During the Allied invasion of Italy in World War II, six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. These tales follow the interactions between American soldiers and Italian civilians as they navigate their way through language barriers and cultural differences.
Lost Caverns Hotel bellhop Freddie Phillips is suspected of murder. Swami Talpur tries to hypnotize Freddie into confessing, but Freddie is too stupid for the plot to work. Inspector Wellman uses Freddie to get the killer (and it isn't the Swami).
A blacklisted reporter brings his shady ways to a small-town newspaper after being fired from a big city daily.
Long before he became producer/director of The Tonight Show, Fred DeCordova helmed the Universal meller Illegal Entry. Howard Duff, who later worked with DeCordova on the TV series Mr. Adams and Eve, stars as Bert Powers, an undercover agent for the U.S. Department of Immigration. While attempting to bring a vicious gang of alien smugglers to justice, Powers falls in love with Anna Duvak (Marta Toren), a gang member who is Not What She Seems.
A federal agent infiltrates a crime syndicate.
A stone-encrusted body is unearthed at Pompeii, and people left alone with it keep dying of crushed skulls...
Mario, an Italian war orphan, sees Luca Rossi commit a murder. Eager for a home and family life, Mario promises not to tell the police if Luca takes him into his household and family. Luca fears and hates Mario, but his father, mother and sister all come to love him.
The first female doctor in New York City comes up against prejudice from male counterparts who feel threatened by her skills. Eventually, though, they come to respect her and romance blossoms between her and the head doctor.
An American prisoner, hidden by some Umbrian farmers, meets, drunk, with a German soldier who is also drunk. The two believe that the war is over and embrace each other emotionally. But it is not so and soon the cannon will thunder. Uncle Tigna, who was hiding the prisoner and two of his companions, will fall victim to the Nazis.
In a post-war Rome (1946) a cat burglar inadvertently saves the life of a would-be suicide man who returns from the war to find that he has been betrayed by his fiancée while fighting in the war. From that moment the thief takes the ex-soldier under his wing. They leave house together for a night full of misadventures. In a streets of Rome they meet the struggling typist who can’t pay her rent and opts to street life; a wandering amnesiac who lost his memory and keeps asking everyone “Do you recognize me?”. Thieves, gamblers, hookers, policemen, soldiers and endless chain of cigarette-smoking and alcohol/espresso-drinking.