heist like that in his territory and not cut him in on it.
Mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder has rented a country house called "The Oaks", which not long ago was the scene of some murders committed by a strange and violent criminal known as "The Bat". Meanwhile, the house's owner, bank president John Fleming, has recently embezzled one million dollars in securities and has hidden the proceeds in the house, but is killed before he can retrieve it.