MovieChat Forums > The Traveling Executioner (1972) Discussion > Unforgivable plot hole!

Unforgivable plot hole!

posted 12 years ago by aventer-1
8 replies | jump to latest

I sent this in as a goof but the db wasn't having it so here I go again. The premise is that Mr. Keach drives around the rough-and-tumble areas of America's past electrocuting condemned people for pay. In his horse-drawn wagon is a portable electric chair and....a generator? Wait! What powers his contraption? Well, in the movie, he just pulls a big lever and, surprise, the generator puts out current like some perpetual motion machine. The movie is set in a period when gasoline and diesal engines were new and rare. And he doesn't have one. Neither does he have a steam engine, the prefered power source for dynamos back then. His seems to run by magic and this major plot hole explains why there were no traveling electrocutionists in America. Nobody explains why the various rag-tag jails don't simply hang their condemned prisoners. Of course there would then be no movie so it's the magic power plant or nothing. Keach's character could have made a lot more money electrifying the small towns he visits with his amazing device! Now c'mon....don't YOU think that rates as a goof?

[–] TheHungryAndAngryShow 12 years ago

I just saw this on the big screen, and he is driving a regular truck, NOT a horse drawn wagon. I would assume that it is powered by the battery in his truck, and amplified by the generator or device in the back of his truck.

[–] aventer-1 12 years ago

There is no way a car battery can be "amplified" to produce enough power to kill somebody!

If you produced a current of 1000 amperes at 6 volts (the nominal voltage of a car battery) you still couldn't kill a mouse, much less a man.

Generators don't "amplify", in fact their efficiency is considerably less than 100% meaning they "de-amplify". To achieve killing voltage and current from a battery he would have to convert the 6 volt dc to ac, then step it up with a transformer. He would need a couple of batteries like they use to power submarines. Face it, it's a plot hole!

[–] smerd_70 12 years ago

Good grief some people suck the fun out of watching movies.

I collect dead pigeons then I press them between the pages of a book.

[–] mnbvcxz112 12 years ago

This might be considered off-topic, however it is often portrayed in Hollywood movies & TV and the so-called non-fiction of Ann Rule that the lights will dim when the switch to the chair is thrown. The electric chair is electrified by a generator independent of the prison's lighting system. More Hollywood BS.

[–] quagaplomb 11 years ago

There was in fact a traveling electric chair used in the south for various prisons that had yet to get their own chair. This film, however ridiculous, is actually based on a factual occurance.

[–] vajustice 11 years ago

The screenwriter, Garrie Bateson, age 22 claimed that his story was inspired by reading a 1941 True Detective magazine with an article about a traveling executioner in the south. He claimed the real life story was set circa 1918. However, the traveling electric chairs didn't start in Louisiana or Mississippi (the only two states to use them) until the 1940s.

[–] brianshoebridge1 10 years ago

It's clearly a major plot-hole in the road taken by the travelling executioner. Plugging into a powerpoint or joining a few car batteries isn't going to do it.

[–] fleshcut 10 years ago

so having just seen the movie i can say this
he is driving a car with a engine
here is the power source for the chair http://i.imgur.com/dSKktCa.jpg
he also just seems to travel between a few states based on his comments in the bank