A patient at a mental hospital kills the head doctor and takes over, replacing the staff with fellow patients. Things get complicated when the niece of the real doctor makes an unexpected visit.

A successful Hollywood actor convinces his lover to kill her abusive husband, then makes a phone call.

A small town is rocked by a series of murders which begins with the killing of a local farmer's son.

A woman becomes the target of her murderous spouse after she finds a button from one of his victims.

Racketeer Harney gives Derry a contract to hit Breech, whose wife Connie is a paraplegic. Derry meets Connie, helping her to play a bar jukebox. Sympathizing with Connie, Derry decides, for a price, to fake Breech's death by buying a mortuary corpse and staging an automobile smash-up. Derry expects Breech and Connie to abscond to Mexico City.

A sheriff investigates the disappearance of the wife of a man who has been acting suspiciously.

Miles Crawford, a former movie star, is now a successful attorney. When his young son Tod is charged with first-degree murder, he hires the best criminal lawyer, but then convinces Tod that he should represent him at trial. His closing argument is an impassioned performance, bringing applause from spectators. Then the judge calls the attorneys into his chambers. The prosecutor has discovered some startling new evidence that may affect the case.

A college aide borrows a dead female body from the lab and plants it in his roommate's dorm to try and scare him sober, but the joke becomes disastrous.

A wall separating the innocent from the guilty is perilously breached when ex-cons mistakenly steal radioactive cobalt, then abandon it. Thinking the cobalt container hides industrial diamonds, they open it in their front, an auto repair shop, endangering the neighborhood. As they lie low, before fleeing to Mexico, only the youngest of the trio is concerned about the neighbors, especially a female shopkeeper he cares for. Fear mounts, as the mechanic who pried open the Pandora's box, grows ill, and the FBI tracks the radioactivity.

The husband of a successful actress, thought for years to be dead, suddenly returns and demands he once again become a part of her life, now that she's a success. Things get complicated when she accidentally kills him after he attacks her.

Gerald Swinney is a henpecked husband suffering under the constant verbal abuse of his overbearing wife. Gerald devises a plan to rid himself of her and begin his life over again, but the results have unexpected consequences.

One of a bigamist's four wives takes it upon herself to track down and kill the other three women.

After a little boy vanishes in a magic shop, he comes back later with supernatural powers and evil intentions.

An heiress finally finds a young man who loves her for herself instead of her money. After he dies in a Bolivian mine explosion, she tries to regain contact with him through an Indian mystic.

Marcia Fowler is sunbathing in her backyard when she spots a new neighbor, Roy Bullock, eyeing her. Frightened, she calls the police, who take her to the Bullock house and warn Roy not to be a peeping Tom. Marcia also asks her husband Jack to admonish Roy, but Jack finds Roy to be friendly. Roy befriends 12-year-old Stevey Fowler. Marcia begins getting obscene telephone calls, and blames them on Roy. When Jack and Stevey take a flight to San Francisco, Roy visits Marcia to leave a gift for Stevey, and to chide Marcia for her infidelity. Panicked, she overreacts, and soon regrets her rashness.

A woman runs a psychic scam with hidden speakers to make people believe she can contact their dead love ones, and one man believes she has contacted his dead son, so he becomes dangerously obsessed with her sessions.

Charlie Hill is mesmerized by a strange jar at a carnival sideshow. He buys it from the owner, but his wife Thedy Sue is frightened and wants it thrown out. The townspeople come from miles to see it and Charlie becomes a local celebrity.

A convict at a state prison work camp plans a clever escape with the help of the aging, alcoholic fellow prisoner who's in charge of making coffins and burying the camp's deceased.

A struggling actor auditioning in London learns that his actress-girlfriend who dumped him is married to the play's backer, a rich diamond merchant. They soon rekindle their romance and plan to get her out of her marriage.

James Parkerson is a professor and dean of psychology. He places a classified ad in the newspaper offering to help husbands and wives who want to be relieved of their spouses, ostensibly to conduct research. The editor calls him into the newspaper office for a meeting with a police detective, who suspects him of offering murder for hire. The ad is discontinued, but he receives 20 responses. The first responder is Bingham, a real hit man, who wants all of Parkerson's referrals. The second responder is Robert Johnson, with whom Doris Parkerson is having an adulterous affair. Bingham plans to kill Mrs. Parkerson, but Johnson gets in the way.

