Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill, but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.
In the Colorado Rockies, Sheriff Scott, heads a posse that is after four escaped convicts, and thought it is his sworn duty to return the men dead or alive, he is, as always, reluctant to kill his fellow man. He is accompanied by Jaynes, a tavern owner, who takes much delight in his telescopic rifle, and by "Smitty," a gas station held up the escapees and more than ready to show she can be as tough as any man, although she seems to have some other motive for getting to the leader of the convicts, Kaygo.
An American army officer working for British intelligence comes to post-war Berlin to solve a murder. His investigation is compromised when he falls for a nightclub singer, not realising she is an agent of the criminal mastermind he is on the trail of.
A small town boy heads for the lights of the big city and discovers the delights of hard liquor and fast women. Ere long, he becomes an addict, a dope peddler and a shop-lifter to obtain money for drugs.
Clarinetist Stan has a nightmare about killing a man in a mirrored room. But when he wakes up and finds blood marks on himself and a key from the dream, he suspects that it may have truly happened.
After a fight with her husband, Lucy runs out of the house, and into a night of terror. She heads for the local cinema, and in doing so, becomes the only eyewitness to a couple of crooks, who are robbing the cinema's safe. In her haste to escape the thieves, she is knocked down by a passing bus, and is taken to the local hospital. The two crooks follow, and wait for a chance to finish her off, and thus eliminate the only person who can tie them to the robbery.
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.
A scientific experiment involving subjecting a corpse to an extreme charge of electricity accidentally revives an executed criminal and makes him impervious to harm, allowing him to seek revenge on his former partners, and deal similarly with anyone else who gets in his way.
Three teenagers with troubled families are unable to adjust at home and in high-school. Tempted with an easy, carefree life they soon pass from misdemeanors into serious crime - and will suffer for it. Sometimes, repentance comes too late.
A newspaper publisher's daughter suffers from neglect by her parents. She and her friends turn to crime by dressing up like men, holding up gas stations, raping young men at gunpoint, and having makeout parties when her parents are away. Their "fence" gets them to trash the school on request of sinister un-American clients, and they run afoul of the law, apple pie, and God himself.
When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.
Gambler Nathan Detroit has few options for the location of his big craps game. Needing $1,000 to pay a garage owner to host the game, Nathan bets Sky Masterson that Sky cannot get virtuous Sarah Brown out on a date. Despite some resistance, Sky negotiates a date with her in exchange for bringing people into her mission. Meanwhile, Nathan's longtime fiancée, Adelaide, wants him to go legit and marry her.