Clegg Hoyt
An African American detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racist southern town.
Walt Sherill (Alan Ladd) is attacked and beat down by a group of juvenile delinquents on his way home from work one night. The boys who attacked him are not previously known by the police and are therefore hard to track down. As Sherill starts getting impatient he begins his own investigation. Meanwhile Detective Sergeant Koleski (Rod Steiger) does his best to track down the culprits.
A policeman is accused of manslaughtering a 14-year-old boy but is acquitted of all charges. Still, he feels a lot of guilt and begins to doubt if he really is innocent after all.
Actor Walter Matthau directed his first and only feature film with the black-and-white crime drama Gangster Story. In an unusual noncomedic role, Matthau plays Jack Martin, a local gangster who wants to run his own crime syndicate in the neighborhood run by Earl Dawson (Bruce McFarlan). They eventually team up and plan a heist. Carol Grace plays the reform-minded girlfriend.
Luke Ram seeks revenge against the white renegade who lead a Sioux raiding party against his father's stagecoach way station, killing all the inhabitants except himself. He's joined by his mining partner, young Sam Weller, not realizing that they man they seek is Weller's father, in whose gang Sam rode as a young man.
An innocent Mexican boy is sacrificed to a lynching mob by an ineffectual sheriff. The slaughter leads to a brooding darkness involving the remorseful relatives of the Mexican youngster and the sullen townspeople. Almost by a chain reaction there is established a second set of circumstances inviting a lynching of the Mexican's brother. Only this time the sheriff recaptures a shred of human dignity and saves the brother, if not the town.
Cloud Nine, the local teen hangout, has been taken over by a pair of escaped killers, who hold the local teens hostage. The bartender realizes it's up to him to save the kids.
An overambitious shutterbug almost gets his lights put out permanently when he decides to snap a picture of a mob boss.
