Friday the 13th: The Series (TV Series) The Electrocutioner (1988) User Reviews

The Cursed Electric Chair

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 28 March 2024]

In 1978, Eli Pittman is sentenced to death penalty in an electric chair. He claims that he is innocent, but the warden tells him that his stay has been denied. However, the execution fails twice, and Eli is sent to a mental institution for examination. Ten years later, Eli is working as a dentist at the Haverstock Reform School with the electric chair disguised as a dentist chair. Meanwhile, Jack and Ryan go to the prison to know the whereabouts of the electric chair. The warden tells them that the chair was sold to Lewis and that Eli was innocent in the end. Eli executes a boy at Haverstock and absorbs the electricity generated in the process. He looks for DA Daniial Kendricks, who was responsible for his case, and electrocutes him in the beginning of his crime spree to revenge those who sentenced him to death.

"The Electrocutioner" is another good episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series", with the story of a deranged man that escaped from death by electric chair. The plot is intriguing and the conclusion could not be different. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Executor" ("The Executor")

A Remake of "The Positive-Negative Man"

[Gislef · 7/10 · 13 September 2020]

I've always thought of this episode of 'The Avengers', when seeing "The Electrocutioner". Both feature a man with an electric touch, whose victims conveniently touch conducting elements. Whether they be handrails, or railroad tracks.

The episode also continues the show's unfortunate trend of turning its first-season villains into comic book villains. A shadow weakened by light, an evil lantern that's light beam is reflected by a mirror, and now an electrical villain who can be grounded. I'm surprised Ryan never calls him "Electro". If they're magical powers, should they be bound by real-world physics?

There's also the on-again/off-again portrayal of the bad guy, Eli. Like Helen in "Vanity's Mirror", the writers can't seem to decide if the bad guy is an innocent, or a demented killer, or both. Eli is supposedly an innocent man, but then kills teenagers and tortures the innocent Downing with a dental drill. Maybe Eli wasn't so innocent after all? He seems like the type who would kill his girlfriend.

Writer Rob Hedden also fails to establish the electric chair as an "antique". Yes, it's ten years old. But does that make it an antique?

The bright spot is Angelo Rizacos in the first of his three appearances on the show. He's not bad, but really doesn't have a lot to work with because of the topsy-turvy changes in his character, from innocent man to sadistic killer and torturer. Maybe part of the antiques' curse is turning innocent people into jerks?

Still, Rizacos/Eli does good work as the dentist who is "in tune" with the teenagers he treats and then kills for their energy. He portrays the young, hip professional that was popular in TV and movies around this time.

The regulars don't have much to do. The scene at the end with Micki getting her hair splayed out by static electricity is cringe-worthy. Jack is okay, although all of his guesses about Eli's powers and how they work are incessantly 100% right. We do get to see the trio doing some investigation work. It's not great: Jack deduces the alias at the beginning, based on what appears to be a hunch. Sherlock Holmes, he ain't.

So okay episode. Kind of hum-drum, but Rizacos' performance and the nature of the curse (He kills, to get power to get revenge!) makes the episode stand out a bit.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

Sparks fly

[allexand · 9 July 2009]

A wrongfully convicted man uses a cursed electric chair to absorb electricity and administer poetic justice to those who participated in his botched execution...

"The Electrocutioner" is a fun episode. I consider it to be a guilty pleasure, but from an artistic standpoint, it's one of the more ridiculous episodes this show has churned out in a while.

While I admit it would be kinda neat to have your own electric chair, the very thought of a store actually selling one is beyond far-fetched. Then there's the often recurring problem in that the antique seems too big to fit in the vault. However, they do actually show Ryan and Micki stuffing it in there so I must give them some credit.

When the villain gets the electric chair, what does he do with it? Why, he disguises it as a dentist chair, of course! Apparently the people he works with don't get out much either as no one in their right mind would be fooled by this thing.

He uses runaways as his victims and the chair fries them into nothingness. Nobody ever suspects that he's killing these children despite the constant flickering of lights or the smoking heap of clothing in his trash can, naturally.

There's an unnecessary scene where he tortures and kills his boss after he talks to Ryan and Micki. I don't understand why this needed to be done as the man was completely innocent and it would have looked just a little too suspicious for him to completely disappear.

The one highlight of this episode would be the scene where Eli chases Micki and Ryan to their car as it is pretty suspenseful. They first have to avoid a stream of water along the sidewalk and then he corners them inside their car. This was a pretty fun moment. It was also pretty enjoyable to see how they managed to defeat him at the end.

"The Electrocutioner" is certainly not one of the worst episodes of this series. While I do enjoy watching it, it's rife with implausibilities. While most episodes have events or characters that strain a little credibility here and there, this one is a bit much. This is definitely one to take with a grain of salt.