Jeannot Szwarc

In 1972, college theater student Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) celebrates the success of his first play. During the celebration, he is approached by an elderly woman who places an antique pocket watch into his hand and pleads "Come back to me." Richard does not recognize the woman, who returns to her own residence afterward. Eight years later, Richard is a successful playwright living in Chicago, but has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is struggling with writer's block. Feeling stressed from writing his play, he decides to take a break and travels out of town to the Grand Hotel. While looking at a display in the hotel's museum, Richard becomes entranced by a strangely captivating photograph of a mysterious, beautiful young woman. With the help of Arthur Biehl (Bill Irwin), an old man who has been at the hotel since 1910, Richard discovers that she is Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), a famous early 20th-century stage actress. Upon digging deeper, he learns that she was the aged woman who gave him the pocket watch eight years earlier, but died afterward later that same evening. Richard visits Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright), Elise's former housekeeper and companion. While there, he discovers a music box that plays the 18th variation on Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff, his favorite musical piece. Among Elise's personal effects is a book on time travel written by an old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney (George Voskovec). Richard becomes obsessed with traveling back to 1912 and meeting Elise, who he has fallen in love. He seeks out Professor Finney, who believes that he briefly traveled through time through the power of self-hypnosis. To accomplish this process, one must remove all things from sight that are related to the current time. Finney warns Richard that such a process would leave one very weak physically, possibly dangerously so. Back in his hotel room, Richard dresses himself in an early 20th-century suit, and attempts to will himself into 1912 using tape-recorded suggestions. The attempt fails because he lacks real conviction, but after finding an old guest book from 1912 containing his signature, Richard realizes that he will eventually succeed. Richard again hypnotizes himself (without the benefit of a modern tape recorder) and allows his absolute faith in his eventual success to become the tipping point or trigger for the journey back through time. He slowly falls asleep and awakens to the sound of whinnying horses in the year 1912. Richard looks all over the hotel for Elise, even meeting Arthur Biehl as a little boy, but has no luck finding Elise. Finally, he stumbles upon Elise walking by a tree near the lake. She seems to swoon slightly when seeing him, but then suddenly asks upon meeting him "Is it you?" McKenna's overbearing manager, William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer), abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Richard stubbornly continues to pursue Elise until she agrees to accompany him on a stroll through the surrounding idyllic landscape. Richard ultimately asks why Elise wondered aloud "Is it you?" and she replies that Robinson somehow knows that she will meet a man who will change her life forever, and that she should be afraid. Richard then shows Elise the same pocket watch which she will eventually give him 60 years in the future. Upon returning to the hotel, Elisa invites Richard to her play. He attends the comical-farce and she, in an almost trance-like state, recites an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During intermission, he finds her posing formally for a photograph. Upon spotting Richard, Elise breaks into a radiant smile and veritably glows with soft affection. Just then, the camera's flash goes off and forever captures that wonderous moment in time. We now know that this picture is the same one that Richard will see 68 years later on a wall near the lobby at the Grand Hotel. He later receives a letter from Robinson asking to meet him immediately and saying that it is a matter of life and death. Robinson wants Richard to leave Elise, saying it is for her own good. Richard thinks Robinson is in love with Elise, but Robinson states that he is obsessed with her being a star and has no romantic interest in her. When Richard professes his love for her, Robinson has him bound and locked inside the stables. Robinson then informs Elise that Richard has left her and isn't the one, though she doesn't believe him and professes her love for Richard. Richard wakes up the next morning and escapes his constraints. He discovers that the acting troupe has already left for Denver, though Elise has returned to the hotel to find him. Richard then goes out to the hotel's capricious deck and begins giving into despair, but presently perceives Elise calling his name and running towards him. They return to his room together and it is there that Elise becomes truly intimate with a man for the very first time in her life. Later that evening, she asks Richard to marry him and he readily accepts. She then informs him that the first thing she will do for him is to buy him a new suit (the suit Richard has been wearing the entire time in 1912 is about 10 to 15 years out of style). Richard begins to show his true love how wonderful the suit is on account of its many pockets. He is alarmed when he reaches into one and finds a shiny modern Lincoln penny with the mint date of 1979. This modern item breaks his hypnotic suggestion, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards from 1912 as though through a tunnel, and Elise screams his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably back to the present. Richard wakes up in the same room he just left, although now it is 68 years later. He is very weak and physically and emotionally exhausted from his trip through time and from the devastating unexpected return. He scrambles desperately back to his own suite and attempts to hypnotize himself again, without success. After wandering around the hotel property and sitting interminably at the places where he spent time with Elise, Richard eventually retires to his room and remains there unmoving for days until discovered by Arthur and the hotel manager; they send for a doctor and paramedics. Richard suddenly smiles and sees himself drifting above his body and is drawn to a light shining through the nearby window, where he is reunited forever with Elise.

When signs of a new man-eater begin to wash up on Amity`s beaches, Police Chief Brody must convince the town of the danger and kill the monster.

