MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER JR. A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
"Executions 'R Us" could read the business card of Fred A. Leuchter Jr., the engrossing subject of Errol Morris's latest documentary, MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER JR.
Morris (FAST, CHEAP, AND OUT OF CONTROL) has an incredible gift for finding unusual subjects that is exceeded only by his talent for mesmerizing filmmaking. His camerawork choices are both beautiful and insightful. And he manages to find humor without ever resorting to cheap shots and to make the potentially repugnant absolutely riveting.
In a film with two distinct but seamless parts, Morris presents us with the life of engineer Leuchter. Since his father worked at a prison, the young Leuchter visited him at work and became friends with the inmates. Through this he developed an interest in prisons, specifically executions. "I was very concerned about the humanitarian aspects of death by torture," Leuchter explains.
Before Leuchter came along, electric chairs were generally built by inmates or electricians, not based on any blueprint or design but on seeing a picture of some other state's old electric chair. This led to some pretty horrific executions when the chair did not serve its intended purpose of putting a person to death as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
"I am a proponent of capital punishment," Leuchter tell us. "I am not a proponent of capital torture." A weird guy, described as "a mouse of a man," he drinks 40 cups of coffee and smokes 6 packs of cigarettes every day. He is as sincere as he is delusional about the limits of his expertise.
With his big geeky glasses with thick lenses, he'd fit right in as a Silicon Valley engineer, the type who thinks he knows everything since he's had success in one area. After becoming well known for his high quality electric chairs, other states start asking him to build their death machines, even if they involve poison gas, hanging or lethal injection -- all areas about which Leuchter knows almost nothing, which he initially finds amusing. The fame quickly goes to his head, and he gets a deluded sense of his scientific abilities
The second half of the picture concerns his downfall, when he is asked to testify at a Canadian trial of a Holocaust denier. During a surreptitious visit to Auschwitz, he makes a few ill-conceived experiments and declares that no one died there from poison gas. The movie is at it's most convincing when it easily disproves Leuchter's disproof of the annihilation of the Jews.
Going from very modest fame and fortune to oblivion, he is not able to get his reputation back. His descent proves more rapid than his ascent. "He wasn't putting his name on the line because he had no name," one man explains about Leuchter's trial testimony. "He came from nowhere and he went back to nowhere."
Morris's gripping film tells a fascinating story of a little man who let his accomplishments inflate his ego until it burst.
MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER JR. runs a fast 1:31. It is rated PG-13 for mature themes and would be fine for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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