Denver Pyle

A man kidnaps the wife of a cavalry commander in order to exchange her for a Gatling gun that's being sold by a gun runner. Joe Baker has a dream. He wants to do 'something big.' When he needs a Gatling gun to accomplish this, he seeks out a black marketeer. The price he wants for the gun? A woman! So Baker kidnaps a woman off of the stagecoach, only to find that she is the wife of the commandant of the local Cavalry detachment. Things get further complicated when a girl named Dover McBride shows up. She has come to force Baker to marry her and return east, as he promised to do four years earlier. —Alfred Jingle Intent on making it big--before his tough fiancée, Dover McBride, arrives from cold Pennsylvania--instead, the grizzled renegade, Joe Baker, finds himself back to square one and penniless. Still unsuccessful after four long years in the dusty New Mexico Territory, Joe knows that time is running up; however, in a desperate attempt to fulfil his aspiration, he summons up the strength for one last heist. As a result, one precarious agreement and yet another bad decision later, Baker has one more problem to deal with: the veteran U.S. Cavalry commander, Colonel Morgan. Under those circumstances, will Joe manage to pull off a surprise victory? Is he destined to do Something Big in his life? —Nick Riganas

The players in an ongoing poker game are being mysteriously killed off, one by one. After a card shark is caught cheating, he is taken out and lynched by the drunkards he was playing against. Soon afterwards, the men who were in the lynch mob start being murdered, one after another; all by hanging, strangling, or smothering. Who will be killed next and who is responsible? Is it one of the original party seeking to cover their accursed deed, or perhaps the mysterious Rev. Jonathan Rudd, who has recently arrived in town?

In the middle of the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker meet when Clyde tries to steal Bonnie's mother's car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued with Clyde, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They do some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative. The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss. The three are joined by Clyde's brother, Buck and his wife, Blanche, a preacher's daughter. Soon a long-simmering feud between Bonnie and Blanche begins; the once-prim Blanche views Bonnie as a harpy corrupting her husband and brother-in-law, while Bonnie sees Blanche as an incompetent, shrill shrew. Bonnie and Clyde turn from pulling small-time heists to robbing banks. Their exploits also become more violent. When C.W., the get-away driver, botches a bank robbery by parallel parking the car, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face after he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who is captured and humiliated by the outlaws, then set free. After a raid kills Buck, injures Bonnie and Clyde, and leaves Blanche sightless and in police custody, Hamer tricks Blanche, whose eyes are bandaged, into revealing the name of C.W. Moss, known in the press only as an unnamed accomplice. The Ranger locates Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. hiding at the house of C.W.'s father, who thinks Bonnie and Clyde -- and an elaborate tattoo -- have corrupted his son. He strikes a bargain with Hamer: in exchange for a lenient jail sentence for C.W., he helps set a trap for the outlaws. When Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed while stopped by the side of the road, the police riddle their bodies with bullets in a blood bath.

In 1880s Arizona, General Crook and his troops are trying to subdue the last tribe of Apache led by Geronimo. An Apache warrior who defies U.S. attempts to bring the Indians under control grapples with an array of U.S. soldiers sent to subdue his revolt. Sympathetic scouts seek to bring Geronimo back to the reservation before he is hunted down. —Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>

In China, in 1943, after the Japanese have cut off supply lines and American pilots are ferrying food, medical supplies and refugees, Capt. Cliff Brandon (Victor Mature) lands at the American air base in Kunming after a flight from India. Cliff, who has been saddled with an inexperienced crew, has become demoralized and morose as a result of his war experiences and spends most of his free time drinking in Sadie's Place, a local bar where he is often propositioned by young women. One night, Cliff leaves the bar in a drunken state and encounters an old man (W.T. Chang) in the street, who offers him the company of a young woman. Unable to communicate with the old man, Cliff wakes up the next morning to find that the girl, Shu-Jen (Li Hua Li), has followed him home and intends to stay. Father Cairns (Ward Bond), a priest who operates St. Joseph's Mission, visits Cliff for coffee, and Cliff quickly explains the misunderstanding about the girl, then orders Ellington (Danny Chang), a young Chinese boy who spends time at the airfield, to get rid of her. Later, after Cairns finds Shu-Jen outside Sadie's expecting to get a job as a "hostess," he takes her with him to the mission. When Cliff visits Cairns for a game of chess, the priest explains that Shu-Jen is one of 11 children, three of whom have died, and that Cliff, in his drunken state, agreed to hire her as a bonded servant for three months. Cairns adds that pride decrees that she act as his housekeeper and that the money will certainly help her family. Initially, Cliff refuses, but relents and takes Shu-Jen to Alice Nichols (Elaine Devry), an American Red Cross canteen worker, to find clean clothes for her. Meanwhile, Dan O'Neill (Stuart Whitman), one of Cliff's crew, is romancing Mona Perkins (Ann McCrea), another Red Cross volunteer. At his home, Cliff instructs Ellington to tell Shu-Jen that she is to be only his housekeeper, then asks the boy to stay with him as house guest and chaperon. After Col. Wiley (Denver Pyle) assigns Cliff to fly refugees to Calcutta, he returns with medical supplies for Cairns and a small brooch for Shu-Jen. However, Cliff has a malaria attack and, delirious, allows Shu-Jen to lie beside him for comfort. Cliff recovers, but goes to tell Cairns that "something happened" and that Shu-Jen should go home. Upon discovering that Shu-Jen is pregnant, Alice, a war widow who has become romantically involved with crew member Phil Gates (Bob Mathias), tells Cliff that he has neither honor, nor decency. When Cliff returns home, he finds that Shu-Jen has just left for her home. Cliff drives after her, finds her and tells her that, although it has taken him a while to realize it, he is in love with her. However, when Cliff enlists Ellington's help in formally proposing marriage, Shu-Jen declines, fearful that their marriage will create problems for him. With Cairns's help, Cliff finally convinces Shu-Jen, and they are married in a traditional Chinese ceremony. At the ceremony, Wiley tells Cliff and his crew that they have to leave the next day to fly out of a different base. Later, Cliff, now a changed man, receives word that Shu-Jen has had a baby girl and a few weeks later, when Alice and Mona are reassigned to the same base, they bring Shu-Jen, who has learned some English, the baby and Ellington with them. After a successful mission to drop supplies to troops on an offensive in Burma, Cliff and his crew learn that their airbase is being bombed by the Japanese. Although fired on by enemy planes, Cliff manages to land and plans to evacuate the base. Tragically, he learns that Shu-Jen has been killed in the attack and that the baby is missing. As Wylie has also been killed, Cliff is now in command and orders the plane to leave without him. Cliff then goes back to where Shu-Jen was killed and hears a baby crying. In a pile of rubble, Cliff finds his daughter alive, under the body of Ellington, who died protecting her. A Japanese plane returns to strafe the base and Cliff is hit. He places his identification tags in the baby's hands, then mans an anti-aircraft gun and shoots down several planes before being killed in a direct hit. In 1957, at Los Angeles International Airport, Alice and Phil, Dan and Mona, and others from Cliff's crew eagerly await the arrival of a flight. After many years of searching, Father Cairns has located Cliff and Shu-Jen's daughter in an orphanage in Hong Kong and has sent her to America to be looked after by her parents' friends. A teenager (Tita Aragon), displaying Cliff's dog tags, descends the steps from the plane, and they all embrace.

An officer accused of cowardice volunteers to bring back General Custers's body after Little Big Horn. Returning to Fort Lincoln, Captain Benson learns of Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn. At the inquiry as Custer's Officers blame Custer for the defeat, Benson tries to defend him. But Benson was suspiciously absent at the time of the battle and is now despised by the troops. So when an order to retrieve the bodies from the battlefield arrives, Benson volunteers for the dangerous mission of returning back into Indian territory. —Maurice VanAuken <mvanauken@a1access.net>