Dectective Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen) is still haunted by the night he captured the notorious serial killer Max Jenke (Brion James) who has murdered over 110 people, most of them with a meat cleaver. He constantly wakes up in the middle of the night because of the nightmares he has of that fateful night. The night he and his partner Casey (Terry Alexander) tracked Jenke down to a diner. They both split up. McCarthy finds what's left of two cops, Hodges and Osborn in little pieces splattered all over the diner's kitchen. Casey investigates the nearby electricity plant. After realising Jenke isn't in the diner McCarthy heads to the power plant and finds Casey dying with both of his arms cut off. Eventually he manages to capture Jenke, his boss Lt. Hank Miller (Lewis Arquette) stops McCarthy from shooting him. McCarthy has been on a leave of absence ever since that night. He regularly sees a psychiatrist named Dr. Tower (Matt Clark). It's the day of Jenkes execution by electric chair, McCarthy has a front row seat. Jenke is executed but before he dies he says he will be back. Afterwards in the prison morgue a Professor Peter Campbell (Thom Bray) is conducting state funded research on various crackpot theories he has regarding 'electromagnetic evil'. He believes evil in it's simplest form is electricity and that Jenke is pure evil, so he thinks Jenke can move from the material plane and become pure concentrated electric evil who will be able to manipulate reality. Hey, I didn't understand this rubbish either, I mean I didn't write this stuff. He witnesses Jenkes transformation into electricity. He tries to talk with McCarthy, who Campbell thinks Jenke will go after. Will Campbell be able to convince a disbelieving McCarthy in time? Will Mcarthy's family, his wife Donna (Rita Taggart) plus their two children Scott (Aron Eisenberg) and Bonnie (Dedee Pfeiffer) become victims of Jenke and his meat cleaver? And can Jenke finally be put to rest and his reign of terror be ended? Watch it to find out! Apparently there were some behind-the-scenes production problems on this film. The original writer/director David Blythe was fired after a few days and special effects man James Isaac was brought in to replace him. The UK DVD I have on the 'Hollywood DVD' label has Isaac listed as director on the film itself but has Blythe listed as director on the DVD cover artwork, very strange that. Anyway I was really rather disappointed with this. The script by Leslie Boham and 'Alan Smithee'/Blythe is far too dull and plodding. Long stretches of absolutely nothing happen far too often. Too much padding and wandering around. It's also extremely stupid, whoever thought of the term 'electromagnetic evil'? It has a few decent sequences, but nowhere near enough to justify 90 minutes of our time spent watching it. Another problem this film had was with censorship, there is virtually no gore in it whatsoever and I've got the '18' rated British DVD which is slightly longer than the American 'R' rated cut. Jenke's execution scene is quite cool with lots of expanding skin plus bulging and popping veins. There are a couple of severed heads and a guy with no arms, blood and gore wise thats it. Nowhere near enough of the red stuff in it! Generally the film is quite well made, but nothing spectacular. This film also commits the crime of wasting two great leading men, the always watchable Lance Henriksen and the delightfully over-the-top villain Brion James, who's barely in it to be honest. Extremely disappointing film with the most horrible 'happy ending' I've seen since the Kindred (1987) in which even the family's pet cat comes back to life and survives! Avoid, unless you can see it on T.V. for free because of Henriksen and James, and for the one or two decent sequences in it.