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

Rating:
Summary: Tragically engrossing
Review: "The human body is not easy to destroy."

And so Errol Morris introduces us to the latest intriguing character to sit in front of his Interrotron. Fred Leuchter is a slippery guy. He's a self styled engineer in an industry consisting almost solely of himself: consulting prisons on instruments of execution. Leuchter himself is not even sure how he got there. "I built helmets for electric chairs, so now I could build lethal injection machines," he says. "I now build lethal injection machines, so now I'm competent to build a gallows. And since I'm building gallows, I'm also competent to work on gas chambers, because I've done all the other three." He almost laments that he's been shoe horned into an area that few others would be willing to go, but he does so anyway. He clearly enjoys his line of work and comes to see himself as a real expert. This belief in his own propaganda would be his downfall.

He's a proponent of the death penalty but has a strong conviction that it should be handled "humanely." Those awaiting execution, after decades of imprisonment, are "just like you and me" he argues. He would like to see lethal injection performed in molded seats like a dentist's office has. The condemned could watch TV, listen to music or look at pictures on the wall. Furthermore, execution could be a safe and painless process for the executioners as well. "Nobody should have to place his life in jeopardy because an execution is being conducted." And the beguiling thing about Leuchter is that he is absolutely sincere. He is completely without guile. He clearly wants us to like him.

Errol Morris tends toward the fringes in his selection of subject matter, but he rarely goes wrong. He invented a camera he calls the Interrotron that uses mirrors to show his own face directly over the camera lens. Using this and a prodigious skill as an interviewer, he manages to coax out the very essence of his subjects - often without even them realizing it. Go rent The Thin Blue Line and you'll see what I mean. Leuchter was initially going to be part of his last project, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, but Morris knows a good thing when he sees it and decided to make a new film entirely about Leuchter. And his strange occupation and views on capital punishment would have made a good subject alone. But Fred doesn't end there.

In 1988, Ernst Zundel was on trial under an obscure Canadian law for "publishing information he knew to be untrue." He published books claiming the Holocaust never happened. He called on Leuchter as the only man supposedly familiar enough with the instruments of execution to verify whether Auschwitz' infamous gas chambers really existed. Leuchter was flown to Auschwitz where he stole some brick and concrete samples and had them tested for cyanide. None was found. This gave rise to The Leuchter Report - a now famous document among neo-Nazi groups that supposedly offers evidence that the Holocaust deniers are correct.

Now it would be very easy to paint Leuchter as a simple dupe, but Morris recognizes that he is as much a victim of himself as of the hate groups that he travels around speaking to. In the end, he pays dearly for his botched investigation and his hubris (and is still paying today). Leuchter, believing he was the savior of a wrongly accused man and "the only expert in the world" who could uncover the truth, clings to the knowledge that he was correct, despite all the evidence to the contrary and even his own admitted ineptitude at the sort of investigation he tried to do. The technician who actually performed the tests even confirms that Leuchter was wrong in his assumptions. But Leuchter is a believer.

Morris has given us a masterful film and a look at a man who is anything but simple, but wrapped in a very simple package. He doesn't provide us with ready made answers for the quandaries that exist within Fred Leuchter, but shows him to us in three dimensions. It's not always a pretty picture, but is an engrossing one

Rating:
Summary: Hair-raising.
Review: 'Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.' is a hair-raising documentary about a gas chamber expert and his clumsy survery of concentration camps in Poland that led to the demise of his career. The first thirty minutes of the film discusses Leuchter's career as an expert in "humane" executions of prisoners. It tells of his various viewpoints and his life history. The story takes a sudden turn when the focus of the documentary shifts to Leuchter's discoveries at German concentration camps.
This is where the film becomes really awesome and hair-raising. Here it discusses the trial that followed after the results and people reacting to Leuchter's odd behavior. Errol Morris does his best to give an objective viewpoint on the whole affair. He does not try to make Leuchter look like a devil or angel. Morris pretty much lets the viewer decide about this man. Worth the watch if one can find it.

Rating:
Summary: Hair-raising.
Review: 'Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.' is a hair-raising documentary about a gas chamber expert and his clumsy survery of concentration camps that led to the demise of his career. The first thirty minutes of the film are boring, with Leuchter trying to give "humane" methods when executing prisoners. The story takes a sudden turn when the focus of the documentary shifts to Leuchter's discoveries at German concentration camps.
This is where the film becomes really awesome and hair-raising. Here it discusses the trial that followed after the results and people reacting to Leuchter's odd behavior. Errol Morris does his best to give an objective viewpoint on the whole affair. He does not try to make Leuchter look like a devil or angel. Morris pretty much lets the viewer decide about this man. Worth the watch if one can find it.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Death: He had alot of guts...
Review: ... to publish "The Leuchter Report". I've read it (available on the internet) and he also looked at the "gas chambers" from a mechanical standpoint, to see if they "could" of been used... no proper seals (the gas would of leaked out), no heat in the buildings to supliment the gas, no vents to introduce or take out the gas. In other words, those buildings shown to tourists were fakes. Notice on the film that nobody can dispute these findings, but only attack him personally. That says it all.
Great film!

Rating:
Summary: Another interesting documentary from Errol....
Review: ...definitely not as light-hearted or charming as "Gates of Heaven" or "Vernon, Florida", but still a fascinating film about real people in unreal situations.

Nerdy Fred Leuchter becomes an expert on execution equipment in prisons across the country (his father worked at a prison), and it is this (limited) knowledge that results in his expert testimony in a trial agaist a Holocaust-denier in Canada. He is asked to support the defense team's contention that, perhaps, the Holocaust really didn't happen (and therefore their client is innocent of Holocaust denial). Fred ends up taking a trip to Germany to determine if the alleged gas chambers ever had gas in them (by sampling the brick structures left standing).

