Mel Funn, a once-great Hollywood film director, is now recovering from a drinking problem and down on his luck. He and his sidekicks, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell, want to make the first silent movie in 40 years and Funn pitches the idea to the chief of Big Picture Studios. The chief rejects the idea at first but Funn convinces him that if he can get Hollywood's biggest stars to be in the film, it could save the studio from a takeover by New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour. Funn, Eggs and Bell proceed to recruit various stars for the film. They surprise Burt Reynolds in his shower and revisit his mansion in disguise. They recruit James Caan filming on location, following slapstick fumbling in an unstable dressing room trailer. They find Liza Minnelli at the studio commissary, where she eagerly agrees to be in the film. They recruit Anne Bancroft by disguising themselves as nightclub Flamenco dancers. While visiting the ailing studio chief in the hospital, Funn phones mime artist Marcel Marceau, who responds in French with the only spoken word in the film: a resounding Non! Bell asks, "What did he say?" Funn responds, "I don't know. I don't speak French!" They see Paul Newman on the hospital grounds and sign him to the film after a wild electric-wheelchair chase. In the course of their search for stars, the trio have a number of brief misadventures, including a mix-up between a seeing-eye dog and an untrained look-alike, several (mostly unsuccessful) efforts by Eggs to approach various women and a Coca-Cola vending machine that launches cans like grenades. Engulf & Devour learn of the project and try to sabotage it by sending voluptuous nightclub sensation Vilma Kaplan to seduce Funn. He falls for her but returns to drinking when he learns that she was part of a scheme. He buys a huge bottle of liquor and drinks himself into a stupor, surrounded by fellow "winos". Kaplan has genuinely fallen for Funn and refused Engulf & Devour's money; she helps Eggs and Bell find him and restore him to sobriety. The film is completed but the only copy is stolen by Engulf & Devour just before its theatrical premiere. Kaplan stalls the audience with her nightclub act, while Funn, Eggs and Bell successfully steal the film back. They are cornered by Engulf & Devour's thuggish executives but use the Coke machine they encountered earlier to attack and subdue them with exploding cans. Lacking a separate spool to rewind the film, Eggs winds the film around his own body and upon returning to the theater he has to be rushed to the projection booth to show it. The film is a huge success with the audience, which erupts with over-the-top applause. The studio is saved and Funn, Eggs, Bell, Kaplan and Chief celebrate, as an onscreen caption identifies the film as a "true story".

In 1988, amidst war between the United States and an alliance of China and the USSR, Manhattan has been converted into a maximum security prison to address a 400% increase in crime. In 1997, while flying President John Harker to a peace summit in Hartford, Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist group. The President is handcuffed with a briefcase and put into an escape pod that drops into Manhattan as the aircraft crashes. Police, led by Commissioner Bob Hauk, are dispatched to rescue the President. Romero, a subordinate of the Duke of New York, warns Hauk that the President has been captured and will be killed if further rescue attempts are made. Meanwhile, decorated war hero and former Special Forces soldier Snake Plissken is about to be imprisoned in Manhattan after being convicted of robbing a Federal Reserve Depository. Snake accepts a deal from Hauk in which he will be pardoned in exchange for rescuing the President in time for the summit. To ensure his cooperation, Hauk has Snake injected with micro-explosives that will sever his carotid arteries in 23 hours. If Snake is successful, Hauk will neutralize the explosives. Snake uses a stealth glider to land atop the World Trade Center, then follows the President's tracking device to a vaudeville theater, only to find the tracker on the arm of a vagrant. Inspecting the escape pod, Snake is ambushed by starving underground raiders, and his radio is destroyed. He is rescued by "Cabbie," a fan of Snake's who drives a taxi. Cabbie takes Snake to Harold "Brain" Hellman, an adviser to the Duke and a former associate of Snake. An engineer, Brain has established a gasoline refinery fueling the city's remaining cars; he tells Snake that the Duke plans to lead a mass escape across the 69th Street Bridge, using the President as a human shield. Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie to lead him to the Duke's hideout at Grand Central Terminal. Snake finds the President but gets shot in the leg with a crossbow bolt and is overpowered by the Duke's men. While Snake is forced to fight Duke's champion, Slag, in a match to the death, Brain and Maggie kill Romero and flee with the President. Snake kills Slag and finds the trio trying to escape in the glider. Inmates drop the glider off the roof, forcing the group to street level, where the Duke and his followers confront them. Cabbie arrives and offers to take them across the bridge. He reveals that he bartered with Romero for a cassette tape that contains information about nuclear fusion, intended to be an international peace offering. The President demands the cassette, but Snake refuses to hand it over. The Duke gives chase, setting off mines as he tries to catch up. Brain guides Snake, but they hit a mine, and Cabbie is killed. As they continue on foot, Brain accidentally stumbles onto another mine. A distraught Maggie sacrifices herself to slow the Duke. Snake and the President reach the containment wall, and guards hoist the President up. The Duke opens fire, killing the guards before Snake subdues him. As the rope is lifting Snake, the Duke attempts to shoot him, but the President takes up a dead guard's rifle and kills the Duke. Snake is hoisted to safety, and Hauk's doctor neutralizes the explosives in his neck. As the President prepares for a televised speech to the leaders at the summit meeting, he off-handedly thanks Snake for saving him and offers only half-hearted regret for the deaths of Cabbie, Brain and Maggie; Snake walks away in disgust. Hauk offers Snake a job as his deputy, but he keeps walking. The President's speech commences, and he plays the cassette. To his embarrassment, it only plays Cabbie's favorite song, " Bandstand Boogie ". As Snake walks away free, he pulls the real cassette from his pocket and destroys it.

An all-American family inherits a deceased uncle's house. John and Mary Hyatt, together with daughter Debbie and son Billy move in, but Waldemar, a vampire, and Yolanda, his wife, want desperately to get into the rundown house because it contains a book of evil. Billy finds the mysterious book. He reads of a curse hanging over the date of Saturday the 14th. As he turns the page, a monster is unleashed and with each turn, another disappears from the page and is materialized within or outside the home. The house is soon swarming with monsters. Strange things start happening: eyes appear in John's coffee, sandwiches are mysteriously eaten, the television tunes into The Twilight Zone only, dirt is found in Mary's bed, dishes get done by themselves, neighbors disappear. As this is happening, neither John or Mary suspect anything, completely oblivious to the spooky occurrences around them. Waldemar gets into the house by turning into a bat. Mary keeps hearing noises at night, which she thinks are made by owls, but are actually the sounds of Waldemar in bat form. John hires an exterminator to get rid of the bats. The exterminator turns out to be Van Helsing, who is also after the book of evil. John and Mary begin planning a housewarming party for Saturday the 14th. Guests arrive, but they cannot leave. When they try, a thunderstorm appears outside the door. As the night unfolds, the monsters begin to kill the guests one by one. Eventually a duel between Van Helsing and Waldemar and Yolanda erupts, where it is discovered that Van Helsing wants the book in order to rule the world and Waldemar and Yolanda were only trying to stop him from getting his hands on it. Good triumphs over evil, as Van Helsing and the monsters are defeated. The Hyatts end up in an upscale new home, while Waldemar and Yolanda keep the original house as their own.

