In Paris, a French schoolboy makes friends with a red balloon and vice-versa, with the balloon following him around like a pet. It stays out of the reach of other would-be captors, but a gang of boys destroys it eventually. Then other balloons of various sizes and colors descend on the boy from all parts of Paris, and together they lift him into the sky and take him away over the horizon.

Schoolteacher and family man Ed Avery, who’s been suffering bouts of severe pain and even blackouts, is hospitalized with what’s diagnosed as a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, Ed agrees to an experimental treatment: doses of the hormone cortisone. Ed makes a remarkable recovery, and returns home to his wife, Lou, and their son, Richie. He must keep taking cortisone tablets regularly to prevent a recurrence of his illness. But the “miracle” cure turns into its own nightmare as Ed starts to abuse the tablets, causing him to experience increasingly wild mood swings.

English nobleman Phileas Fogg, a very strict and emotionless man, gets wound up in a bet at his gentlemen’s club: He has to prove that it is possible to travel around the whole world in only 80 days. Together with his new butler Passepartout, who expected a different first day at work, he takes off instantly to Paris, where they miss the train to Marseilles. But a travel agent called Thomas Cook offers them his captive balloon, which carries them to Spain instead. Passepartout’s skills are necessary in a bullfight in order to get them a ship that should take them back onto their planned route. An ominous Mr. Fix starts crossing their path more and more often, he somehow seems to try to hinder their forthcoming. In the deep jungles of India, the butler’s skills are again needed in a case of rescuing beautiful Princess Aouda, who is to be burnt alive at the side of her dead husband. In Hongkong, Passepartout meets drugs in a involuntarily manner and in the United States, the wild, wild west takes its toll. All the time, Mr. Fogg has his usual timetable and meal schedule running at normal pace, so that all the waves have to be broken by Passepartout. And he won’t get paid much, because he left the gas running, back in London. When the journey comes to a dramatic returning to England, Mr. Fogg has to cope with the facts that he seems to have lost the bet by some hours, but gained something he never seemed to have: emotion.

Polish Princess Elena believes she was born to be the guardian angel of great causes and great (undiscovered) men. It is only when men need her that she is interested in them and she abandons them when they have accomplished their goals in life. She encounters Henry de Chevincourt who introduces her to General François Rollan, who has just been nominated to become Minister of War. The General is bait for some conniving politicians who wish to turn the hero into a dictator. They take advantage of a current political trial and the resulting war scare to engineer a coup d’etat which is meant to catapult the General into leadership. Rollan lets himself be taken in because he is in love with Elena who is in league with the plotters. Meanwhile, Henry, also in love with Elena, is hanging around on the sidelines.

Elvis plays Clint Reno, one of the Reno brothers who stayed home while he brother went to fight in the Civil War for the Confederate army. When his brother Vance comes back from the war, he finds that his old girlfriend Cathy has married Clint. The family has to struggle to reach stability with this issue. Vance is involved in a train robbery, while a Confederate soldier, of Federal Government money. There is a conflict of interest, when Vance tries to return the money, against the wishes of some of his fellow Confederates.

Held by the police as a raving lunatic, Dr. Miles Bennell recounts to a psychiatrist the events that have turned his life upside down. He returned to his small town the previous Thursday, having been called back from a medical conference by his nurse, who was being flooded with patients. He arrives to find that most have canceled their appointments, but the few cases he does have all have the same story: someone close to them is acting strangely as if they had been replaced. Consulting some of his colleagues, he finds that these types of reports have been coming in all week and they conclude it must be some type of mass hysteria. However, when his friends Jack and Teddy Belicec show him a partly formed body they have uncovered in their home, he begins to realize that there may be some truth to the wild stories he has been hearing.

This forgettable piece of 1950s sleaze stars Cleo Moore as a voluptuous blonde who becomes a successful commercial photographer. Richard Crenna, making a major break from his TV image as Our Miss Brooks’ Walter Denton, plays a reporter who takes a special interest in Moore’s career. The beauteous picture taker becomes involved in a blackmail plot when she goes to work for a Confidential-type magazine, nearly losing her life to mobsters. It was the opinion of many contemporary reviewers that the title Over-Exposed referred not to the photographs taken by Moore but to the generous amounts of cleavage displayed by the actress’ low cut gowns. Though Cleo Moore has become a “cult” favorite thanks to her appearances in the turgid melodramas directed by Hugo Haas, Over-Exposed demonstrates that her minimal acting talent vanished altogether without Haas’ guiding hand.

In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service abroad the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.

Billy Bigelow asks for permission to be sent down “from above” for one day to try and make amends for mistakes he made in life. Billy worked at the carnival as a carousel barker, which is where he met Julie. The carousel owner, Mrs. Mullin, fired him because of jealousy, and he and Julie got married. Billy got into bad habits when he couldn’t find a job and they were forced to live with Julie’s cousin Nettie after Julie was fired from her factory job for staying out late with Billy. When Julie told him she was pregnant, he felt compelled to somehow find a way to support his family, but the only option seemed to be falling back into crime with his old pal Jigger.