This film traces the unbelievable true story of the Calderón family, who built grand movie palaces in Mexico and the U.S., employing thousands to produce incomparable, hugely successful, and often reprehensible populist-genre films that were utterly and uniquely Mexican.
Teenagers with neglectful parents run amok; some get killed, some get arrested, some get rehabilitated.
With the purpose of using barbasco roots in the production of cortisone, a pharmaceutical company sends a scientist to investigate the possibilities of exploitation in Veracruz, but the man gets lost in the jungle and lives a strange romantic adventure in a remote location called Paradise.
A saloon singer is released from prison after being convicted on a prostitution charge. She plans to blackmail the judge from her case by seducing him, but after she grows close to the judge she has a change of heart.
Left alone after her mother runs off with another man and her father kills himself, Elena attempts to make a new life for herself in a new city. Believing he's a friend, Elena goes to dinner with "Pretty Boy" Lucio, but he drugs her champagne and sells her to Rosaura, who runs a brothel out of her nightclub. Elena becomes a sensation as a dancer, but all the while she nurtures plans of revenge against those who have conspired against her.
It is the story of a beautiful Tehuana woman who falls in love with a sailor who leaves with the promise of returning, but due to her delay she decides to accept a former suitor as her husband. Finally, when the marriage is about to materialize, the sailor returns creating an emotional conflict in her that is resolved thanks to her fiancé who, by intuiting her true feelings, leaves her free to stay with the sailor