An attorney helps a client threatened by an unstable woman who blames her for a broken wedding engagement.

Dave Snowden elopes with wealthy Bonnie Daniels, and Mr. Spencer sees them break into the abandoned old estate where Bonnie lived until age six. Mr. Spencer informs Bonnie's mother, Mrs. Daniels, who finds Snowden struggling to open a mysterious locked door on the upper floor. Mrs. Daniels annuls the marriage, because Bonnie's true age is only 17, not 19, as Dave was told. Three weeks later, when Bonnie reaches majority, she rejoins Dave, and they consummate nuptials, but Mrs. Daniels will not release Bonnie's trust fund until she is 25. Dave convinces Bonnie to attempt suicide with sleeping pills, in order to convince her mother that she loves Dave. Although she takes only 4 pills, Bonnie dies, because of a history of rheumatic disease. As an apparent gesture of goodwill, Mrs. Daniels grants Dave the childhood estate. Dave proclaims that he only married Bonnie for her money. Mrs. Daniels, hiding in the house, overhears Dave's admission, then watches as he enters the locked door, behind which is an unfinished elevator shaft. Dave plunges to the bottom of the shaft, becoming paralyzed. He begs Mrs. Daniels to save him, but she just tosses the house keys down to him, and closes the door.

A notorious but ethical auto thief and his gang steal a Rolls-Royce, unaware that the trunk contains the body of a woman who was murdered by her husband.

Gerald Musgrove shoots and kills a night watchman while stealing $100,000 from a bank. On the street nearby, while eluding police, he meets elderly Emmy Rice, and befriends her. Since he is on parole, he must launder the loot, so he stows it in some of Emmy's old magazines. Gerald then prods impoverished Emmy into writing a will, awarding all money found in her apartment to himself. He tries to murder Emmy three times, but she survives, and arranges for the arrest of Milly Musgrove for attempting to gas her to death. Gerald is apprehended too, when he realizes that Emmy gave all her magazines to a junk collector, and blurts admissions of guilt. Emmy, however, kept one magazine in cold storage, containing all of the purloined bills.

An elderly woman is locked in an air tight safe with one of her cats by her niece's fiancé when she discovers he is a forger.

The Commissioner of Recreation & Parks receives three life-threatening letters in one week, complaining about the method by which art is selected for museum display. When James Bellington enters City Hall with a breadbox-sized package and runs from a lobby policeman, he is apprehended, but the parcel only contains an alarm clock. Bellington is sent to Dr. Glover, a psychiatrist, who labels him a paranoid with homicidal or suicidal tendencies. Bellington delivers two shoeboxes to the art museum, but shows the bomb squad that they only contain art supplies. In a bistro, he tells an undercover policewoman that he plans to bring a dangerous device to the museum. When he arrives with his finger on a button atop a box possibly filled with explosive, police clear the museum. Then Bellington rendezvous with his confederates, art thieves, who have already replaced five paintings with his forgeries.

A group of studio executives and a leading lady (Gia Scala) view a screening of a black mass, and are impressed by the performance of Karl Jorla. They want him for the lead in their next horror picture, so they fly him into Hollywood from France. They need to arrange for publicity but Jorla refuses, saying that the film they observed was of him as the real-life arch-priest of a group of devil worshipers who will track him down and kill him. The studio tries to protect him, but he trusts no one. He disappears, then suddenly emerges three days later in a scene with the leading lady, cryptically mumbling the address in Topanga Canyon where he may be located. The police find his murdered corpse, but an autopsy reveals that he has been dead for at least three days.

Eddie Turtin discovers that his friend and business partner, Charlie Osgood, has fraudulently defalcated at least $60,000 from their company, and warns him that if he does not repay the money promptly, criminal charges will be pressed that should result in a 35-year prison sentence. Charlie concocts a plan with his girlfriend Danielle to fake his death, placing a dummy in public view on a pier. The dummy appears to jump suicidally, then a violent explosion destroys the body. Charlie and Danielle plan to abscond with $89,000 stowed in a company filing cabinet. But the best laid plans often don't go as planned.

A married man finds his beautiful mistress murdered and flees without reporting it, only to become the victim of blackmail.

An ethical lawyer becomes very disturbed about what to do when the client he just got acquitted of murder brags that he committed the crime.

After serving a prison sentence, a man romances the woman whose false testimony got him convicted.

A domineering wife is suspected of murdering her husband when the body of an unrecognizable man is found buried in her barn.