Pleasure or Pain

In 1985, against the backdrop of Thatcherism, Brian Jackson enrolls in the University of Bristol, a scholarship boy from seaside Essex with a love of knowledge for its own sake and a childhood spent watching University Challenge, a college quiz show. At Bristol he tries out for the Challenge team and falls under the spell of Alice, a lovely blond with an extensive sexual past.

Kate and her brutish boyfriend Big Al sell handguns on the streets of New York. She's smart, stylish, and self-confident, but all that leaves her when Al, in a jealous and self-indulgent rage, beats her. Three friends encourage her recovery: Vic, a woman who would like to be Kate's lover; Reilly, who runs with Al but also is attracted to Kate and repulsed by Al's violence; and, Liz, the counselor assigned to Kate from a battered-women's program. Vic and Reilly talk about killing Al, Liz gives pep talks; Kate remains frightened. Will Al's menace and Kate's dependency hold sway?

Long years of separation have made sisters Loida and Lina strangers to each other. So much so that when cruel fate makes their paths cross anew, it is by way of one man's love Willie's. As unsuspecting of the two women are, of their familial affinities, Willie gets caught in the what seems a sticky situation. Especially as Loida and Lina finally and eventually find the truth about themselves. Love and life can be as hot and sticky as rice cakes, indeed!

Jack Hammett is an aggressive young defence attorney on the rise up the corporate ladder. In the courtroom he's known as the "Hail Mary Kid" for his ability to win the unwinnable cases. When one of the firm's lawyers, Darren Gaines, is murdered and Gaines' wife is charged, Hammett is assigned as her attorney. Hammett asks Kate Weldon, a recently hired lawyer, to assist him. Together they discover some inconsistencies in the case as well as a possible connection to the recent murder of a judge.

An irresponsible young Spaniard having spent 6 months in jail for embezzlement gets a job as a waiter in a bar restaurant and becomes involved in a stolen goods racket.

A businessman hosts a hunting party at a remote lodge, and hires three prostitutes to take care of his clients. However, the girls have their own plans and secretly install cameras in the bedrooms to record the activities for future use.

A mild-mannered gay dentist and a womanizing bar owner rekindle their unlikely friendship when, upon meeting by chance after a decade apart, the latter turns out to be severely ill.

Shocking scenes are revealed in the Nagasaki Women's prison.

Kenneth Bianchi, one of the two serial rapists and killers who terrorized the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s, is giving police station interviews to psychiatrist Samantha Stone, who has disquieting lifestyle issues of her own. It falls to her to delve into the details of the case to determine the veracity of Bianchi's claims of multiple personality disorder, but in so doing, she is forced to relive the horrific crimes, one of which occurs at her very doorstep.

Set in the mid-80s, when a reporter is sent to cover the Challenger Space Shuttle launch only to become mixed up in the lives of some local students.