Scientist James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman) delivers his wife, Carrie (Joanna Miles), to a church sermon at a country parish, then drives to work at a local university. During a sermon about God's "gentle caress," a major earthquake strikes and nearly demolishes the chapel, but no one is killed. While the parishioners evacuate, Carrie grabs her Bible and calls James from a payphone, thereby missing her ride home with Henry Tacker and his son, Kenny. As the two men approach the Tacker farm, their pickup truck explodes in flames. Young Norma Tacker (Jamie Smith Jackson) watches in horror as her father and brother burn. That night, Norma is retrieved from her vigil inside the burned truck by her boyfriend, Gerald Metbaum (Richard Gilliland). Both are unaware that the vehicle is hosting killer cockroaches. Returning home, Norma retires while Gerald hears strange noises and surveys the property to discover large, incendiary cockroaches near a fault line created during the earthquake. A cat is killed when a cockroach com-busts on its head. Sometime later, Gerald visits the biology class of his former professor, James Parmiter, who lectures that modern man has lost his innate ability to communicate with other living creatures. When the students leave, the two men eat lunch at the cafeteria and Gerald reports his entomological discovery at the Tacker farm, the earthquake's epicenter. When James argues that fire-producing insects do not exist, Gerald shows him the dead cat. James goes to the farm with Gerald and is astonished that the cockroaches are able to make fire by rubbing their legs together. He also observes one cockroach feeding on ashes. Soon, the town is besieged by fires in most of its buildings and James calls the mayor to warn him about the bugs, but the mayor is unavailable. Back at the university laboratory, James's colleague, Mark Ross (Alan Fudge), examines a cockroach specimen and reports that the insects eat carbon and are indestructible to any blunt force. James wonders how the cockroaches travel from place to place, since they cannot fly. At the Parmiter home, Carrie prepares to leave for the Tacker funeral with Mark's wife, Sylvia, and James returns in time to say goodbye. Alone in the house, James is visited by a handyman named Charlie, who reports strange noises coming from James's car. James discovers cockroaches feasting on his engine and orders Charlie to leave. He then lures the insects into a trap with a freshly burned newspaper. Meanwhile at the Tacker funeral, Carrie gives Norma and her surviving brother, Tom, a handkerchief that Henry gave her at the church just before the earthquake struck. When Norma, Tom, and Gerald return home to pack up the house, Norma answers the telephone and a cockroach, nesting in the receiver, attacks her ear. Gerald extracts the bug with a burned newspaper and Norma is sent to the hospital. Meanwhile, James drives to the farm, which is now smoking from the fires triggered by the cockroaches. He impales one of the insects, causing it to explode. Excited by his discovery, James phones Mark and they meet at the laboratory. James explains that the bugs are slow-moving because of atmospheric pressure, and they are suffering from decompression sickness. Before the earthquake, the cockroaches lived entirely underground in a dense atmosphere, but now they are struggling to stay alive. James suspects the insects are ancient creatures trapped underneath the Earth's surface during a prehistoric volcanic eruption. When Mark adds that the cockroaches cannot reproduce and that they will soon self-destruct in the Earth's atmosphere, James is despondent. Sometime later, James asks Gerald to build a large pressure tank. Gerald hopes that James' experiments will help Norma recover from the cockroach attack and agrees. Back at the Parmiter home, Carrie discovers a surprise birthday cake that Sylvia hid in the garage. She brings it inside, unaware that a cockroach is clinging to the box. The insect attaches itself to Carrie's shirt, then sets her hair on fire, causing the woman to ignite. Later, Mark arrives at the laboratory to find James paralyzed with grief. Seeking to make sense of the tragedy, James returns to the Tacker farm and sees the burned shells of deceased cockroaches. He captures a sole surviving insect and places it in Gerald's newly crafted pressure tank, muttering, "I will make you live." He then introduces an average household cockroach into the tank and the two bugs copulate. Sometime later, Gerald and Norma return to the Tacker home, but he refuses them entry. James is angered to learn that the location of his hideout has been leaked to Mark. The couple leave food for James, then drive away. Days pass and the cockroach mating is successful. However, the female "fire bug" guards her egg case and James is unable to perform experiments. Several more days later, the egg case increases in size and James transfers it out of the pressure tank and into a box. There, the egg hatches numerous infants that grow to adult cockroaches within five hours. When James reintroduces the mother cockroach to her offspring, they kill her and James sobs. Soon, cockroaches escape from their box and feast on James's uncooked steak; he discovers that they only consume raw meat and eat collaboratively, as a "single unit." That night, James awakens to find cockroaches sucking blood from his chest and secures them in the pressure tank. Over the next several days, James suspects that the cockroaches listen to his voice and watch him, as well as form symbolic patterns with their bodies to communicate messages. Late one night, he discovers that the insects have escaped the tank to form the letters of his last name on the wall, along with the message: "We live." Terrified, James realizes the bugs have great powers and runs from the house to get them more food. Meanwhile, Sylvia takes a taxi to the Tacker home, intending to give James the Bible that Carrie held so dear. She screams upon finding the house infested with cockroaches and a cassette tape of James' voice, repeating: "I've gone too far." As the insects burn her face, Sylvia runs outside and dies in the barn. Feasting on their kill, the bugs procreate and climb into the fault line. When James returns, he discovers the insects missing. That evening, Mark arrives, looking for Sylvia, and notices that James has become mentally unhinged; unshaven and disheveled. Although James orders his colleague to leave, he promises to return to the university in a few days. With Mark gone, James is horrified when he discovers Sylvia's body. He grabs the Bible and tries to phone the authorities, but the line has been severed by the mutant cockroaches. Hearing the insects, James wanders outside to see a bright red light emanating from the fault as giant cockroaches, now equipped with wings, fly away. Although James tries to escape into the house, the creatures smash through the window in pursuit and set him and the whole house on fire. As James tumbles out of the front door in flames, he falls into the fault and the cockroaches follow. The fissure closes, trapping the cockroaches underneath the Earth's surface yet again.