Maos Sangrentas translates to Bloody Hands in English, and that's just what this gruesome Brazilian melodrama delivers. The story begins when a gang of dangerous convicts escape from a penal colony. With the police in hot pursuit, the escapees cut a gory swath through the countryside. As his comrades are killed off one by one, the leader of the group descends into gibbering madness. In contrast to this, a subplot develops involving the least dangerous of the escapees, who murdered his wife in a peak of self-righteous rage and is now seriously in doubt about the wisdom of his deed. Principal scenes reworked in 1962 to make the film The Violent and the Damned (q.v.).

A rich and lonely old man leaves his old mansion in Ouro Preto to his nephew, who moves into it with his wife. But soon enough the house begins to acquire a will of its own, while the man’s personality undergoes a radical transformation, assimilating the habits of the dead uncle.

A retired civil servant decides to return to his hometown to reencounter his first and only love.