A dead husband turns up in a motel room, but the stunning woman he was with vanishes, leaving no fingerprints. When police show scant interest in the case, the rich widow falls off the wagon and swears revenge. With $7 million all to herself, the widow expects to track the temptress down and make her suffer.
A seemingly happy married couple have a fatal car crash. The husband dies and the surviving wife is suspected by the police of intentionally causing the accident. She tries to "prove" her innocence by taking two polygraph tests. The results confuse her and she comes to believe the "lie detector machines" know the real truth.
Wielding a gun, Edward Smalley invades the office of attorney J. Marvin Bean. The attorney has no idea what this is all about until forced to remember an incident in World War II when Smalley had been accused of treason, and Bean was his court-appointed military attorney. The trial was cancelled before Smalley was given a chance to exonerate himself; the charges were dropped, but the accused man feels that he has never truly been cleared.
A "surfer bum","600 miles from a wave", is roaming the back-roads of the U.S. in his woody wagon when it breaks down. His "rescuers" include a small town sheriff who has a habit of his prisoners escaping and then being hunted down and murdered by his bloodhounds. When the surfer is seen as a threat to report the goings-on he is arrested and is next in line to "escape".
A professional craps player (who is habitually broke) is offered backing of up to $1,000,000 to play for a wealthy Southerner who has the goal of winning $200,000 from a Las Vegas casino. If successful they will split the winnings evenly. Complications include the craps players' love interest-and her boyfriend.
A woman enters a private estate which has access to a lake, strips down to a bathing suit and goes swimming. She is pulled underwater by a mysterious scuba diver and held until she drowns. The local police determine her death to be purely an accident but an investigator from out of town is not so sure about that.
In Los Angeles,a wealthy man has a brief scuffle with a Spanish laborer and is accidentally hurt. Feeling the incident was actually a vicious attack,he vows to track down the Spaniard. He does find the man's daughter and by accident causes her to become hurt. Now the Spaniard becomes the hunter and is out for revenge.
A vagrant teenage girl matches the description of a child that went missing years earlier. The mother of the missing child is a bit to quick in dismissing this girl as her child even though everything matches. The police had long suspected the mother of murdering her child. They send the girl to live with the mother in hopes of bringing back childhood memories or possibly solving a murder.
Five men trapped in an underground Research Center determine that their oxygen will run out before they can be rescued. They decide to have a "lottery" to choose who will have to die so the rest can live. After being saved,the four survivors are charged with murder and find the outcome could be fatal.
A young man returns to Santa Marta, California after seven years, having been paroled on a ten year term for raping a local girl.He finds resentment from his father and the townsfolk. What no one will believe is that he is innocent. His "plan" to clear himself runs into a problem-he is set up to take a fall again.
In 1943 a somewhat shell-shocked pilot is put back into action after being shot down for the second time in his total of four missions. However, he is shot down again and ends up in a German POW camp. He escapes to smuggle out intelligence information. On his way back to England he plays a game of cat-and-mouse with the Nazis.
An overly stressed, financially strapped, high powered businessman goes on a sales trip and wakes up suffering from amnesia after being assaulted. He settles in a small town, meets a nice girl and gets a simple satisfying job. Then his memory returns. He goes back to his old life and finds unhappiness. What will he do?
An "overdeveloped genius" teenage boy has periodic fits of violent anger. Accompanied by a C.I.D. officer and a psychiatric nurse he is driven by car from his home in L.A. to a military installation in Kansas for diagnosis. During the journey several odd incidents occur and eventually the boy is missing. Is it kidnapping or foul play?
In Majorca,Spain the U.S. Special Envoy is investigated for accepting bribes from organized crime while in his former position of D.A. The U.S. government uses an unlikely undercover operative - an international playboy worth 18 million dollars. The playboy begins the search for evidence by romancing the Special Envoy's secretary.
Police authorities in Chicago are seeking serial killer "Georgie Porgie." His M.O. is to murder blondes with a "cheap" reputation. He was thought to have "gone south for the winter" after a killing in Tennessee. But he has returned to Chicago and kills a woman in the middle of a strip club. Georgie Porgie is somewhere on the Illinois Tollway. However, the manhunt is complicated by a missile convoy moving through the Chicago area.
A mysterious unfriendly man comes to a remote mountain town to buy supplies and causes the locals to wonder why he is there. He further puzzles them when he sets up a homestead next to a long played out mine and puts up a 'No Trespassing' sign. Meanwhile, the owner of the town's General Store and his daughter are battling their own demons.
A divorcee who skips the country and heads to Brazil, her ex-husband would normally be happy to see the back of her; unfortunately she took $2 million of his money before leaving. Private eye Forsythe is hired to bring her back. And just to keep Forsythe honest, a second private eye is engaged to bring him back.
An alcoholic, loudmouth, unemployed man on the verge of losing his wife and son is arrested for murder. He actually is a witness to who committed the crime but no one except a family friend believes him to be innocent. He becomes a hero to his neighbors as the murdered man was a drug dealer and begins to revel in the glory. When his friend finds the real killer it may be too late as the "hero" is now fully prepared to go to prison.
In the San Diego area (at Coronado) a family heirloom/good luck piece ring is sold by a man's mother to raise money. A spinsterish school teacher on vacation from Philadelphia buys the ring at a gift shop and the man, just too late to buy it back, decides to romance her to recover the good luck piece. As time passes the relationship becomes more important than the ring.
In San Francisco,an elderly cabinet maker has saved $62,000 and does not want his wife to inherit it when he dies. A lawyer explains how the man can leave it to his intended-an orphaned niece.The man fears his wife is trying to kill him and wants to provide for his niece and her love, an abused deaf and dumb cousin. The man is right-he is murdered. The cousin is blamed and later saves the niece from the murderous wife.
France 1944 and in a secret camp men prepare for a daring mission. The unusual thing is that they are German soldiers who will masquerade as U.S. troops in order to cause confusion and buy time for a last gasp German Offensive. Later, five U.S. G.I.'s travel toward the front lines and begin to suspect each other of being a German infiltrator.
In tiny Cedar Bay a tightly wound, much decorated Korean War veteran has plans to establish a para-military organization called the U.S. Vigilance Committee. Local teenagers show the man no respect and later decide to play a Halloween "prank" on him.The prank causes the re-awakening of a bad experience the man suffered during the war-and may lead to death.
In small-town Hainesville, California a kindly jewelry store owner feels guilty after killing a young Mexican man during a hold-up attempt at his store. The boy's sister is angry and wants revenge. She takes advantage of the jeweler's compassion and loneliness and gets close to him-a little too close for both of them. Later, she finds the man who truly was to blame for her brother's death.
A military air transport plane on a 15 hour flight from Tokyo to Seattle, Washington has engine and compass problems during a hurricane and wanders into Soviet air space. An emergency landing on uninhabited Russian soil with rough terrain is complicated further by the fact that one of the plane's passengers is an important Soviet defector.
Just outside of Reno, Nevada, five men with diversely different backgrounds ambush an armored car truck and make away with $3,000,000 in cash. The men make their getaway to Los Angeles using a gas tanker truck in which the money and three of the men are hidden inside. The trip is full of uncertainty as they fight amongst themselves while, unknown to them, a veteran police inspector is cleverly piecing clues together.
A notorious cat burglar has his activities closely watched by the police so he trains an "apprentice" to carry out his well planned thefts while at the same time providing himself with safe alibis. When the cocky trainee finds he enjoys the money and lifestyle being a "high class thief" brings, he decides to go into business for himself and eliminate the old pro.
During the Prohibition days following WWI, Tom Threepersons is a Cherokee with a violent past, rides into a small border town in Texas. He finds his old captain, Harly Clay, who wants him to come to work with him in the Alcoholic Beverage Unit. Across the border in Mexico is Charlie Raines, a bootlegger with a hired killer who keeps the liquor flowing. A showdown is only a matter of time in coming for a man looking for peace.
Near Bodie Air Force Base, a mild mannered dentist has problems getting respect from his wife and son following a robbery by a junkie over his reluctance to use a gun. Further complicating his life is his slightly mentally disabled son, who finds perverse joy in teasing a somewhat touched and lonely old lady neighbor.
An American wife arrives in Havana,Cuba to beg for the release of her "adventurer" husband who has been jailed on charges of espionage. He actually was in Cuba trying to recover $1,000,000 in Mafia money left behind after The 1958 Revolution. The Communist authorities want the money and the woman enlists a reporter to help her find it and clear her husband. Meanwhile, anti-Castro patriots lurk in the background.
Four men with various motives plan to "make use of" printing plates recently made in Chicago for a South American country's currency.They will try to commit the crime while on the train from Chicago to Los Angeles from which the plates are being shipped. An unexpected injury could "derail" their attempt.
A S.A.C. (Strategic Air Command) bomber on a routine patrol mission from March Air Force Base in the U.S. to Spain-and-back suffers an on-board fire. The co-pilot,who has dodged the responsibility of becoming a lead pilot,is suddenly thrust into command when the pilot is severely injured due to the fire. Can the co-pilot conquer his fears and master his inadequacies?
