The comic mishaps and adventures of a young boy named Ralph, trying to convince his parents, teachers, and Santa that a Red Ryder B.B. gun really is the perfect Christmas gift for the 1940s.

Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals.  It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

In the sleepy suburbs of Miami, seemingly normal Egyptian immigrant Fuad Ramses runs a successful catering business. He also murders young women and plans to use their body parts to revive the goddess Ishtar. The insane Ramses hypnotizes a socialite in order to land a job catering a party for her debutante daughter, Suzette Fremont, and turns the event into an evening of gruesome deaths, bloody dismemberment and ritual sacrifice.

Melinda Clarke stars as the latex-clad Candy, a beautiful bank robber hiding out at a desert gas station run by nuns while awaiting her boyfriend's release from prison. After being exposed to a falling piece of alien meteorite, Candy grows an extremely long homicidal tongue with a taste for human flesh, while her pet poodles--who have also been exposed--transform into flamboyant drag queens.

An American cowboy living in Mexico discovers his cattle is being eaten by a giant prehistoric dinosaur.