A team of Allied prisoners of war (POWs), coached and led by English Captain John Colby, a professional footballer for West Ham United before the war, agree to play an exhibition match against a German team, only to find themselves involved in a German propaganda stunt. Colby is the captain and essentially the manager of the team and thus chooses his squad of players. Another POW, Robert Hatch, an American who is serving with the Canadian Army, is not initially chosen, but eventually nags the reluctant Colby into letting him on the team as the team's trainer, as Hatch needs to be with the team to facilitate his upcoming escape attempt. Colby's superior officers repeatedly try to convince him to use the match as an opportunity for an escape attempt, but Colby consistently refuses, fearing that such an attempt will only result in getting his players killed. Meanwhile, Hatch has been planning his unrelated escape attempt, and Colby's superiors agree to help him if he in return agrees to journey to Paris, contact the French Resistance and try to convince them to help the football team escape. Hatch succeeds in escaping the prison camp and finding the Resistance in Paris. The Resistance initially believes it will be too risky to aid the team's escape, but once they realise the game will be at the Colombes Stadium, they plan the escape using a tunnel from the Parisian sewer system to the showers in the players' changing room. They convince Hatch to let himself be recaptured so that he can pass this information back to the leading British officers at the prison camp. Hatch is indeed recaptured. However, he is placed in solitary confinement, and thus the prisoners do not know if the French underground will help them. Colby tells the Germans that he needs Hatch on the team because Hatch is the backup goalkeeper and the starting goalkeeper has broken his arm. Colby himself actually has to break the starting goalkeeper's arm because the Germans want proof of the injury before they will allow Hatch to join the Allied lineup. In the end, the POWs can leave the German camp only to play the match; they are to be imprisoned again afterward. The resistance's tunnelers break through to the Allied dressing room at halftime with the POWs trailing, 4–1. However, the team persuades Hatch to return to the pitch for the second half rather than lead the escape as planned. Despite the match officials being heavily biased towards the Germans, and the German team causing several deliberate injuries to the Allied players, a 4–4 draw is achieved after great performances from Luis Fernandez, Carlos Rey and Terry Brady. Hatch plays goalkeeper and makes excellent saves, including a save of a penalty kick as time expires to deny the Germans the win. An Allied goal had been blatantly disallowed earlier in the match, so the POWs should have won, 5–4. After Hatch preserves the draw, the crowd storms the field and swarms the players. Some of the spectators help the Allied players disguise themselves in the chaos so that they can escape, and they all burst through the gates to freedom.

In 1972, Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site (near Crescent, Oklahoma), shares a ramshackle house with two co-workers, her boyfriend Drew Stephens and her lesbian friend Dolly Pelliker. She makes MOX fuel rods for nuclear reactors, where she deals with the threat of exposure to radiation. She has become a union activist, concerned that corporate practices may adversely affect the health of workers. She is also engaged in a conflict with her former common-law husband in an effort to have more time with their three children. Because the plant has ostensibly fallen behind on a major contract – fabricating MOX fuel rods for a breeder reactor at the Hanford Site in Washington state – employees are required to work long hours and weekends of overtime. She believes that managers are falsifying safety reports and cutting corners wherever possible, risking the welfare of the personnel. Karen approaches the union with her concerns and becomes active in lobbying for safeguards. She travels to Washington, D.C. to testify before the Atomic Energy Commission. When Silkwood and other workers become contaminated by radiation, plant officials try to blame her for the incident. When she sees weld sample radiographies of fuel rods being retouched to hide shoddy work, and that records of inadequate safety measures had been altered, she decides to investigate further herself. Complications arise in her personal life when Angela, a funeral parlour beautician, joins the household as Dolly's lover. Unable to deal with Silkwood's obsession with gathering evidence, and suspecting her of infidelities, Drew moves out. On November 13, 1974, once she feels she has gathered sufficient documentation, Silkwood contacts a journalist from The New York Times and arranges a nighttime meeting. She first attends a union meeting, carrying documentation of her findings on her way to meet with the journalist. En route, she sees approaching headlights in her rear-view mirror, which draw so close that they distract and blind her, preventing her from seeing the road ahead, leading to her fatal one-car crash. No documents are found in the wreckage of her car.

