Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.

A roustabout joins a traveling carny and schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband.

Sasaki is a sincere civil servant, working at city hall. Due to his timid personality, he can't properly deal with nasty people, including a single mother on the verge of giving up her own child, another civil servant pressing him to have a physical relationship, and a person who receives welfare benefits unfairly. His passivity leads him to get caught up in a terrible crime.

When an employee at an illegal gambling den dies suspiciously, her sister, Nancy, looks into the situation and falls for Johnny O'Clock, a suave partner in the underground casino. Selfish and non-committal by nature, Johnny slowly begins to return Nancy's affection and decides to run away with her, but conflict within his business threatens their plans. As Johnny tries to distance himself from the casino, his shady past comes back to haunt him.

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?

The life of Al Roberts, a pianist in a New York nightclub, turns into a nightmare when he decides to hitchhike to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend.

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.

25-year-old Dwayne McLaren, a former athlete turned auto mechanic, dreams of getting out of tiny Cut Bank, Montana the coldest town in America. But his effort to do so sets in motion a deadly series of events that change his life and the life of the town forever...

Locked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.

After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.

Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.