The story revolves around a man on Death Row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a grievous crime, the nature of which is never explained. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather, who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead.
The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal "Cerberus" guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer's local gangs on camera to make violent, visceral, underground snuff films.
