Nicholas Ray

Hair is a musical focusing on the lives of two young men in the Vietnam era against the backdrop of the hippie culture. Set in the late 1960s, Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) is a naive Oklahoman sent off to see the sites of New York before beginning his enlistment in the US Army. On his arrival he observes a group of hippies lead by George Berger (Treat Williams) begging for change from a trio of horseback riders. Later, Claude catches the runaway horse the hippies have rented and uses it to show off his riding skills to one of the trio of strangers--an upper class débutante. While returning the horse to the hippies, Claude accepts their invitation to be shown around the city. In the course of a single evening, Claude gets stoned smoking marijuana and then is introduced to the race and class issues of the 1960's. The morning after, George finds a scrap of newspaper identifying the mysterious girl. The hippy group, including Hud (Dorsey Wright), Jeannie (Annie Golden) and Woof (Don Dacus), crash a private party where the girl, Sheila Franklin (Beverly D'Angelo), secretly enjoys the disruption of her rigid environment. After the group is arrested, Claude uses the only money he has to pay George's fine so that George can find the funds to get the rest of them released. Meanwhile, at the prison, Woof's refusal to have his hair cut leads into the title song. Unsuccessful at convincing Sheila to get the funds from her father, George returns to his parents' home and is able to convince his mother to give him enough money to have the others released from jail. For their next adventure, the group attends a peace rally in Central Park where Claude drops acid. When Jeannie proposes they get married to keep Claude out of the Army and Sheila shows up to apologize, Claude's "trip" reflects his internal conflict over which world he belongs in--his own native Oklahoman farm culture, the upper class society of Sheila or the free-wheeling world of the hippies. When his trip is over, Claude and the hippies have a falling out over both a mean trick they pull on Sheila (taking her clothes while she's skinny-dipping, which then leads to Sheila being completely humiliated when she has no choice but to hail a taxi completely naked) and their philosophical differences over the war in Vietnam and personal versus community responsibility. In the end Claude goes through with his original plan and reports to the draft board. He begins his enlistment in the Army and makes it through basic training. When Claude writes to Sheila from his training camp, she seeks out George and his group to share the news. George begins to cook up a scheme to visit Claude in Nevada at the military base. Enter Hud's finance (Cheryl Barnes), who wants him to return to their life together with his son, LaFayette Jr. (Rahsaan Curry). Tricking Sheila's brother Steve (Miles Chapin) out of the family car, the hippies, Sheila and Hud's finance all head west and try to enter the training camp to visit Claude. Turned back at the guard post, George's next scheme has Sheila chat up Fenton (Richard Bright), an Army Sergeant, at a local bar. Luring him out a back country road with intimations of sex, Sheila helps the group relieve him of his uniform and his car. Using both the car, having his hair cut very short and dressed in Fenton's Army uniform, George infiltrates the Army base, finds Claude and reveals himself. When Claude refuses to leave for fear of being found missing during a headcount, George schemes to take his place long enough for Claude to visit with the others waiting in the desert. While Claude is away, the base, which has been on alert, becomes fully activated with immediate ship-outs to Vietnam. George, unwilling to reveal the Claude is AWOL, boards the plane to Vietnam in Claude's place. Claude arrives too late to slip back into his place. The final scene is at Arlington Cemetery several months later showing George's headstone (he was killed in action in Vietnam) and the song "Let the Sunshine In". As the song continues, the movie closes with crowd shots of a full scale peace protest in Washington.

A commander receives a citation for an attack on Erwin Rommel's headquarters, which is actually undeserved, as the commander is unfit for his job. On top of that, unbeknownst to him, his wife is having an affair with one of his officers. In North Africa during World War II, Major David Brand is assigned to lead a British commando raid into German-held Benghazi to retrieve whatever documents they can lay their hands on at the German headquarters. His number two will be Capt. Jimmy Leith who speaks Arabic fluently and knows Benghazi well. Brand also learns that his beautiful wife Jane and Leith were lovers before the war, creating tension between the two. Brand is untested in battle and freezes at a critical moment, losing the respect of his men. After the raid, the trek back is arduous and takes its toll on the men. It also results in only one of the two senior officers surviving. —garykmcd Unfit commander receives an undeserved citation for an attack on Rommel's headquarters. Unbeknownst to him, his wife was once in love with one of his officers. —frankfob2@yahoo.com

Mistaken for train robbers, Matt Dow and Davey Bishop are shot at by the sheriff and his posse but they are cleared and hired as lawmen. Odd little Western that gets off to a snappy start when a man (Matt Dow) is mistaken as a train robber. After the town's sheriff shoots the kid he's riding with, Dow clears his name and ends up as the new sheriff. He romances a Swedish woman and settles in to a peaceful life only to find that the boy has a few secrets of his own.

Shortly after moving to Los Angeles with his parents, 17-year-old Jim Stark (James Dean) enrolls at Dawson High School. In the opening scene, Jim is brought into the police station for public drunkenness. When his mother, father and grandmother arrive at the police station to retrieve him, conflicts in Jim's family situation are introduced as he explains to the arresting officer. His parents are often fighting. His weak-willed father (Jim Backus) often tries to defend Jim, but Jim's picky and domineering mother always wins the arguments for his father cannot find the courage to stand up to his wife. Jim feels betrayed both by this fighting and his father's lack of moral strength, causing feelings of unrest and displacement. This shows up later in the film when he repeatedly asks his father, "What do you do when you have to be a man?" The next day, while trying to conform with fellow students at the school, he becomes involved in a dispute with a local bully named Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen). While Jim tries to deal with Buzz, he becomes friends with a shy 15-year-old boy, John, who is nicknamed Plato (Sal Mineo), who was also at the police station the night of the opening scene for shooting and killing puppies. Plato idolizes Jim as a father-figure much to Jim's concern. Plato tells Jim that his parents divorced several years ago and are never in Los Angeles. His mother lives away in her hometown and never visits, calls or writes, while his father (a wealthy business executive) is always traveling and avoids comming home, leaving only his housekeeper to look after Plato. Plato experiences many of the same problems as Jim, such as searching for meaning in life and dealing with his absent and selfish parents who "don't understand." In the school hallway, Jim meets Judy (Natalie Wood), whom he also recognizes from the police station the previous night, where she was brought in for being out alone after dark, who originally acts unimpressed by Jim, saying in a sarcastic tone, "I bet you're a real yo-yo." She is apparently the property of Buzz. Judy too has an unhappy homelife when it shows her before going to school when she deals with her unattenative and sexist father who gives all his attention to Judy's younger brother as well as ignors both Judy and his wife for he feels that women are ment only to serve him, and nothing more. That afternoon, Jim goes on a field trip with his science class to the Griffith Observatory. At the Planetarium, he watches a dramatic presentation of the violent death of the universe. After the show, he watches Buzz and his thugs slash a tire of his car for no reason, and then Buzz challenges him to a knife fight, while the gang taunts Jim as a "chicken." Jim reluctantly takes part in the fight and wins, subduing Buzz by holding his switchblade up to his neck before discarding both knifes off a railing. Both Jim and Buzz get slight injuries during the knife fight. Not to be outdone, Buzz and his thugs challenge Jim to a "Chickie Run" with Buzz and Jim racing stolen cars towards an abyss. The one who first jumps out of the car loses and is deemed a "chicken" (coward). That evening, the "game" is held with Judy and several students in attendance to watch. But the race ends in tragedy for Buzz when a strap on the sleeve of his leather jacket becomes looped over a handle on the car door, preventing him from jumping out before the car goes over the cliff. Jim runs home and tries to tell his parents what happened, but quickly becomes frustrated by their failure to understand him and storms out of the house. Jim goes to the police to find the sergeant who took his statement the previous night to tell him about the accident involving Buzz's death, but learns that the police officer is not there. Jim refuses to speak to any policeman and will speak only to the sergeant and he leaves. But Jim is spotted leaving the station by three of Buzz's friends, Crunch (Frank Mazzola), Goon (Dennis Hopper), and another one of Buzz's gang members whom is not named. Mistakenly thinking that Jim told the police about the "Chickie Run", they decide to hunt Jim down to "silence him"... permenently. Jim meets up with Judy and they go to an abandoned mansion to hide out. Plato finds them there (he was the one who told Jim about the house). There they act out a "fantasy family," with Jim as father, Judy as mother and Plato as child. However, Crunch, Goon, and the other boy soon discover them, and terrorize Plato who finally brandishes his mother's handgun that he took from the house, shooting Crunch, and at Jim, and a police officer who investigates, in a clearly unstable state. Plato runs and hides in the Observatory, which is soon besieged by the police. Jim and Judy follow him inside, and Jim convinces Plato to lend him the gun, from which he silently removes the ammunition magazine. When Plato steps out of the observatory, he becomes agitated again at the sight of the police and charges forward, brandishing his weapon. He is fatally shot by a police officer as Jim yells to the police, too late, that he had already removed the bullets. Plato was wearing Jim's jacket at the time, and as a result, Jim's parents (brought to the scene by police) think at first that Jim was shot. Mr. Stark then runs to comfort Jim, who is distraught by Plato's death. Mr. Stark promises to be a stronger father, one that his son can depend on. Thus reconciled, Jim introduces Judy to his parents and they drive off together as dawn starts to break.

Dixon "Dix" Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a talented but violence-prone and washed up screenwriter. Needing money, he reluctantly takes the job of adapting a trashy novel for the screen. Knowing that this is obviously below him, instead of reading the thing he instead asks a naive, celebrity-obsessed girl (who has read the book) he meets at a restaurant to give him a synopsis, which she does enthusiastically. He sends her home with cab money and is abruptly woken up at 5:00 the next morning by a police officer; the girl was found murdered, and Dix was the last person to see her alive. Given his violent past and what appears to be apathy towards her death, he is the most logical suspect until his beautiful neighbor Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi (though the audience is never quite sure if she is telling the truth or lies because of her attraction to Dix). There is an undeniable connection between Laurel and Dix, and despite her guarded demeanor and his deep internal demons, the two fall madly in love and for a while they enjoy the happiest time of their lives. Meanwhile, the murder investigation continues and Dix is still the most likely suspect. This puts immense strain on their relationship. The pressure on him is mounting, and as he begins to become increasingly impatient and irritable, this makes her back away from him. Sensing this, he is so frightened he'll lose Laurel, he clings ever more tightly to her, which appears controlling and frightens her. After hearing she didn't tell him about going down to the police station to answer more questions, he storms off and almost kills an innocent bystander, and is only stopped by Laurel's plea. After that incident, Laurel begins to truly doubt Dix's innocence. Dix senses this and from the strain of the accusation, the novel and his fears of losing Laurel, his violence has started up again. In addition, his controlling ways continue to increase from his desperation as she pulls further and further away from him emotionally. Though she loves Dix, Laurel fears for her life and plans to leave him. When Dix finds out, he flies into a rage and nearly strangles the woman he loves; the only thing that stops him is a ringing telephone which confirms his innocence. However, he walks away anything but a free man, having lost forever the one person who he truly loved, who truly loved him, and could've made him happy enough to help him deal with his violent nature.