A New Orleans detective is leading an investigation into a killer who is raping and murdering women. His enquiries lead him into the seedy side of town where he is no stranger off-duty. All this contrasts with his home life as a single parent with two young girls. Then on the case he meets rape counsellor Beryl Thibodeaux with whom a relationship possibly offering some normalcy starts to develop.

An abused woman (Lopez) discovers that the dream man (Campbell) she married isn’t who she thought he was. She and her daughter try to escape (aided by her previous boyfriend, played by Futterman), but he pursues her relentlessly. Fearing also for the safety of her daughter, she decides that there’s only one way out of the marriage: kill him. ‘Fred Ward (I)’ (qv) has a guest-starring role.

Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney/”Leave It to Beaver”-esque family-man. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? Fourteen years, ago Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady’s rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey, bibliophile Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.

Rookie Los Angeles cop Nick Styles is at a Los Angeles street fair, where hit man Earl Talbot Blake pulls a double cross on some drug dealers, killing four men. Minutes later, Nick shoots Blake in the knee, and Blake is grabbed by Nick’s partner and best friend Larry Doyle. Nick becomes the focus of the media, thanks to an amateur cameraman’s footage of Nick disarming Blake. Over the next few years, Nick’s career takes off: he’s offered a job in the district attorney’s office, and his hip media style keeps him in the public eye. Nick marries a woman named Alice and they go on to have two daughters named Lisa and Monica. While Blake is in prison, he vows revenge on Nick. When Blake comes up for parole, he orchestrates a bloody escape — which includes faking his own death. Blake doesn’t want Nick dead. He just wants Nick to suffer in spades. He wants to ruin Nick’s life as completely as possible, and then have Nick sent to prison for murder so Nick will know how Blake feels. Blake begins his vendetta by killing city councilman U. B. Farris and planting evidence to make everyone think Nick and Farris are running an underage pornography ring. Blake then kidnaps Nick, forces him to take drugs and have sex with a prostitute, videotapes the whole thing, and then releases Nick. Nick tells everyone that it was Blake who kidnapped him, but everyone refuses to believe Nick because everyone thinks Blake is dead. That night, Blake breaks into Nick’s house, and makes a threatening videotape with Lisa, Monica, and an ax in it, but Blake didn’t actually do anything to Lisa and Monica. Nick is then suspended from the DA’s office, with everyone thinking that Nick is mentally ill because he keeps saying that Blake is still alive. Blake then begins the final phase of his vendetta — he kills Larry and frames Nick for it. Blake also links Nick to misappropriation of public funds, specifically, the funds he’s supposed to be raising for a children’s center in a building at the base of the Watts tower. Nick is forced to turn to his childhood friend, gang leader Odessa, for help in clearing his name and stopping Blake once and for all.

A grieving mother, Telly Paretta, is struggling to cope with the loss of her 9-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist and her husband tell her that she has created eight years of memories of a son she never had. But when she meets the father of one of her son’s friend who is having the same experience, Telly embarks on a mission to prove her son’s existence and her sanity.

Linda Fiorentino plays Bridget, a “femme fatale” who steals her husband’s money and leaves from New York. She meets Mike, who falls in love with her and they become lovers. But Mike has no idea about Bridget’s past and her plans to use him to get rid of her husband…

Karen Davis is a woman residing in Japan with her boyfriend, who is studying there. Temporarily assigned to be caretaker for a woman with severe sleeping disorder, Karen goes to the patient’s house. What she finds is something she would never expect. The house is plagued by the presence of murderous ghosts, the result of a curse. The curse is born from someone dying in a powerful rage. Now, Karen finds herself being tormented by that curse, as it eventually starts claiming it’s victims.

A wave of kidnappings has swept through Mexico, feeding a growing sense of panic among its wealthier citizens, especially parents. In one six-day period, there were twenty-four abductions, leading many to hire bodyguards for their children. Into this world enters John Creasy, a burned-out ex-CIA operative/assassin, who has given up on life. Creasy’s friend Rayburn brings him to Mexico City to be a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos, daughter of industrialist Samuel Ramos and his wife Lisa. Creasy is not interested in being a bodyguard, especially to a youngster, but for lack of something better to do, he accepts the assignment. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. Creasy’s new-found purpose in life is shattered when Pita is kidnapped. Despite being seriously wounded during the kidnapping, he vows to kill anyone involved in or profiting from the kidnapping. And no one can stop him.

A yuppie couple buy a large house in an exclusive San Fransisco neighborhood. They renovate it and plan to rent two apartments on the first floor to cover the costs. A prosperous looking man moves in but is not the ideal tenant. He never pays any rent, drives the other tenants away and systematically ruins the lives of his landlords.

Two men wake up at opposite sides of a dirty, disused bathroom, chained by their ankles to pipes. Between them lies a dead man loosely clutching a hand-held tape player and a handgun. Each finds a tape the perfect fit for the player in their back pocket. They play the tapes. One is threatened, the other isn’t. But they have a task: One must kill the other by 6:00, or his wife and daughter will die. They find hacksaws in a toilet, and try to cut the chains, but it doesn’t work. They are the two newest victims of the Jigsaw Killer. In a flashback, we learn of Amanda, a girl who falls victim to the Jigsaw Killer. On her head is a mask, which is hooked into her lower jaw. There is a timer on it. Only one key will unlock it, and that key is in the digestive tract of her cell mate who lies paralyzed on the opposite side of the room. If she doesn’t unlock the mask in time, her lower jaw will be ripped wide open. She survives, but her cell mate doesn’t. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn of more victims, and of the nearly-successful capture of the Jigsaw Killer, who doesn’t actually kill his victims. Instead, he finds ways to make them kill either themselves, or each other, and he thinks the entire ‘game’ out perfectly, with no other ways out. Or so it would seem.