A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists.
During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.
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.
A magician in a carnival--who actually can read minds and levitate people and objects--works with a superintelligent chimp named Alex, who can also talk. The magician and the chimp soon become the stars of the carnival, drawing in big crowds. However, the wild-animal trainer, who has been displaced by the team as the carnival's top act, decides to kidnap Alex and sell him to a medical laboratory for experimentation, thereby getting rid of his competition.
Billy Bigelow has been dead for 15 years. Now outside the pearly gates, he long ago waived his right to go back to Earth for a day. He has heard that there is a problem with his family: namely with his wife Julie Bigelow, née Jordan, and his child he hasn't met. He would now like to head back to Earth to assist in rectifying the problem; but before he may go, he has to get permission from the gatekeeper by telling him his story. Adapted from the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit Broadway musical.
After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.
A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.
Australian good girl Sandy and greaser Danny fell in love over the summer. But when they unexpectedly discover they're now in the same high school, will they be able to rekindle their romance despite their eccentric friends?
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals. It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
Roustabout Stanton Carlisle joins a traveling carny and unsuccessfully schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband, Pete.
The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.
Tired of being a small-town waitress, Donna departs with the latest carnival show, living with entertainers Frankie and Patch in a tense, emotional triangle.
Customs officers Katti and Wolfgang are so deeply in love with each other that they are barely aware of their surroundings. But after the wedding reception, there's nothing but trouble.
A former novelist returns to his small Midwest town after serving in the Army during WWII, to the chagrin of his social-climbing brother, and becomes close with an easy-going professional gambler and torn between two very different women.
A young sailor falls in love with a mysterious woman performing as a mermaid on the local pier. As they become entwined, he comes to suspect the woman might be a real mermaid who lures men to a watery death during the full moon. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2007.
Night of Abandon: A wild blissful night in Brazil during Carnival. Liar's Tale: A burned out photojournalist's obsession with a high-class call girl awakens her ability to feel again. In the Blink of an Eye: A passionate boxer seduces a happily married woman.
A wild girl who was raised by bears is found by humans when she rescues an injured man. She is brought to the city against her will, and is put in a stage show. She is discovered and saved by her family, and tries to find a way to take revenge on the people who imprisoned her.
Italy in the early 1930s. To the elderly aristocrat Gerard, all that is left of Leonora, the love of his life, are a number of erotic tape recordings. She led a double life as respectable wife and mother of two, and as a whore at the local brothel. Now, after her death, her children Ursula and Edmund pass under the tutelage of Gerard. Having not seen them for many years, he is utterly bewildered by Ursula's uncanny likeness to her mother. While Gerard's mistress Fiorella takes care of Edmund's sexual needs, Ursula follows the last instructions of her mother. In the process, she uses the legacy of her mother's recordings to get into the mindset of her relationship with Gerard. Is Gerard ready to find his lost love Leonora again... in the likeness of her very daughter?
A trio of former sideshow performers double as the "Unholy Three" in a scam to nab some shiny rocks.