Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Errol Morris

Release Date:

14 January 2000 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Plot:

A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.

Plot Keywords:

Execution | Auschwitz | Gas Chamber | Holocaust Denier | Revisionist

Awards:

1 win & 3 nominations

Cast

Fred A. Leuchter Jr.	...	Himself (as Fred Leuchter)
Robert Jan Van Pelt	...	Himself
David Irving	...	Himself
Caroline Leuchter	...	Herself (voice)
James Roth	...	Himself (analytical chemist)
Shelly Shapiro	...	Herself
Suzanne Tabasky	...	Herself
Ernst Zündel	...	Himself
David Collins	...	Re-enactment cast
Daniel Polsby	...	Re-enactment cast
Jeff Brown	...	Re-enactment cast
Robert Duerr	...	Re-enactment cast

Also Known As:

Mr. Death (USA) (short title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements.

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Australia:M | France:U | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Auschwitz, Poland

Company:

Channel Four Films

Trivia:

All of the states which bought one of Leuchter's lethal injection machines have subsequently stopped using them because they were too difficult to operate and maintain.

Quotes:

Fred A. Leuchter Jr.: The human body is not easy to destroy and it's not east to take a life humanely and painlessly without doing a great deal of damage to the individual's body.

Movie Connections:

Features Electrocuting an Elephant (1903)

The homespun conformist

He seems to be concocted by a joint effort between Flannery O'Connor and Philip Roth: Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. builds more humane death technology. He brings electric chairs into the twentieth century and suggests that TV sets be brought into the killing room for the victims of lethal injection. For a while, the director Errol Morris is fascinated by the visual properties of geeky, big-gummed, brown-suited Fred, who reveals his churning interior self in only one way: he confesses to consuming forty cups of coffee and six packs of cigarettes a day. He seems like the obsessive, narrowly niche-defined folk of Morris' FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL--AI geeks and topiary gardeners. Then history intervenes.

A Holocaust denier on trial for libel in Canada calls Fred as his star witness, proclaiming this mix of Babbitt and Kevorkian as a world-class expert. And so Fred takes his bride (the waitress who served him his daily forty cups) on a honeymoon to Auschwitz, where, in an almost comic act of desecration, he hacks chunks of brick from the deathhouse walls to prove they contain no Zyklon B. After pride cometh a fall, and Fred is ruined--and in the process Morris has minted a meditation on the roots of evil that joins together "Twin Peaks" and Sophocles.

The most tightly focussed and probably the best of Morris' documentary features, MR. DEATH is probably the most eloquent spokesman of Morris' continuing theme--the metaphysical delusions ordinary mortals use to get through their very mortal days and nights.