Ferdinand Weitel, a forklift driver, is desperate: Insurance agent Arno von Mehling, a true sales talent, has had contracts signed in record amounts. Now Weitel is wandering through the corridors of the insurance company trying to save what can still be saved - on Shrove Tuesday of all days. The department for customer service and complaints is in a colorful mood and has no ear for Weitel's worries. Finally, secretary Annerose Waguscheit takes heart and tells him about the evening carnival ball "Traum-Police", where he can safely find Mr. Mehling.
An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists.
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?
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.
Deuce Bigalow is a less than attractive, down on his luck aquarium cleaner. One day he wrecks the house of a gigolo and needs quick money to repair it. The only way he can make it is to become a gigolo himself, taking on an unusual mix of female clients. He encounters a couple of problems, though. He falls in love with one of his unusual clients, and a sleazy police officer is hot on his trail.
With a reputation for seducing members of the opposite sex, regardless of their marital status, a notorious womanizer discovers a beauty who seems impervious to his charms. However, as he continues to pursue the indifferent lady, he finds himself falling in love.
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.
SPLINTERHEADS introduces Thomas Middleditch as Justin Frost, a twenty-something slacker whose “thing” is that he has no “thing” at all. When a small-time carnival rolls into town, he meets Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), a gorgeous con artist, or “splinterhead,” who has more “things” going for her than anyone he has ever met.
The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.
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.
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.
Hickspoiltation film from the early 1970s ostensibly starring Oscar nominee Mercedes McCambridge, but really more a film looking for an excuse to show off Simone Griffeth's beauty. She plays a daughter of a swamp family. The whole family goes to a carnival where she is seduced by an older male performer, while her teen brother is seduced by an older female performer.
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.
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.
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.
Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He enters an abusive relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen in an attempt to climb the social ladder. His desperation for love and affection soon spirals into tragedy.