When Walter is diagnosed with lung cancer, despite his squeaky clean lifestyle, he has to tell his screenwriter partner, a chain-smoker. As Walter fights cancer he tries to put his affairs in order by teaching writing to prison inmates, talking to his son and ex-wife, and getting his partner to quit smoking.

After Al Capone is imprisoned, he still continues to run his empire, and plots to assassinate the mayor of Chicago.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

Biography of the singers who formed the hit Motown musical act, The Temptations.

A college professor teaching a course called "The Psychology of Fear" brings his students (including a psychic) to his home, one dark and stormy night to tell scary stories. The first involves a young couple whose car breaks down by an old, abandoned house. The second has four trendy teenage girls getting lost in a bad part of town and chased by a pack of vicious dogs. Last, a woman on crutches confronting a stalker at the answering service where she works the night shift.