High Noon tells the story of a lawman named Will Kane (Skerritt) who has just married a young bride, Amy (Thompson), promising to leave his dangerous career and settle down for a quiet life. Just as they are about to leave, word comes that a vicious killer Kane had sent to prison years earlier, is coming to town on the noon train seeking vengeance. Kane attempts to rally the town to fight the gunman, but not even his former deputy Harvey (Diamond) is willing to help. Harvey's cowardice infuriates his girlfriend, Helen (Alonso), whose romantic past with both Kane and with the arriving gunman convinces her to pack up and leave town. As the dreaded noon hour approaches, Kane realizes he must stand alone against the coming storm.

Navy SEALs launch a rescue mission after terrorists plunge a jet carrying a missile-launching computer into the sea.

During routine maintenance of a liquid-fuelled ICBM, the fuel tank is penetrated by a falling spanner. The film traces the efforts of the maintenance crew and associated military and civilian personnel to recover the potentially disastrous situation before the fuel tank is sufficiently depressurised that the stack collapses and explodes.

A drifter stranded in Kansas accepts a job offer from a wheat harvester who, in desperation over his cancer and financial woes, attempts suicide but becomes a father-figure to the young man.

Frame Johnson's attempt to settle down in Tombstone is interrupted when a mob tries to mete out some frontier justice.

After being released from prison, ex-gunfighter John Wesley Hardin hopes to have his autobiography published in order to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation.

Rise, fall and execution of John Brown, fanatic abolitionist.

In Apache territory, a supply Army column heads for the next fort, an ex-scout searches for the killer of his Native wife, and a housewife abandons her husband to rejoin her Apache lover's tribe.