On 12 October 1978, police are summoned to the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, where they find Nancy Spungen dead. Her boyfriend, former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, is taken into custody. Sid is driven to a police station and told to describe what happened. A little more than a year earlier, in 1977, close friends and band members Sid and Johnny Rotten meet Nancy, a heroin -addicted American groupie who had come to London to bed the Sex Pistols. Sid dismisses her at first, as her intentions are obvious, but begins dating her after feeling sympathy for the rejection she faces from fellow punk performers. The two swiftly bond over heroin use, and it is implied that Nancy introduces Sid to the drug. Sid and Nancy fall deeply in love, but their self-destructive, drug-fueled relationship frays Sid's relationship with the rest of the band. Nancy is distraught when Sid departs on a month-long American tour without her. The tour is notably disastrous, with Sid strung out of his mind, often drunk or on methamphetamine, and physically violent. Phoebe, Sid's friend and road manager, unsuccessfully attempts to help him stop drinking. Meanwhile, Nancy remains in London, staying with her friend Linda, a dominatrix. Although several of Sid's friends and acquaintances warn him of Nancy's devastating effect on his life, Sid stubbornly ignores these warnings. On 17 January 1978, in the midst of the group's American tour, the band breaks up. Sid reunites with Nancy in New York City, and he attempts to start a solo career with Nancy as his manager. The two visit Paris to begin recording sessions, but the trip is unfruitful. Sid is quickly dismissed in the music industry as a has-been, and he and Nancy descend deeper into heroin addiction; Nancy also begins suffering from severe depression, and the couple eventually make a suicide pact. Nancy brings Sid to Philadelphia to meet her family, who are horrified by the couple's reckless behavior and physical state. Sid and Nancy return to New York and settle in the Hotel Chelsea, where they live in squalor and depend on opiates supplied by their drug dealer, Bowery Snax. Their love affair ends tragically one night when, during an argument in which Sid announces his plans to stop using heroin and return to England to restart his life, a suicidal Nancy begs him to kill her. She attacks him and they fight in a drug-induced haze, leading to him stabbing her, although whether it was intentional is left to interpretation. They fall asleep and later Nancy awakes and stumbles into the bathroom, where she collapses and dies, calling Sid for help. Sid is bailed out temporarily by his mother, who is also a heroin addict. After Sid wanders to a restaurant, some street kids convince him to dance with them. A taxi appears and picks Sid up, and he believes he finds Nancy alive in the back seat. The two embrace as the cab drives off. A postscript says that Vicious died of a heroin overdose, and lastly reads: "R.I.P. Nancy and Sid."

In the early part of the 20th century, Iquitos, Peru, a small city on the Upper Amazon, is experiencing rapid growth due to a rubber boom. One incomer, an Irishman named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (known locally as "Fitzcarraldo"), is a lover of opera and a great fan of the internationally renowned Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. He dreams of building an opera house in Iquitos, but, although he has an indomitable spirit, he has little capital. The Peruvian government has parceled up the areas in the Amazon basin known to contain rubber trees. However, the best parcels having already been leased to private companies for exploitation, Fitzcarraldo has been trying and failing to make the money to bring opera to Iquitos by various other means, including an ambitious attempt to construct a Trans-Andean Railway. A rubber baron shows Fitzcarraldo a map and explains that, while the only remaining unclaimed parcel in the area is on the Ucayali River, a major tributary of the Amazon, it is cut off from the Amazon (and access to Atlantic ports) by a lengthy section of rapids. Fitzcarraldo notices that the Pachitea River, another Amazon tributary, comes within several hundred meters of the Ucayali upstream of the parcel. He leases the inaccessible parcel from the government, and his paramour, Molly, a successful brothel owner, funds his purchase of an old steamship, which he christens the SS Molly Aida, from the rubber baron. After fixing up the boat, Fitzcarraldo recruits a crew and takes off up the Pachitea, which is largely unexplored because of the hostile Indians who live on its banks. Fitzcarraldo intends to go to the closest point between the Pachitea and the Ucayali, pull his three-deck, 320 -ton steamship up the muddy 40° hillside, and portage it from one river to the next. He plans to use the ship to collect rubber harvested along the Ucayali and then transport the rubber over to the Pachitea and, on different ships, down to market at Atlantic ports. Soon after they enter Indian territory, the majority of Fitzcarraldo's crew, who are unaware of his full plan, abandon the expedition, leaving only the captain, engineer, and cook. The natives are impressed by the steamship and, once they make contact, agree to help Fitzcarraldo without asking many questions. After months of work and great struggles, they successfully pull the ship over the mountain using a complex system of pulleys aided by the ship's anchor windlass. The crew falls asleep after a drunken celebration, and the chief of the natives severs the rope securing the ship to the shore. Fitzcarraldo awakens as the boat is entering the rapids, and is unable to stop it. The ship does not sustain any major damage, but Fitzcarraldo is forced to abandon his quest. Before returning to Iquitos, he learns that the natives helped him move the ship in the belief that sending it over the Ucayali rapids would appease the spirits dwelling there. Despondent, Fitzcarraldo sells the steamship back to the rubber baron, but there is time before the title changes hands for him to send for a European opera company that he is told is in Manaus. Lacking an opera house, they construct their sets on the deck of the ship, and the entire city of Iquitos comes down to the riverbank to watch as Fitzcarraldo floats it by, managing to bring opera to the city after all.

