The Traveling Executioner Reviews

Keach is excellent as an executioner-for-hire who travels around the country in 1918 with his own electric chair performing executions. In Alabama, he has to kill Hill and her brother Gierasch. Although Keach fries Gierasch, Hill sleeps with Keach in an attempt put off her execution. The love-struck Keach tries to get prison doctor Jarvis to help him fake Hill's execution, but the doctor asks a steep price for his cooperation, and when Keach is turned down for a loan at the bank, the executioner murders a guard and frees Hill. The young woman takes off on Keach when he returns to claim his equipment. Both are later caught. Instead of being executed, Hill is given a life sentence; however, Keach is electrocuted by his idiot assistant, Cort. This black comedy was the fourth to be made under the aegis of a new production unit at MGM headed by Herbert F. Solow. Novice screenwriter Bateson was a student at the University of Southern California when he whipped up the macabre script for this one. The picture premiered in Montgomery, Alabama, where locations were shot.