Russian mobster Terek Murad has declared open season on the Russian militia and the FBI over the shooting of his brother in a Moscow nightclub. He hires the Jackal, a nasty assassin whom nobody has even seen, to kill the Director of the FBI. With nowhere else to turn (except a woman who used to work with the Basque separatists, who is now in the USA but whose exact whereabouts in unknown to all save Mulqueen), FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston (who was present at the Moscow shooting) and Major Valentina Koslova of the Russian milita (who pulled the trigger in that shooting) enlist the reluctant services of Declan Mulqueen, an imprisoned IRA sniper, to track the Jackal down, for Declan is the only other person who can positively identify the Jackal.

Based on the true life experiences of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film focuses on half-brothers Paco and Cruz, and their bi-racial cousin Miklo. It opens in 1972, as the three are members of an East L.A. gang known as the “Vatos Locos”, and the story focuses on how a violent crime and the influence of narcotics alter their lives. Miklo is incarcerated and sent to San Quentin, where he makes a “home” for himself. Cruz becomes an exceptional artist, but a heroin addiction overcomes him with tragic results. Paco becomes a cop and an enemy to his “carnal”, Miklo.

Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. The Turkish courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the “Midnight Express”.

The rise and fall of the notorious Roman Emperor Caligula, showing the violent methods that he employs to gain the throne, and the subsequent insanity of his reign – he gives his horse political office and humiliates and executes anyone who even slightly displeases him. He also sleeps with his sister, organises elaborate orgies and embarks on a fruitless invasion of England before meeting an appropriate end. There are various versions of the film, ranging from the heavily- truncated 90-minute version to the legendary 160-minute hardcore version which leaves nothing to the imagination (though the hardcore scenes were inserted later and do not involve the main cast members).

Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former ‘TV scientist’ has become obsessed by the marriage of motor car technology with what he sees as the ‘raw sexuality’ of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes who they contort into the shape of trapped-corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.