At the end of their high school senior year, noble underachiever Lloyd Dobler is smitten with valedictorian Diane Court. He plans to ask her out, although they belong to different social groups. Lloyd's parents are stationed in Germany in the U.S. Army, so he lives with his sister Constance, a single mother, and still has no plans for his future. Diane comes from a sheltered academic upbringing, living with her doting divorced father Jim, who owns the retirement home where she works. She will take up a prestigious fellowship in England at the end of the summer. Lloyd offers to take Diane to their graduation party. She agrees, to everyone's surprise. Their next "date" is a dinner at Diane's, where Lloyd fails to impress Jim, and IRS agents arrive unexpectedly to inform the latter he is under scrutiny for tax fraud. Diane introduces Lloyd to the retirement home residents and he teaches her to drive her manual transmission Ford Tempo graduation gift. They grow closer and lose their virginity together in the car, to her father's concern. Lloyd's musician best friend Corey, who has never overcome her unfaithful ex-boyfriend Joe, warns him to take care of Diane. Jim urges Diane to break up with Lloyd, feeling he is not an appropriate match, and suggests she give him a pen as a parting gift. Worried about her father, Diane tells Lloyd she wants to stop seeing him and concentrate on her studies, giving him the pen. Devastated, he seeks advice from Corey, who tells him to "be a man" because it takes more to be a "man" rather than just being a "guy". Meanwhile, Jim discovers his credit cards are declined as the investigation continues. At dawn, Lloyd stands under Diane's open bedroom window and plays " In Your Eyes " by Peter Gabriel on a boombox, which played when they were intimate. The next day, she meets with an IRS investigator, who says they have evidence incriminating Jim with embezzling funds from his retirement home residents. He suggests she accept the fellowship as matters with her father will only worsen. Diane finds the cash concealed at home and confronts Jim, who tells her he took it to give her financial independence. He feels justified in doing so, insisting he provided better care of his residents than their families. Distraught, Diane reconciles with Lloyd at his kickboxing gym. At the end of the summer, Jim is incarcerated on a nine-month sentence after accepting a plea deal. Lloyd visits him at the prison, saying he is accompanying Diane to England. Jim reacts angrily when Lloyd gives him a letter from Diane, but she arrives to say goodbye and they embrace. She gives Jim the pen he had suggested she give to Lloyd, asking him to write to her in England. Lloyd supports and comforts Diane, who is afraid of flying, on their flight.

