Richard Benedict

I'll Give My Life -- I'll Give My Life

Ace in the Hole -- When a man is trapped alive in a mine collapse, a self-interested reporter and the townspeople cynically create what we now call a 'media circus'.

A cave collapse in New Mexico traps a man, and all eyes turn toward the tragedy... including those of Charles "Chuck" Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a washed-up newspaper reporter who sees the incident as a ticket back to his former days at the top of the journalism heap. As the media circus begins to swirl around the trapped man's plight, Tatum takes command of the situation, embellishing the unfolding drama and prolonging the rescue effort … while feeding stories to the nation's reporters clamoring to cover the event. He's become the self-anointed mastermind behind what soon becomes a national media sensation - and he's desperately determined to milk it for all it is work. Celebrated director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, The Apartment) mixes gritty cynicism with a superb cast - Douglas, Jan Sterling (The High and the Mighty), Robert Arthur (Just For You), Frank Cady (The Bad Seed) - in this powerful, fascinating study of the dark side of the human soul.

A rescue ship travels out to Mars to retrieve the only survivor of a space probe that has experienced some sort of cataclysm. That survivor, Col Ed Carruthers is accused of murdering his fellow crewmen. But Ed claims that the killer was a Martian monster, and hopes to prove his assertions by signing up for a second journey to the Red Planet. Before long, the crew members of this second expedition are being systematically killed off, and it looks as though Ed is up to his old tricks. As it turns out, however, Ed was telling the truth: there is a monster on board, the savage descendant of the once-mighty Martian civilization, who snuck on board when an irresponsible crew member left the door open. The monster stays alive by absorbing the vital body fluids of its victims-and there seems to be no way to stop this parasitic creature.