Created in 1949 by the U.S. Army, "The Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb" represents an early attempt to describe the impact of bomb effects and radiation exposure to the American public. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima four years earlier is used as the primary example, with graphic footage shown of the devastated city. What's not shown are the many sick and injured survivors — a strange omission given the film's title. The real point of the film seems to be that a nuclear attack is survivable so long as society makes preparations for that eventuality, a standard Civil Defense message that would be refined in the coming decade. Once the incredibly powerful H-bomb entered the picture however, the very concept of Civil Defense became obsolete.
A film director, in bad standing with his studio, tries to turn a local carnival dancer into a "French" movie star and pass her off as his big new discovery.
A bizarre mechanic tells a traveler the story of a bank employee, Peppino Biancaneve, who with the help of a disc is trying to put together the words he would like to use to ask for the hand of the daughter of the jeweler Carlo Casertoni, but while he mulls over the sentences he should pronounce to his future father-in-law he comes across a strange individual who could be a bringer of bad luck: a jettatore.
Ruthless Italian-American banker Gino Monetti is engaged in a number of criminal activities. Three of his four grown sons refuse to help their father stay out of prison after he's arrested for his questionable business practices.
In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died.
In this remake of and using stock-footage from 1941's "Arizona Cyclone," Tex is a daredevil freight-line driver who, with the aid of his pals Smokey and Deuce, wipes out the crooked rival line, and has enough time left over, from this shorts' twenty-six minutes , to toss in four songs.
