Robert Altman directs this radical adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel. Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) smells a rat when his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), whom he has just driven to Tijuana, is accused of murder. Convinced of Lennox's innocence, Marlowe follows a convoluted trail which leads him to his friend's mistress, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), her alcoholic husband (Sterling Hayden) and hood Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), to whom Lennox owed a substantial sum of money. Watch out for an early, unbilled appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of Augustine's heavies.

Double bill of classic thrillers directed by Stanley Kubrick. In 'The Killing' (1956), Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) gets out of prison after a five-year stint and begins to put together plans for a million dollar race track heist. As he gathers his crew together, it seems that Johnny's plan is fool-proof and is sure to go off without a hitch. However, when gang member George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr) tells his wife (Marie Windsor) about the plans, and she in turn tells her boyfriend (Vince Edwards), the seeds are sown for the whole operation's undoing. In 'Killer's Kiss' (1955), boxer Davy Gordon (Jamie Smith) finds himself in a world of trouble when he intervenes and saves dancer Gloria Price (Irene Kane) from her seedy and violent boss Vincent Raphello (Frank Silvera). Davy and Gloria fall in love and plan to leave the city and make a fresh start, but Vincent is angry and jealous and sends his men to kill the young lovers...

Sterling Hayden was at the peak of his earning power as a star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts, and, broke and an outlaw, set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer--bound for the South Seas. Long before he was an actor, Hayden was a seaman. He had sailed before the mast and as mate and captain in sailing ships. He had been a Grand Banks fisherman. Then Hollywood offered him a screen test. Pushed to stardom, he became the leading man to one of the screen's most beautiful women, and the money began to flow. With money and fame, however, came a gnawing dissatisfaction with his life. His attempt to escape launches this autobiography. It is the candid, sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinizes his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience. It is also the triumph of a complex and contradictory man, still a rebel and a seeker, undefeated by his failure to find himself in love, adventure, drink, or escape to the South Seas. It is, as Eugene Burdick said of it, "utterly fascinating, written by a man who has been able to achieve an honesty about himself which is almost unique."

Since its publication in 1963, Sterling Hayden's autobiography, Wanderer, has been surrounded by controversy. The author was at the peak of his earning power as a movie star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts, broke as an outlaw, set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer--bound for the South Seas. His attempt to escape launched his autobiography. It is the candid, sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinized his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience.