Jonas Candide performs his job as state executioner in early 20th century Mississippi like a combination preacher and carnival barker, persuading condemned men to accept their deaths before electrocuting them on his electric chair. After he's assigned his first woman to execute, however, Jonas' sense of purpose is shaken.

Amos Lasher loses his wife and home in an accident, finding himself in the care of the state, or specifically speaking, the Sunset Nursing Home. Here he finds the head nurse, Daisy Daws, ruling the cowed patients with an iron hand, but as his determination to get out of Sunset grows, the more sinister his situation becomes.

An electronics genius, who is an ex-con, and four of his lady friends devise a plot to steal millions of dollars from the Chicago Transit Authority. A detective, who had been keeping tabs on him since he got out of prison, suspects that he is up to something and tries to catch him at it.