Review #646: 'Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.' (1999)

Never a director to focus on anything but the utterly fascinating, Errol Morris' documentaries over the past few years lay a foundation for a consistently excellent body of work. His love of the eccentric and the condemned prove fascinating viewing, but what makes his films so utterly gripping is his objectivity. Don't get me wrong, it's more often than not very clear as to where Morris' opinions lie, but he allows his subject a fair crack, a chance to give their side of the story, no matter how outrageous it happens to be. Here, with Mr. Death, about the highs and lows of Fred Leuchter, expert manufacturer of execution devices and Holocaust denier, Morris lets his subject seal his own fate with his own words.

With his father a prison warden, Fred Leuchter spent a lot of his youth around criminals, many of whom were facing imminent execution. Having heard about the flaws in the execution facilities - many of which were built by non-professionals with only a photograph to work from - Leuchter took it upon himself to design an electric chair that was not only more reliable, but more 'humane', both for the prisoner and the wardens. Soon enough, without any engineering qualifications, Leuchter was being employed by other states to design gallows and machines to administer lethal injection. Meanwhile in Canada, renowned neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel published a paper that denied the existence of the Holocaust. Leuchter was brought in as an 'expert' to investigate the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only to discover no trace of cyanide. This led to Leuchter's paper The Leuchter Report, and the downfall of the man's life and reputation.

Similar to Morris' The Fog of War (2003), which allowed former Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara to be viewed as a human being and not the monster it was so easy to label him as, Leuchter does not come across as an anti-Semite, or even someone that believes half the things he says. This mouse of a man - short, ugly, addicted to coffee and cigarettes - is entirely non-threatening. But as we witness him getting swept up in the neo-Nazi rallies he's invited to speak at, he comes across as a man that simply has a need to feel a purpose and place in the world. What he did is unspeakable - illegally gathering samples by chipping off stone from the walls of a place many hold sacred, to use his self-labelled expertise to deny the most shocking genocide in history - but it is nevertheless hard not to feel some sort of pity for him.

Being a former detective, Morris doesn't need to try very hard to disprove Leuchter's findings, and rubbishes with them with a few swift strokes. But those of us with working brains in our heads don't need to be told the Holocaust was real, so Morris doesn't spend too much time on it. This is very much about the man behind the uproar, using archive footage of his time at Auschwitz to portray a man that doesn't seem to grasp the true gravity of the situation. Why did he do it? Can he comprehend the possible repercussions of the words that come out of his mouth? Whatever the answers, this is a fantastic documentary - gripping, shocking, informative and objective, everything you would expect from Errol Morris.


Directed by: Errol Morris
Starring: Fred A. Leuchter Jr.
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie