Bruno Anthony thinks he has the perfect plot to rid himself of his hated father and when he meets tennis player Guy Haines on a train, he thinks he's found the partner he needs to pull it off. His plan is relatively simple. Two strangers each agree to kill someone the other person wants disposed of. For example, Guy could kill his father and he could get rid of Guy's wife Miriam, freeing him to marry Anne Morton, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator.
Sarah Taylor, a police psychologist, meets a mysterious and seductive young man, Tony Ramirez, and falls in love with him. As a cause of this relationship she changes her personality when she begins to receive anonymous telefon calls.
After she misses her train, a young woman is forced to hitch a ride back to town. After managing to get away from a lecherous trucker, she is given a ride by a good-looking but somewhat mysterious young man, who she comes to suspect may be a dangerous escapee from a mental asylum.
This drama chronicles the emotionally distant relationship between a mother and her four grown children. Though they live in the same house they could not be more different. One of her sons is a conscientious provider who keeps them afloat. A different brother believes himself the greatest thespian since Barrymore. The third brother is a budding revolutionary determined to overthrow the capitalist empire. Meanwhile, the mother's daughter goes to college and returns a married woman.
A lonely, mentally unbalanced woman invents a fictitious daughter and has the "daughter" write to a Marine stationed in the South Pacific. When the soldier returns back to the States, he goes to look up his pen pal, and is told by the "mother" that the daughter has moved away. An acquaintance of the women tells the soldier the truth, and in a rage the "mother" kills her. In order to cover up that crime, she realizes she must kill the soldier, too.