Mr. Death: the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr [NTSC]

Ingenious, highly idiosyncratic documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris, accomplishes another fascinating, provocative character-study in “Mr. Death - the Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.”. The son of a Massachusetts prison guard, Leuchter is a designer and renovator of execution equipment. He is totally committed to the ideal of execution equipment that runs flawlessly and efficiently, that kills its victim in the most swift and painless manner. The detail and passion with which Leuchter describes the workings of electric chairs or lethal injection is jaw dropping, and reveals an individual with an extremely perverse, skewed perspective on things. His categorical oddness is revealed merely by the fact that he drinks forty cups of coffee and smokes six packs of cigarettes in one day. Leuchter’s extreme naivety finds its ultimate expression in his work for the Revisionist Historians which involves trespassing onto Auschwitz, surreptitiously removing samples from the ‘alleged’ gas chambers, testing them to find they bare no chemical residue that would substantiate the Holocaust, and therefore declaring the Holocaust a myth. Morris reveals via interviews and documentary footage how the neo-Nazis used this eccentric somewhat disturbed ‘geek’ for their own purposes. But the consequences are serious: Leuchter, post media-attention, finds that no one is willing to do business with him anymore. Morris doesn’t judge Leuchter but rather allows him to present his side of the story, no matter how bizarre. Part of what makes “Mr Death” so engaging is Morris’ filmmaking style, which mixes first-person interview and documentary footage with an expressionist almost melodramatic style that creates an effective, eerie atmosphere perfectly suited to the odd material. “Mr Death” is fascinating and engrossing thanks to the totally eccentric nature of its main character and the various issues which his story raises and complicates, such as capital punishment, evilness, morality, and truth.