Helen Martin

When Ashtray moves to South Central L.A. to live with his father (who appears to be the same age he is) and grandmother (who likes to talk tough and smoke reefer), he falls in with his gang-banging cousin Loc Dog, who along with the requisite pistols and Uzi carries a thermo-nuclear warhead for self-defense. Will Ashtray be able to keep living the straight life?

Forensic psychologist and detective Alex Cross travels to North Carolina and teams with escaped kidnap victim Kate McTiernan to hunt down "Casanova," a serial killer who abducts strong-willed women and forces them to submit to his demands. The trail leads to Los Angeles, where the duo discovers that the psychopath may not be working alone.

When his boss is killed, Detroit cop Axel Foley finds evidence that the murderer had ties to a California amusement park called Wonder World. Returning to sunny Beverly Hills once more, Foley reunites with Detective Billy Rosewood to solve the case. Along with Billy's new partner, Detective Jon Flint, they discover that Wonder World is being used as a front for a massive counterfeiting ring.

After his wife is murdered by street punks, a pacifistic New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad, prowling the streets for would-be muggers after dark.

A down and out young punk gets a job working with a seasoned repo man, but what awaits him in his new career is a series of outlandish adventures revolving around aliens, the CIA, and a most wanted '64 Chevy.

After leaving Washington D.C. hospital, plastic surgeon Ben Stone heads for California, where a lucrative practice in Beverly Hills awaits. After a car accident, he's sentenced to perform as the community's general practitioner.

A suicidally disillusioned liberal politician puts a contract out on himself and takes the opportunity to be bluntly honest with his voters by affecting the rhythms and speech of hip-hop music and culture.

Kid'N'Play leave their neighborhood and enter the world of adulthood and higher education. Play attempts to get rich quick in the music business while Kid faces the challenges of college.

Aspiring actor and hot-dog stand employee Bobby Taylor catches the ire of his grandmother for auditioning for a role in the regrettably titled exploitation film "Jivetime Jimmy's Revenge." When Tinseltown Studios casts Taylor in the title role, he has a series of conflicted dreams satirizing African-American stereotypes in Hollywood, and must reconcile his career goals with his desire to remain a positive role model for his little brother.

A legendary she-demon, in the updated guise of a beautiful model, infiltrates the offices of a successful fashion magazine with the aim of corrupting the world via mass media.

Arms dealers from several companies vie to sell the most expensive and highest tech weapons to a South American dictator. There are complications; understanding the exact nature of how 'gifts' are used to grease the wheels of a sale, a religious conversion from one of the salesman and a romance that begins to grow between two competitors.

J. T. Gamble, a shy, withdrawn Harlem youngster, shows compassion and responsibility when he takes on the care of an old, one-eyed, badly injured alley cat days before Christmas and secretly nurses it back to health.

Amos Lasher loses his wife and home in an accident, finding himself in the care of the state, or specifically speaking, the Sunset Nursing Home. Here he finds the head nurse, Daisy Daws, ruling the cowed patients with an iron hand, but as his determination to get out of Sunset grows, the more sinister his situation becomes.

Two broke buddies feel lucky when they come upon a truckload of cellular phones and begin selling them out of the back of their van. Trouble arises though, when the phones develop faults. The two friends then not only have to deal with unsatisfied customers but also the FBI.

A crime-busting lawyer and his initially reluctant attorney father take on the forces that run gambling and prostitution in their small Southern town.

The real-life account of an illiterate, deaf-and-mute, black youth who was accused of murdering a prostitute, and the relationship that developed between him and his court-appointed attorney, who also was deaf, and the events leading up to his precedent-setting trial.

The NBC All Star Hour (1985) was a one-hour primetime television special that brought together stars from NBC’s biggest shows of the mid-1980s, blending comedy, music, and variety performances into a network showcase.

Navin Johnson heads to Los Angeles to attend the wedding of his pen pal, Marie. On the way, he runs across a gang of hobos whose leader, Diesel, takes him to Las Vegas after learning of his skills at poker.

A revisionist twist on Cinderella with an all-black cast and set in Harlem during WWII. Cindy is a country bumpkin who moves from South Carolina to live with her father and his new family. When her stepmother and two stepsisters refuse to take her to the Sugar Hill Ball, her draft-dodging, chauffeur neighbor whips up a little "magic" and at the ball she catches the eye of the richest man in Harlem.

Thirteen years after the "Lawnmower Killer" killed her sister, high school student Mary Graves and obsessed detective Dick Harbinger are on the lookout for the killer to reappear during the annual Halloween Pumpkin Prom.

Harry Landers is a feisty senior citizen who refuses to abide by the rules in a stodgy retirement home run by a dour Ms. Davis, in which Harry leads a revolt by the other goated senior citizen residents against the establishment.

Director Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle) knows how to construct and, when necessary, even milk a laugh for optimal effect. This second riotous volume in the Partners in Crime collection features more ribald moments culled from Townsend's laugh-filled HBO variety show. Sinbad, David Allen Grier and Damon Wayans also star.

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

During the 1960s' civil rights movement, a black civil rights worker returns to his small Southern town and runs for sheriff against the incumbent, a popular segregationist.

The town's leading citizen becomes a homicidal maniac after his wife deserts him.

An estranged wife shows up after a nearly 7 years of disappearance -- thought to be dead, to prevent her husband from marrying his new love until someone kills her.