An industrial research scientist who "married the boss's daughter" feels pressured to gain a promotion so he can afford her. When the chance to make money by selling company secrets is offered he takes it. Later, to his regret, he finds the choice is no longer his-he will continue to provide information or his wife will die.
Crime busting District Attorney Paul Maytric's (Leslie Nielsen) wife is killed by a car bomb that was meant for him. He quits as DA and becomes a vigilante out for revenge. After a local gangster is killed, Maytric thinks he may be able to tie the murder to mob boss Jack Sallas (Richard Conte), who up to this point in time is 'untouchable'. Sallas has one of the local police, Detective Phil Scanlon (Larry Pennell) in his pocket, who unknown to Sallas is shaking down Elmer Pike (Macdonald Carey) and his casino, and Maytric needs to find out why. Maytric thinks Pike's daughter Elizabeth (Indus Arthur) may be able to help him, and decides to approach her, but is it too late?
Paul Bryan, a lawyer with only a short time left to live, decides to spend his days hobnobbing with the jet-set on the French Riviera.
A U.S. scientist obsessed with putting an end to war by creating the ultimate weapon, endangers his marriage by neglecting his much-younger wife. He's a perfectionist, which riles his military overseers, who keep pressuring the physicist for quick results, because they fear he'll be nabbed by enemy agents.
Paul Campbell (a pre-Hawaii Five-0 Jack Lord) has a dream - hitting a gold strike. His wife Dorothy (Lisabeth Hush) has heard it all many, many times before, and wants Paul to give it all up for a normal job and life. The problem is money - Paul and Dorothy have none. Besides being on credit with 'Pop' Tullett (Broderick Crawford), the local general store owner, they live in one of his cabins. Pop is about ready to draw the line with Paul, but he has a yen for Dorothy and thinks there may be more than one way to get payed back. When Dorothy's brother Chris (Andrew Prine) returns from his stint in Vietnam, Paul gets him to go in as partners. They find the gold strike, but Paul miscalculated the claim and Pop takes advantage of the situation. Pop confronts Paul, who realizes he's lost everything and is ready to give up prospecting for the sake of Dorothy. Chris has different ideas and goes after Pop. After a tragic accident, Paul tries to get Chris to come to his senses, but is it too late?
Nazi scientist Jeremias Lipp having successfully eluded the War Crimes commission, prepares to leave his Swiss refuge to take a job with a Middle Eastern government. But a group of Israeli agents have no intention of allowing Lipp to continue his activities. They spearhead the scheme to kidnap Lipp and deliver him to his accusers.
The meek and hard working Lester Pennell, who worked at the Alburn Gallery, was displaying the silver spectre of Louie XIV monarch of France, worth two million dollars. Lester lost his job by being too honest and being a "doormat". Lester struck back in order to impress his girlfriend and change his wimpy image,by undermining a complicated and interesting plan to break in and steal the spectre.
A geologist from Vancouver,Canada comes to the U.S. to see his old college roommate who is now a reclusive Howard Hughes-ish multi-millionaire industrialist. He has a mining investment to propose but is not allowed to see his friend, is rudely treated by the man's staff and is almost murdered. After being "bought off", he persists and finds an unexpected result.
A washed-up race car driver named Tony Camion whose beloved brother is killed in a race that he should not have been driving. The brother only drove the car because Tony could not do it himself. In an effort to redeem himself to his brother's family, Tony changes his life insurance policy to make his brother's family the beneficiary and hires an unknown hit man to kill him on July 20th. He then sets about making sure his brother's family has everything they need prior to his demise.
When a senile VIP is accidentally locked into an "impenatrable" safe, a "reformed" safe cracker is recruited from State Prison to rescue him. The "Human Can Opener" is not enthusiastic about the offer and, despite his loyal girlfriend, hatches a rescue plan with a twist.
The pilot episode that was broadcast in the summer of 1963, before the series began. A notorious cat burglar has his activities closely watched by the police so he trains an "apprentice" to carry out his well planned thefts while at the same time providing himself with safe alibis.When the cocky trainee finds he enjoys the money and lifestyle being a "high class thief" brings, he decides to go into business for himself and eliminate the old pro.
Nightmare in Chicago is a 1964 suspense thriller crime television film produced and directed by Robert Altman, based on the novel Death on the Turnpike by William P. McGivern. It was originally filmed as an episode of the NBC series Kraft Suspense Theatre titled "Once Upon a Savage Night" before being expanded into the TV movie.