EDITOR’S NOTE: The Traveling Executioner was on the CBS Late Movie on January 9, 1974 and April 9 and August 21, 1975.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

One of the classic tropes of American cinema is that of the snake-oil salesman, traveling the South at the turn of the last century in a medicine wagon and touting god-knows-what in a bottle that will cure everything from piles to anemia. The Traveling Executioner, an obscure, oddball film from 1970, subverts that trope into an unforgettable existential character study.

In 1918, Jonas Candide, an ex-carny and ex-con, played by Stacy Keach in the performance of a lifetime, travels the Deep South with his own electric chair. (Don’t question how a portable electric chair without a way to charge its generator would work; just go with it.) Acting as a private executioner, Candide sends convicts to the next life for $100 a pop. Candide is not a bloodthirsty villain but rather a charming rogue whose greatest gift is his ability to put the condemned at ease in their final moments. Before throwing the switch, he spins a story of how he was contacted through a medium by a man he executed who told of how wonderful the afterlife is—fields of Ambrosia. Hearing this story, the condemned pass on with a smile on their face, soon to go to a better life.

Candide is good at what he does, and all is well until one day he learns he’s scheduled to execute a German brother and sister convicted of murder. He falls head over heels in love with the sister played by Drive-In Asylum favorite Marianna Hill. From that moment on, Candide hatches as many schemes as he can in to save his love from his traveling chair. As you can imagine for a movie from the 70s, in E.C Comics fashion, it doesn’t end well.

The Traveling Executioner is one of the oddest, yet most unforgettable movies I’ve ever seen. Everything about it stamps it as a classy production. It was the only screenplay written by 21-year-old University of Southern California film student Garrie Bateson. And while the screenplay has a whiff of film-student earnestness and an ending that you’ll see coming early on, it nonetheless makes a serious impression. Directing with a sure hand was journeyman Jack Smight, who has Frankenstein: The True Story, The Illustrated Man and Damnation Alley among his credits. The dusty, depressing look of the film was the work of ace cinematographer, two-time Oscar nominee Philip Lathrop. Maestro Jerry Goldsmith supplied the score. Adding to the film’s cache are nice early supporting turns by M. Emmet Walsh, as a warden, and Bud Cort, as a mortician and Candide’s assistant. Things look and play like a late-period Western without the gunfights.

But the real joy here is watching the stage actor Stacy Keach giving it his all in an early film role. He’s a sympathetic protagonist even when he resorts to unsavory measures in the name of love. For me, Keach, later to make his mark on TV as the definitive Mike Hammer, has always been an underrated talent. Casting him in this role was a masterstroke.

MGM had no clue how to market The Traveling Executioner, which everybody describes as a “black comedy.” It’s not. At its heart, it’s a serious art film with some exploitation trappings. Indeed, the gauche, heavy-handed ad campaign promising unbridled fun did nothing to sell it to audiences. But then again, I can’t think of how any ad campaign could capture the film’s unique tone. Despite a few good reviews, it had a short, disastrous theatrical release in the fall of 1970. Afterward, apart from a few showings on The CBS Late Movie, it vanished and was almost impossible to see for decades. It finally became available on a DVD burn from Warner Archives in 2011, but it has yet to find its own fields of Ambrosia, a cult following. I wish Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary would feature it on the Video Archives podcast. It’s a great film with a singularly great central performance awaiting rediscovery.

Epilogue. Unbelievably, in 1993, The Traveling Executioner was adapted into a stage musical, The Fields of Ambrosia. Despite some good reviews, the 1996 London show closed after only 23 performances. Déjà vu.