David "Dave" Lyons, a deaf man, and Wallace "Wally" Karew, a blind man, meet when Wally applies for a job in Dave's NYC concession shop. After a brief period of confusion and antagonism, they become close friends. Dave reads lips and guides Wally when they travel, and Wally tells Dave about invisible sources of sound and what people say behind his back. After being hired at the shop, Wally waits outside for the day's newspapers. Meanwhile, a bookmaker to whom Wally owes money walks into Dave's shop with a briefcase. When the man is approached by a woman named Eve, he hides a gold coin from his suitcase in a coin dish. Eve takes the briefcase and shoots the man while Dave’s back is turned. Dave does not see the shooting but notices Eve's legs as she leaves. Wally, who heard the gunshot, walks into the shop and trips over the dead body. Dave then rushes to help Wally and picks up the gun that Eve left behind. The police find them over the body with Dave holding the gun. As they are arrested, Wally picks up the day's collections from the coin dish and stashes them in his pocket. At the police station, Dave and Wally are interrogated by Detective Captain Emile Braddock and Lieutenant Gatlin, who make them the prime suspects after they are unconvincing as witnesses. When Eve and her accomplice Kirgo – hoping to recover the coin – pose as attorneys to bail them out, Wally recognizes Eve's perfume and Dave her legs, but Braddock ignores them when they insist that she is the killer. Dave and Wally escape from the police station, but the criminals soon find them. Eve takes the coin from Wally and calls her boss Mr. Sutherland for instructions, while Dave learns their plans by reading her lips. When Kirgo tries to kill them, they knock him unconscious. They then steal an unattended police car, and Eve, Kirgo, and Braddock chase them. Working together to guide the patrol car, Dave and Wally evade their pursuers but accidentally launch the car onto a waterborne garbage barge. After hiding the police car, they call Wally's sister Adele for help. The three then head for a resort mentioned in Eve's call to her boss. There, Wally impersonates a visiting professor. Meanwhile, Dave sneaks into Eve's room and steals the coin. Meanwhile, Adele distracts Kirgo by crashing her car into his. However, Kirgo and Eve discover the ruse, kidnap her, and take her to Sutherland's estate. Arriving at the Sutherland estate, Dave and Wally free Adele but end up captured. In his study, Sutherland – who is also blind – reveals that the coin is an outer disguise for a sample of an extremely valuable material called a superconductor. Kirgo and Sutherland are killed during an argument over sharing the profits, after which Dave and Wally rescue Eve. When the police arrive, Wally and Dave are cleared of the charges. Shortly thereafter, the two men reaffirm their friendship at a local park.

In 1501, a city in Italy was taken by a coup d'état while its rightful ruler, Arnolfini, was away. Arnolfini promises some mercenaries 24 hours of looting if they succeed in retaking the city, and they do so, raping and killing those who stand in their way. In their revelry, Arnolfini decides that he wants the mercenaries gone. Hawkwood, the commander of the troops, cares for a young nun he mistakenly attacked during the siege. Arnolfini promises to get medical attention for her, while Hawkwood leads Arnolfini's cavalry, betraying his former lieutenant, Martin. The cavalry ejects the mercenaries from the city without their loot. Martin's son is later stillborn. Burying the infant unearths a wooden statue of Saint Martin of Tours —a saint with a sword. The mercenaries' chaplain views this as a sign from God to follow Martin as their new leader. Arnolfini's son Steven is betrothed to Agnes. They meet for the first time and eat from a mandrake to magically fall in love, and later the entourage is attacked and robbed by Martin's band. Arnolfini is seriously injured; Kathleen, Agnes' lady-in-waiting, is killed; and Agnes is hauled away, concealed among her valuable dowry. Martin discovers Agnes that evening as they strip the caravan of valuables. The men desire to rape her but Martin decides to take her himself. He rapes Agnes in front of the caravan while she at first taunts him, and then begs Martin's protection when he is finished. Martin prevents the rest of the men from raping her. The mercenaries come upon a castle where, unknown to them, the inhabitants are infected with the plague. They capture the castle with the help of Agnes. She induces Martin to fall in love with her and works on the other mercenaries to accept her. She appears to have given up on her former life. Determined to rescue her, Steven turns to Hawkwood. Hawkwood only wants to live a quiet life, married to the former nun. Steven, becoming as ruthless as his