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.
Recently paroled from prison, legendary burglar "Doc" Riedenschneider, with funding from Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, gathers a small group of veteran criminals together in the Midwest for a big jewel heist.
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
A screenwriter with a violent temper is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts.
Cashier and part-time starving artist Christopher Cross is absolutely smitten with the beautiful Kitty March. Kitty plays along, but she's really only interested in Johnny, a two-bit crook. When Kitty and Johnny find out that art dealers are interested in Chris's work, they con him into letting Kitty take credit for the paintings. Cross allows it because he is in love with Kitty, but his love will only let her get away with so much.
One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.
A con man tries to blackmail a Mexican gangster.
When a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner in a quiet Connecticut town, the citizens are horrified and demand action from the police. All of the witnesses identify John Waldron, a nervous out-of-towner, as the killer. District Attorney Henry Harvey is then put on the case and faces political opposition in his attempt to prove Waldron's innocence.
Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer. His next target, a woman, is the most difficult.
Frank Bigelow is about to die, and he knows it. The accountant has been poisoned and has only 24 hours before the lethal concoction kills him. Determined to find out who his murderer is, Frank, with the help of his assistant and girlfriend, Paula, begins to trace back over his last steps. As he frantically tries to unravel the mystery behind his own impending demise, his sleuthing leads him to a group of crooked businessmen and another murder.
Chick Hewes is released from prison and finds work as an accountant. Two years later, Chick's crooked friend, Benny LaMarr, to whom he is indebted for past kindnesses, steals a diamond necklace from the home safe of the district attorney. When the district attorney threatens to accuse the police of inefficiency in crime fighting, Garvey, who is campaigning for the office of police commissioner, promises to catch the thief in twenty-four hours.
War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.
After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.
This is the terrifying story of a desperate foot. A reluctant accomplice of a man who has fallen into horror, he takes advantage of a moment when the man has dozed off to record a message for anyone who will listen. It's the ultimate S.O.S. from a foot who has no other option but to reveal the appalling truth to the world.
An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi, who may be hiding out in a small town in the guise of a distinguished professor engaged to the Supreme Court Justice’s daughter.
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?
Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.
Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash.