The Electric Chair (1976)
** (out of 4)
In a small Southern town, a married preacher is having an affair with a single woman and before long they are both found brutally murdered. Another minister is put on trial and sentenced to the electric chair but a strange set of events are about to shock everyone.
Director J.G. Patterson, Jr. is best known for producing DOCTOR GORE but he also directed THE BODY SHOP. Both of those films went overboard in regards to the violence and gore but that's certainly not the case with THE ELECTRIC CHAIR, which would be Patterson's second and final feature. This film has the look and feel of an exploitation movie but it's actually a courtroom drama.
Is THE ELECTRIC CHAIR a good movie? Absolutely not but there are certainly some interesting ideas scattered throughout the picture including the two sequences where the title comes from. We get to see a staged electrocution that is without a doubt the best thing in the picture. This first sequence is actually very well directed, features some nice editing and an effective music score. The entire sequence shows us what happens when someone is prepared for the chair and it's very effective.
The rest of the film is pretty much a Southern melodrama dealing with an illicit affair, a Bible-belt community and of course there are a few twists that I won't ruin. I will admit that one of the twists at the end was quite shocking and completely came out of nowhere. The performances are all rather bland, which is what you'd expect out of a film like this and at times the 98-minute running time does drag. The film is out there in an edited version clocking in 17-minutes shorter but I've only seen the uncut version.
Even though THE ELECTRIC CHAIR isn't a good movie, it is weird enough to where fans of the drive-in era should check it out.
