After being frightened by a peeping Tom at her mansion in the suburbs, the beautiful Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) calls the police for help. When a policeman, Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), arrives, he becomes infatuated with Susan, and the two engage in an affair. Susan soon ends their relationship, choosing to remain with her husband, John (Sherry Hall). However, Webb's obsession with her continues to grow, until he begins plotting to kill John and cash in on his life insurance policy.

This biopic is about Galileo Galilei, the seventeenth century Italian who laid the foundations of modern science. Galileo made himself one of the world's first telescopes and discovered the moons of Jupiter. He supported Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This brought him in conflict with the Catholic Church. By threatening him with torture, the Church forced him to recant his views in front of a tribunal, and sentenced him to house arrest. However, Galileo's trials and theories inspired others like Sir Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler to prove that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Some years ago, the Pope accepted that Earth does revolve around the Sun and issued a rare apology for what the Church had done to Galileo. The Catholic Church recanted.

Can anything escape this terror? British commandos on maneuvers become ill with mysterious symptoms and horrific burns. Dr. Adam Royston (Dean Jagger), an atomic scientist from a nearby research station, suspects lethal radiation … but is mystified by the cause. At a nearby hospital, the phenomenon reappears and engulfs more innocent people, including a hospital orderly whose skin melts away from his body! Dr. Royston speculates that the unknown is on a quest to absorb radiation and expand in size and range as it claims more and more victims. As time runs short, he becomes desperate to trap the entity before its power overcomes mankind!

Seven different women whose backgrounds are filled in by flashbacks and narration are together in a steam room on ladies' day. Violet is the maternal manager of the steam bath, and one of the issues to be resolved is how to save the bath from being shut down by the authorities. Nancy is suddenly a single mother of three after being deserted by her husband. Her good friend Sarah has neither children nor a husband, yet she can empathize with Nancy's increasing loneliness. Josie is an outgoing, talkative woman whose sex life is her main interest at the moment, and other women include a somewhat reserved mother-and-daughter duo. Personal traumas are revealed and shared, and a plan to save the steam bath is also cooked up.

Leonora, mourns the death by drowning years earlier of her daughter. She encounters a strange waif-like girl, Cenci, who bears a strong resemblance to her lost child. Cenci is herself struck by the great resemblance of Leonora to her own mother, whose death the mentally unstable Cenci has been unable to accept or even acknowledge. The two women quickly develop a symbiotic relationship, moving in and out of the illusion that each is the lost loved one of the other. The complicating factor is the arrival of Albert, Cenci's stepfather, whose incestuous attachment to her may well be the cause of her mind's unbalance. With Albert's arrival, no one in the strange trio is safe.

An ex-con who's taken part in the robbery of a racetrack is caught and sent back to prison, but he won't tell his fellow gang members where he's stashed the loot. The gang kidnaps his girlfriend and has him tortured in prison in an effort to find out where the money is.