Three young and desperate inhabitants of Madrid attempt to rise above their circumstances by any means available to them in that sun-drenched city. This tight-knit trio must scramble when their hasty plans become derailed by a demanding matriarch, an abusive older brother, and the entire corrupt underclass with which they deal.
In 1979, a delivery truck makes its way up a lonely southern California highway in a storm, bound for the San Diego Zoo with a deadly tropical rattlesnake as cargo. When the truck suffers a blowout, the driver loses control and hits a tree, shattering the snake's aquarium in the back and the window separating the snake from the driver. The snake slithers into the front of the truck, kills the driver with its bite and then moves off into the forest. Flash forward to 1999. The small southern California town of San Vicente has grown from 6,000 to 30,000, and the rattler, which escaped nearby years ago, has bred. There are now 25,000 of these hybrid rattlesnakes, and they are slowly making their way downhill into the town, attracted by the movement of the blasting as the town paves its way toward progress. Progress, in this case, brings terror, in this tale originally penned by John Carpenter.
Mario consigns his girlfriend Licia to a whorehouse for an evening in order to get the photographic goods to blackmail her father with. To get her out of the way, Licia is then consigned to a mental hospital by her father.
A juror in a murder trial, after voting to convict, has second thoughts and begins to investigate on his own before the execution. German version of "Murder."
A grim police detective embarks on a one-man crusade to track down a depraved sex maniac when a nightclub deejay receives a disturbing series of obscene phone calls. Finding himself getting far too close to the victim for comfort, the hard-boiled cop must track down the unbalanced pervert before he can carry out his sick threats...
Laura Bartelli is a stripper in a French bar. She retires after a moody landscape architect named Marco Tisserand asks her to abandon her life and share his. However, after her red Volkswagen runs off the road en route to the rendezvous, she ends up scarred and comatose in a hospital. Marco stays at her bedside.
Everyone has a secret. Twins Sarah and Gaëlle near 25; for ten years, Sarah has been a fundamentalist Carmelite in a Brazilian convent, and Gaëlle has been in prison for a heinous crime. Sarah comes to the attention of Fr. Joachim, a priest and physician; he can find no cause for her debilitating abdominal pain. When Sarah and he are transferred to Paris, Joachim looks for Gaëlle, now on probation and finding no respite from society's approbation. An enterprising reporter is digging into Gaëlle's life, the mother superior of Sarah's convent hovers over her, and Joachim investigates the phenomenon of twin's symmetry. Is there any release from the past?
Helped by socialite Janice Kendon and barkeeper Scott O'Brien, Arizona deputy sheriff Les Martin works to solve three brutal murders in and around the Grand Canyon. His efforts leads to the killer fleeing with Janice as a hostage and a chase by car and helicopter lead to a climax on a miner's bucket on cables a mile above the canyon floor.
When the Vice President's plane goes down near a remote Pacific island, he is kidnapped by rebel forces and held for ransom. It is up to his female Secret Service agent and a press secretary to infiltrate the camp and save him.
One day, for no apparent reason, a cop kills 11 children. The same day, horror novelist Thomas Roy tries to commit suicide after cutting his fingers. At first glance, nothing seems to link the two events – until Dr. Paul Lacasse, a disillusioned psychiatrist, takes over the case. Prompted by his colleague Jeanne, a fan of Thomas Roy, Dr. Lacasse investigates the writer’s past. Hounded by a gossip columnist, Dr. Lacasse uncovers a series of troubling facts that bolster his convictions about the case. As he tries to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle in order to better treat the famous writer, Dr. Lacasse is dragged further and further into a series of events, with terrifying consequences.
Greed, lust and fate bring together a motley collection of oddballs and lowlifes for some rather sticky situations in Hoch's twisted neo-noir debut. Three separate but interconnected stories, all set on a deceptively sunny day in California and centered around one million dollars in cash, inspire Hoch's quirky characters to commit acts both devious and depraved in an attempt to make the big score.