Stanley Kramer · 1963 · road

Stanley Kramer's gargantuan 1963 ensemble comedy. A chance car crash in the California desert sends a pack of strangers racing to a seaside park where a dead robber's loot is buried under a big W - a frantic, every-man-for-himself dash across Southern California that ends in glorious, ruinous chaos.

1. 1
   The Desert Highway

   A reckless driver crashes off a desert highway and, with his dying breath, tells the strangers who stop that a fortune is buried under a big W in Santa Rosita.

2. 2
   Across Southern California

   Unable to agree on a split, they all tear off at once for the coast, by car, by chartered plane, by stolen bicycle, in a no-holds-barred scramble.

3. 3
   The Big W

   At Santa Rosita Beach they find the four palm trees that form a giant W and dig up the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

4. 4
   Downtown Santa Rosita

   It all ends in chaos on a collapsing fire escape, the stolen money fluttering away over the street below.