Born to Be Bad

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.

The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.

A dark personal secret drives a young woman to use every man she encounters.

Ex-con turned private investigator Bradford Galt suspects someone is following him and maybe even trying to kill him. With the assistance of his spunky secretary, Kathleen Stewart, he dives deep into a mystery in search of answers.

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.

After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.

An insurance man wishing for a more exciting life becomes wrapped up in the affairs of an imprisoned embezzler, his model girlfriend, and a violent private investigator.

Davey Gordon, a New York City boxer at the end of his career, falls for dancer Gloria Price. However, their budding relationship is interrupted by Gloria's violent boss, Vincent Rapallo, who has eyes for Gloria. The two decide to skip town, but before they can, Vincent and his thugs abduct Gloria, and Davey is forced to search for her among the most squalid corners of the city, with his enemy hiding in the shadows.

Joe and Paul Fabrini are Wildcat, or independent, truck drivers who have their own small one-truck business. The Fabrini boys constantly battle distributors, rivals and loan collectors, while trying to make a success of their transport company.

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

Christopher and Cathy Dollanganger live together as man and wife with Cathy's two sons who are unaware of the incestuous nature of their parents' relationship. But when a mysterious woman moves in next door and befriends the younger boy, Bart, he begins a strange transformation and displays accusatory behavior towards Cathy and Christopher. When Christopher discovers their mysterious neighbor is, in fact, his mother Corrine Dollanganger, all of the family's long-hidden secrets are revealed in a tragic climax.

When a housewife finds out she is pregnant, she runs out of town looking for freedom to reevaluate her life decisions.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.

Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.

A garage owner marries a much younger woman. Trouble begins when he becomes friends with a man who has his eyes on his former-showgirl wife.

Vincent Lubeck is a vicious ex-convict. His criminal activities are despised by his family, but he uses and abuses them in the course of his crimes. Eventually his own brother must stand up to him.

A man takes over the identity of a dead man while on the lam from a crime he didn't commit.

An estranged wife shows up after a nearly 7 years of disappearance -- thought to be dead, to prevent her husband from marrying his new love until someone kills her.

In flashback from a 'Rebecca'-style beginning: Ellen Foster, visiting her aunt on the California coast, meets neighbor Jeff Cohalan and his ultramodern clifftop house. Ellen is strongly attracted to Jeff, who's being plagued by unexplainable accidents, major and minor. Bad luck, persecution...or paranoia? Warned that Jeff could be dangerous, Ellen fears that he's in danger, as the menacing atmosphere darkens.

Under a dictatorship that has banned music, a man hides a record until he is caught. Whilst paying for his crimes he stumbles across a repository of confiscated items, leading to events that will change the course of history.

A mystery grows after a bank robbery car leads investigators to a carnival sideshow.

A shy Portuguese poet and an exuberant English occultist meet up in Lisbon in 1930. When the last one disappears, an English detective begins a thorough investigation: was it a suicide, as reported. Or a homicide? This is the real story of the brief meeting between Fernando Pessoa, Aleister Crowley, and Hanni Larissa Jaeger.

When the nephews of Phyllis Carter are killed in an automobile crash while under the influence of narcotics, she persuades Police Lieutenant Jim Hahan to use her as an undercover agent.

Bit player Sherry Stewart gets miffed when director Walter Darman turns her down after she reads for a small part in his picture. She and her boy friend, Ronnie, devise a plan to lure Darman to her apartment, where she gives him a drugged drink. She tells Darman they had been intimate and blackmails him for $50,000. More than a little distracted by his situation, his wife senses something is wrong and he gets into a violent argument with his father-in-law who owns the producing company Darman works for, and discontinues the picture. Sherry informs Darman she is going to tell his wife all about them. Darman tells his secretary that he is going to work late and is not to be disturbed, sets the moviola runnings, and exits by the back door and hot-foots it to Sherry's apartment.

Jack Early is a photographer who will stop at nothing to climb his way to the very top of the success ladder. On the strength of his sheer tenacity, he gets a job with a major newspaper, and it's not long before he's made a name for himself by charming a notorious crime boss, Nick Palmer, into allowing himself to be photographed. Palmer takes him under his wing, but Early decides to bite the hand that feeds him and sets Palmer and another crime boss, Colton, against one another.

A night club owner takes on the crooks who killed his best friend.

A woman is found strangled in her shop. Shortly after, another murder is committed. Perhaps the most terrifying is that the both girls' name is Sonja. The police is convinced it's the same killer and at each scene is heard a woman singing the same song. A song which is soon dubbed the 'murder melody.'

With the help of some seedy gangsters, young attorney Steve Keiver makes some quick cash by bending the law, and in the process, he impresses the mobsters so much that they invite him to work for them on a regular basis. But when Police Inspector Matt Duggan realizes that Steve is working as a middleman for the mob, the young lawyer finds himself in a life-threatening situation. In order to clear his name, he must betray the deadly crooks he's been working for.

A down-on-her-luck San Francisco woman, turning in desperation to jewel robbery, barely escapes getting nabbed in a heist and moves to Los Angeles where she gets an honest job as a waitress. Her troubles start again, however, when she falls madly in love, blind to the fact that her boyfriend is a four-flushing, small-time con man.

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.

Larry Nelson, paroled from prison after serving nearly half of his thirty-year sentence, is determined to not fall into the clutches of the law again, and takes a quiet job at a country sanitarium. Thete, he meets and falls for a nurse, Charlotte Maynard, and he knows the only way to enter her web is to have a lot of money, for Miss Maynard is somewhat of a gold-digger.

A vicious loan shark ring has been preying on factory workers. When several workers at a tire factory suffer violence at the hands of the loan sharkers, a union leader and the factory owner try to recruit ex-con Joe Gargan to infiltrate to the gang. At first Joe does not want to get involved, but changes his mind when his brother-in-law dies at the hands of a savage loan shark hood. Joe works his way into the mob, but in order to keep his cover, Joe can't tell anyone what he is up to. This results in him being disowned by his sister and girl friend.

Molly's husband Rick was a gang leader somewhere in the middle west. When he's shot, the tough woman moves to S.F. with a couple of the gang to start anew. Disguised as a noble woman, she and her gang rob security transports. But when one day Rob confesses to her that he killed Rick out of jealousy, she shoots him down immediately. In lack of proof she can't be convicted for the murder, but she goes to jail for the robberies. It's a new and very open female prison, where she learns a profession for the first time in her life.

Sent to a dude ranch in the west to recover her health, a New York actress falls in love with a ranch owner recently acquitted of the murder of his wife.