father, seizes her to force Hawkwood to help his pursuit of Martin. Steven's party locates Martin and the mercenaries. They do not have sufficient force to take the castle and lay siege to it. In the castle, Martin asks Agnes where her true loyalty lies; she is noncommittal, hinting that the winner takes all. Outside, the plague spreads among Steven's forces and infects Hawkwood. Steven builds a siege tower to storm the castle, and Martin destroys it with something Steven had tried earlier: gunpowder. Steven's soldiers are killed as Steven scales the tower's ladders, and falls into the castle grounds. The mercenaries capture Steven and shackle him in the courtyard; Agnes joins in his abuse. Using a new medical technique Steven learned (cutting the buboes on the infected body), Hawkwood cures his plague. He cannot continue the siege alone but, before leaving for additional troops, he and the physician, Father George, catapult pieces of an infected dog into the castle. One chunk lands near the chained Steven; he initially warns Martin of the danger of the dog, but flings it into the castle's water well after seeing Agnes acquiesce to Martin's sexual demands. Steven says that she can decide whether to tell the mercenaries. The mercenaries wish to leave the castle, fearing the plague, but Martin persuades them to stay. At the next meal, Agnes watches as they drink infected water. As Martin begins to drink, she slaps the cup from his hand, just as the mercenaries begin to show signs of the plague. The party blame Martin, and hurl him into the well. Agnes then joins in the abuse of Martin. After the throng departs, Steven needs Martin's key to escape from the shackles, and Martin needs Steven to get out of the well. The two cooperate, but upon seeing that Hawkwood and Arnolfini recovered from their wounds and returned with an army, Martin flees to the belfry. Using a lightning storm to strike the chain, Steven frees himself and, as the battle rages, races to find Agnes. During the fighting, the belfry catches fire. All the mercenaries, save Martin, Polly, Anna, and Little John, end up dead. Martin confronts Agnes, who claims that she loves him. He prepares to murder her rather than allow her to return to Steven. As Martin is strangling Agnes, Steven attacks. Martin overpowers Steven and almost drowns him, but Agnes strikes Martin on the head, and she and Steven flee the blazing castle and reunite with Hawkwood. As Agnes and Steven embrace, Agnes sees Martin over Steven's shoulder, escaping from the castle, a sack of loot on his shoulder. She says nothing.

Fritz Knobel (a fictionalized version of real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. He sells a portrait of Eva Braun and one volume of what he alleges to be Hitler's diaries (but which he actually wrote himself) to factory owner Karl Lenz. Lenz shows off the diary to his guests during a "birthday party for the Führer ", among whom is sleazy journalist Hermann Willié. Willié works for the magazine "HH Press"; the letters HH are a licence plate abbreviation for Hamburg where the real-life Stern magazine is located, but are also the common abbreviation for " Heil Hitler " among neo-Nazis. Knobel, in need of material to produce more diaries, turns to his own life for inspiration; after he meets Martha and she becomes his lover (he is already married to Biggi), Martha becomes the inspiration for the diary version of Eva Braun. Rumors about the diaries cause a major Nazi craze in high society, allowing former Nazi officials to flaunt their old ranks (e.g. Obergruppenführer). Willié becomes even more obsessed, buying Hermann Göring 's old yacht Carin II and starting an affair with his (fictional) grandniece Freya von Hepp, who is based on Hermann Göring's daughter Edda Göring. Towards the end, the plot has developed its own dynamics, putting more and more pressure on Knobel to deliver the remaining volumes while in constant fear that his forgery will be discovered. The volumes are convincing enough to fool the enthusiastic journalists, who are willing to overlook some oddities, especially a false monogram "FH" instead of "AH" on one of the volumes. They invent alternative facts to explain away the discrepancy (the term " Führerhauptquartier " instead of "Adolf Hitler" for instance). Later, Knobel manages to manipulate a forensic graphoanalysis to his advantage, but it seems only a matter of time until the truth is discovered. The constant fear, and the struggle against developing a too-close identification with the person he is writing about, eventually make Knobel collapse. Biggi and Martha take charge of the situation, forcing him to pull himself out of the forgery business just in time, while (similar to the end of World War II) the Nazi-enthusiasts fall – more or less hard according to their personal level of belief.

