Hard-drinking, arrogant, womanizing Hud Bannon (Paul Newman) lives a self-centered, indolent life supported by his hard-working and morally upstanding father, Homer (Melvyn Douglas), on the family cattle ranch in Texas. Hud's teenage nephew, Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde), blames Hud for the car crash that took the life of his father, Hud's older brother Norman, but shows hints of following in his ne'er-do-well uncle's footsteps when both men pursue family housekeeper Alma (Patricia Neal).
A former safecracker (Stephen Boyd) is blackmailed into robbing a bank during festival time in Spain.
Dr. Carruthers feels bitter at being betrayed by his employers, Heath and Morton, when they became rich as a result of a product he devised. He gains revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them out to kill his employers' family members by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Johnny Layton, a reporter, finally figures out Carruthers is the killer and, after putting the perfume on himself, douses it on Carruthers in the hopes it will get him to give himself away. One of the two is attacked as the giant bat makes one of its screaming, swooping power dives.
When their uncle dies without leaving a will, his farm passes to his nephew and two nieces, disappointing his housekeeper, Annie Yeo. While the nieces wish to sell the place, Alfie Brewer, has ideas of setting up as a farmer. Facing the hostility of his family, and some of the locals, he attempts to improve the farm before its mortgage is called in.
A Soviet general offers the SIS important military documents, and a meeting is set up in East Germany, with McCready in charge of the operation. As the Soviets know him, he recruits his old friend Bruno Morenz, a BND agent, who has to break BND rules to enter East Germany, which he does as a favour to McCready. Morenz secures the documents, but his life is in chaos, as he has just accidentally killed a woman and her pimp boyfriend and is on the run from the police. McCready finds Morenz a hiding place and enters East Germany to join him. With the Stasi closing in on them, and Morenz unable to escape, McCready kills him with poison, takes the documents, and escapes to the West.
The film opens with the disclosure by morgue examiners that a beautiful woman has literally died of fright. The plot reveals how she reached the fatal stage of terror.
The woman is married to the son of a doctor, the proprietor of a private sanatorium, where she is under unwilling treatment. Both the son and the doctor indicate they want the marriage dissolved. Arriving at the scene is a mysterious personage (Bela Lugosi) identified as the doctor's cousin who had been a stage magician in Europe. He is accompanied by a threatening dwarf (Angelo Rossitto).
After it is apparent that the wife is terrified of the foreigners, it is disclosed that she is the former wife and stage partner of a Paris magician known as René, who was believed to have been shot by the Nazis. Attempts to draw a confession that she had betrayed her magician husband and had collaborated with the Nazis led to the use of a device employing a death mask of the supposedly dead patriot, which literally frightens her to death.
Although the young newspaperman hero and his sweetheart guess the answer to the story, they allow the diagnosis "scared to death" to stand.
Sylvia Brenner is a plain secretary sharing an apartment with two other girls, one of whom is her friend Annie . Her economic condition is meager, but she makes do with what she has. She works for a womanizing divorce attorney, Gaylord Stanton , who only dates married women; he has no intention of ever getting married and sees wives as safe, since they already have husbands. But Sylvia is secretly in love with Gaylord. When the woman he is fooling around with, Grace Lawrence , decides to leave her husband in order to marry Gaylord, he panics. In order to avoid having to deal with the matrimonial pursuits of any of his potential dalliances, he offers a business proposal to Sylvia whereby he will provide her with financial remuneration if she will marry him in name only. She agrees.
After the sham wedding, Sylvia is sent off to Paris by Gaylord, to get her out of the way so he can continue his nightly debauchery. In Paris, she uses her money to do a serious makeover of herself. While there, she also meets her boss's old friend, Reggie Durant , who falls in love with her. Reggie is a sophisticated European, who introduces Sylvia to the enticements of the European lifestyle, to which she is attracted. When Reggie asks Sylvia to divorce Gaylord so that she can marry him, she is tempted, but confused, and returns home. Returning to the States, everyone takes notice of the transformed Sylvia.
Although there is a brief hiccup, as Grace puts forth a full-court offensive to win over Gaylord, Gaylord and Sylvia end up realizing that they are in love with each other.
Englishman Sir Ronald Burton (Richard Greene) believes his two close friends have been murdered by the evil Count Karl von Bruno (Stephen McNally..complete with eye patch). It seems that Burton and friends were responsible for driving von Bruno from Africa.
Assuming the alias of Richard Beckett, Burton secures an invitation to go to von Bruno's "black castle" for a hunting party. there he plans to gather evidence to show that von Bruno had murdered his two friends. Burton meets von Bruno's wife Elga (Paula Corday) who is trapped in an arranged marriage. The two begin to fall in love.
Dr. Meissen (Karloff), the castle physician is sympathetic to the young couples plight. He goes so far as to murder Count Steiken (John Hoyt) when he overhears Elga and Burton confess their love for each other. Burton leaves the castle with evidence he has discovered but is forced to return when Dr. Meissen informs him that von Bruno has imprisoned Elga. While attempting to rescue her he battles with von Bruno's brutish mute servant Gargon (Chaney) whom he sends into a pool of alligators.
To help the couple escape, Dr. Meissen administers a potion to them that will send them into a death like trance. von Bruno discovers the plot and...
