Joanne Woodward

Comedy western in which a traveler bets more money than he can afford in a poker game, and unusual events follow. A naive couple and a child arrive to the town on the way to San Antonio, Texas to buy a farm there. There is a poker game between the richest men in the region. The man cannot resist it and though he is a very bad poker player, enters the game betting all the money of his family. In the climax of the game he suffers a heart-attack. His wife then takes his place in the table. That's the only way of recovering their savings. But there is a little problem. Can anybody explain to her how to play poker? —Miguel A. Andrade <andrade@gredos.cnb.uam.es> A couple with a young son arrive in the town of Laredo, just as the five richest men of the area are settling down to play the biggest game of poker of the year. When the wife disappears, the husband, after watching a few hands, joins in the game only to lose most of the families savings. As the wife returns, he finds that he has dealt himself a winning hand, but does not have the cash to continue. In the following argument he collapses, and his wife has no choice but to continue with his hand in order to win back their money, the only problem being she can't play poker. —MIKE.WILSON6@BTINTERNET.COM

The fashion industry and Paris provide the setting for a comedy surrounding the mistaken impression that Samantha Blake is a high-priced call girl. Steve Sherman is the journalist interviewing her for insights on her profession. Having once played and lost in love, twenty-five year old Samantha Blake has immersed herself in her job as the chief ladies fashions buyer for discount J. Bergner's Fifth Avenue in New York. In other words, she scowls the high end shops at night stealing their designs which Bergner then produces and sells for a fraction of the cost. She has placed as much space between herself and romance by dressing like a man and going by the moniker Sam. Steve Sherman could be a great journalist, but his womanizing always seems to get in the way. Steve and Sam meet on the same New York to Paris flight, Sam who is travelling there with her boss Joe Bergner and her wisecracking colleague Lena O'Connor, who is secretly in love with Joe, to visit the Paris design houses under the guidance of vivacious Felicienne Corbeau, while Steve has been exiled there by his boss, International Press chief Bertram Chalmers, as Steve's iron-clad contract won't allow Chalmers to fire him until the expiry of that contract, Chalmer's hope being that Steve kills himself among the bevy of French beauties in the process. Sam and Steve immediately butt heads being the antithesis of each other when it comes to love and romance. Lena has her own romance problems as she can see that she will have to fight Felicienne for Joe, which is made all the more difficult in Felicienne being a truly nice woman. But being in the city of love opens Sam's eyes to the fact that she really wants love in her life. Making herself over to an extreme, she meets Steve, who out of circumstance doesn't recognize her as Sam and who believes she is a prostitute named Mimi. Steve's initial interest in Mimi is purely as a source for stories, he using her background to equate the French view of love and sex with sport. But as they spend more time together, they begin to fall for each other, the question then being if they can love each other as plain old Steve and Samantha. —Huggo

A guitar-playing drifter wanders into a small Mississippi town and inflames two troubled women. Having fled New Orleans to avoid arrest, Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier (Val), a trouble-prone, guitar-playing drifter, wanders into a small Mississippi town aiming to go straight and lead a quiet, simple life. He gets a job in the dry goods store owned by a sexually frustrated middle-aged woman named Lady Torrance, whose sadistic elderly husband, Jabe, is dying. With an obscure past and passions of her own, Lady finds herself attracted to Val, pulsating with passion anew, as he presents an arousing antidote to her bitter marriage and small-town humdrum life. Also vying for Val's attention are the alcoholic, sex-crazed Carol Cutrere and the unhappily married Vee Talbot. Each brings her share of problems into Val's plans, himself equally tempted by these women, though he succumbs to the charms of Lady. But the jealous Jabe is friends with Sheriff Talbot, Vee's husband, and things can't possibly end well for Val and Lady. The screenplay by Meade Roberts and Tennessee Williams is based on Williams' own 1957 play, "Orpheus Descending". —pdlussier1 Having been in and out of trouble with the law from his fast living, Valentine Xavier, a drifter and musician who played primarily in New Orleans, decides to turn over a new leaf when he reaches Two Rivers County in the American deep south. With the help of the sheriff's wife Vee Talbot, Xavier is able to get a job as a clerk at Torrance Mercantile in Vee knowing that Jabe Torrance will soon be coming home from the Memphis hospital, and will likely never be able to get out of bed in the apartment above the store on his own, leaving his wife, Lady Torrance, to run the store by herself. Xavier, in his trademark snakeskin jacket, exudes a masculine sexuality, which increases business at the store by all the admiring young women of the county now frequenting it. Who lets him know in no uncertain terms that she is interested is party girl Carol Cutrere, whose fast ways has had her banned from Two Rivers, period, plus a number of other businesses outside of the county line. The one female in the county openly stating that she is not interested is Lady, despite not loving or ever having loved hard and violent Jabe, she putting any past infidelity in search of happiness behind her. The interactions between Xavier and Lady lead to them once again striving for happiness in their lives, which is interrupted by many of the men, including Sheriff Jordan Talbot, looking out for Jabe's interests, they who, as a collective, have an equally violent outlook as the answer to life's problems. —Huggo Valentine Xavier is a traveling musician who has decided to change his lifestyle and do away with haunts and nightclubs. By the will of fate, he ends up in a provincial town, where he gets a job as a salesman in Jabe Torrance's store. Between him and Lady Torrance, the wife of the owner of the store, there is sympathy. But the young and eccentric Carol Cutrere also claims the guy's heart. Under the circumstances, he will have to make a difficult choice. —Tango Papa

A ruthless college student resorts to murder in an attempt to marry an heiress. Student Bud Corliss is wooing Dorother Kingship purely for her father's mining fortune. When he finds she is pregnant he realises she is likely to be disinherited, so cleverly stages her suicide. After a couple of months her sister back home finds evidence to question the suicide verdict, but by then has a new boyfriend of her own... —Jeremy Perkins {J-26} State-run Stoddard University students Bud Corliss and Dorothy Kingship are secretly dating, they not having told anyone for fear of working class Bud not being accepted by Dorothy's hyper-critical father, wealthy businessman Leo Kingship, owner of Kingship Mines. Mr. Kingship's hard and critical nature led to he divorcing his wife solely for a "mistake" on her part years earlier, and has led to a strained relationship with both Dorothy and her sister, Ellen. Bud even calling her Dorie instead of Dorothy is one thing she loves about him in distinguishing him from anything in her past life. Bud aspires to get out of his working class situation. Their relationship hits a major bump when Dorie informs him that she is pregnant with his child. While Dorie wants to get married, she seeing it as an inevitability in they loving each other, Bud, stating the problem of her father, sees, unstated, almost anything else as preferable to marriage, especially at this stage of his life in it jeopardizing getting out of that working class life. Without any viable option that Dorie would agree to, Bud ends up with the idea of murdering her. While he seems committed to killing her, what happens is affected by Mr. Kingship in his relationship both with Dorothy and Ellen, Ellen in falling under the spell of a man herself, and Gordon Grant, Dorie's math tutor who has another part-time job which makes him naturally questioning and suspicious. —Huggo Bud Corliss is an ambitious college student with big plans for himself and an heiress, Dorothy Kingship. But then Dorothy goes and gets herself pregnant. It's his child, too, of course; but this ruins everything. Her moralistic father will disown her and will certainly never accept him. It seems he's trapped. Bud's mother knows something is troubling her son, but he won't talk to her about it. All she knows is that Bud doesn't want to turn out like his father, with holes in his shoes. He doesn't have to worry. As his mother says, when he turns his mind to something, he does it. Unknown to her, his thoughts have turned to murder. —J. Spurlin