Two months before his graduation, high school senior Ferris Bueller fakes illness to stay home from school, regularly breaking the fourth wall to describe his senioritis. While his sister Jeanie sees through the ruse, he fools their parents, Katie and Tom. After learning Ferris has been absent nine times that semester, the school's dean, Edward R. Rooney, and his secretary Grace become determined to expose Ferris's chronic truancy. Ferris hacks into the school's computer system and reduces his absence count to two, making it appear that he attends school regularly. To excuse Ferris's girlfriend Sloane Peterson from school, he persuades his hypochondriac best friend Cameron Frye to impersonate Sloane's father and call the school with claims that her grandmother died. Knowing Sloane is dating Ferris, Rooney feels suspicious and responds dismissively. Ferris simultaneously calls the school to confirm his absence, fooling Rooney into believing he offended Sloane's father. When picking up Sloane, Ferris disguises himself as her father and borrows the prized possession of Cameron's father, a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. However, Rooney becomes suspicious upon seeing Sloane kiss Ferris. Fearing his father's wrath, Cameron becomes paranoid when Ferris takes the car on a day trip into Chicago, even with assurances of preserving its condition and original odometer mileage. Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane leave the car with two parking attendants, who promptly take it on a long joyride. The three visit the Sears Tower observatory, eat lunch at an upscale restaurant, visit the Chicago Stock Exchange and the Art Institute of Chicago, go to a Chicago Cubs baseball game, and attend the Von Steuben Day Parade, where Ferris jumps on a float and lip syncs to " Danke Schoen " by Wayne Newton and " Twist and Shout " by the Beatles. They manage to hide from his father, who works in the city. Meanwhile, Rooney prowls the Bueller home for Ferris, becoming victim to some pratfalls and pursued by the family's pet Rottweiler. When Jeanie skips class and returns home to confront Ferris, she discovers a dummy in his bed, and finds Rooney there. Mistaking him for a burglar, she knocks him unconscious by kicking him in the face and calls the police. Rooney regains consciousness and leaves the house upon noticing his car being towed. The police arrest Jeanie, believing she prank called the police station. While detained, she befriends a young delinquent who advises her to worry less about Ferris's exploits and more about her own life. Upon collecting the Ferrari and heading home, Ferris and Cameron discover that the car's mileage has significantly increased. Cameron enters semi-catatonic shock, later almost drowning in a pool before a worried Ferris helps him. At Cameron's house, Ferris jacks up the car and puts it in reverse gear to unsuccessfully attempt to rewind the odometer. Angry toward his domineering father, Cameron kicks the car's bumper until the jacks collapse and it crashes backward through the garage wall, suffering severe damage. Ferris offers to take the blame, but Cameron declines and insists on standing up to his father. After walking Sloane home, Ferris runs through the neighborhood to return home before his family does. He is nearly hit by Jeanie's car as she and Katie drive home from the police station. Ferris escapes Katie's notice, but Jeanie spots him and tries to beat him home, only to be pulled over and given a speeding ticket. Ferris arrives home first, but Rooney confronts him before he can return indoors. Seeing both of them through the window, Jeanie has a change of heart and allows Ferris to come inside before their parents do, claiming that he was at the hospital for his illness. She also shows Rooney his wallet that had fallen from his pocket in the kitchen earlier, tosses it into a nearby puddle, and shuts the back door loud enough to wake up the Rottweiler, who attacks and chases Rooney away. Upon seeing Ferris in bed, Katie and Tom believe he has been home all day. Meanwhile, a humiliated Rooney reluctantly accepts a ride on a school bus filled with students who act derisively toward him.