Obviously not qualified to make such a determination (due to lack of knowledge about the structures themselves, nor the technique of chemically testing sample materials), Fred comes to the (false) conclusion that mass murder must not have ocurred and that the Holocaust did not take place. From here, his career as an execution consultant in the states goes down in flames, as people decide not to seek his services due ot his controversial contribution to the highly-publicized case.

The film would be funny if it weren't for the serious subject matter. What we have left is a story about a pathetic little man (who looks remarkably like "Toad" in "American Graffiti") who got his 15 minutes of fame at the expense of his career and reputation.

This not a movie you would watch more than once, but it is worthwhile nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: I KNOW FRED....
Review: ...I actually contacted Fred Leuchter. A few(not all) points...

-Van Pelt under oath admitted he has misrepresented himself in Canada as a licensed architect.
-Morris broke his contract with Fred. Morris varied from his strict documentary format to collude with Van Pelt on reediting and filming new sequences with no notice to Fred.
-Unlike the film, Fred reviewed the blueprints at Auschwitz long before Van Pelt saw the original Morris film. The omissions in this film are enormous.

I confirmed that the ADL had not contacted Fred about any of their statements issued on him.
Fred was an established expert and an accepted engineer in the field of Navigational Systems and Execution Technology. He holds several patents for geodetic measurement and navigational hardware and one for an Optical Drum Encoder. He was recognized as an expert by the U.S. Navy and gave a joint paper at an Institute of Navigation Meeting at the Airforce Academy with the Chief Astromomer and the Chief Physicist for the U.S. Navy.

"Amazon reviewer":
-"Leuchter surreptitiously videotaped himself illegally..."
Fred's sampling was duplicated later by a Jewish group working with the curator of the camp. Germar Rudolf took samples from that decaying exposed room, others did too.
-"his daily intake of...100 cigarettes"
Fred does not smoke, and gave up smoking before he made the film with Mr. Morris. Maybe Morris wanted to build a wall of some sort between Fred and the audience, and/or to portray Fred as being out of control.
-"Zündel hired Leuchter"
No, the Canadian court hired and paid Leuchter to specifically go to Auschwitz and make a report after his investigation there. Zundel asked the court to investigate the issue of gas chambers at Auschwitz. The court referred Zundel's attorney to the US Prison System, where his attorney was referred to the ONLY man in the world with expertise on execution equipment, Fred Leuchter. Fred was accepted as an expert by the Canadian court, so maybe the groups persecuting Fred should've firebombed the Canadian legal system instead of Fred's house, which he eventually lost. Fred assumed before going to Auschwitz that there were gas chambers there and told Zundel that he would put that in the report if he found those conclusions.
-"From these [test] results he determined that the Holocaust did not occur, and he became an active historical revisionist"
Fred does not belong to the IHR, or any organization that refutes the holocaust. He says the Nazis were bad. Fred only speaks on his report and NOT revisionism. Fred gave a few talks on his court report at the IHR after they contacted him. By that time, he was going broke due to concerted efforts to ruin him financially, and needed the little money the IHR offered. The IHR unlike Morris, did not edit him. Before the IHR contacted him, he had been assaulted, threatened, blackballed from practicing from political pressure, and his house had been firebombed, all apparently only for his testimony in Canada. The Aryan Nations got Fred's report from the court and put their name on it. Maybe someone needed to turn Fred into a bogieman to rally support for a cause and keep people on both sides fearful.

Zundel(a nut primarily known for his research on "secret Nazi UFO bases in antactica"), won on appeal, and the "false news" laws of Canada that he faced 25 years in prison under, were stricken from the books.

Fred says chemist Roth lost his job after specifically supporting Fred's methods under oath at the Zundel trial, and threats have caused Roth to change his tune. Chemists say Roth's comments recently don't make scientific sense. Rabbi Yahuda Bauer the Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Jerusalem University supports Fred's "no gas chambers" finding. So do the Polish State Police Lab investigations as did three additional reports done by Germans. Chemist Germar Rudolf's "Rudolf Report" supporting Fred is not mentioned in the film.

In 1960, it was proven that the German concentration camps had no gas chambers. It took until 1976 for Simon Weisenthal to admit that. A recently vindicated historian was fined $17,000 over 30 years ago for saying that the Auschwitz camp as it stands was a Soviet era reconstruction - it is.

But don't accept what I write!...ASK THE PERSON YOU ARE MAKING THE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT OR DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS!

Rating:
Summary: "Holocaust denial is a story about vanity...
Review: ...to be in the spotlight." The desire to be famous even at the expense of one's career is the focus of Morris' fascinating portrayal of Fred Leuchter, who once had the reputation of being one of the United States' leading designers of execution equipment. But the masterstroke of the film is in its message of how overconfidence in one's abilities can lead to self-ruin, a timeless message which has been repeated throughout literature for centuries. But Morris' take on this moral lesson is unique, unusually thought-provoking and at times downright disturbing.

The film does begin on a somewhat "lighter" note, however. For the first thirty minutes, we are invited into the mind of Leuchter who explains in great detail the formation and zenith of his career as an "execution specialist." His father worked as a prison superintendent in a Massachusetts correction facility and as a result of what he told his son concerning the prevailing conditions of the execution equipment used there, Leuchter was inspired to do something about it. He decided that it would be his mission in life to make sure that execution equipment would be designed so that the prisoner being executed would be put to death as quickly as possible and with no physical harm being done to those who were required to witness the execution.

It was a noble profession to pursue, despite the morbidness of it, and therefore quickly built a fine reputation throughout the country, with prison officials contacting him on a regular basis with requests for new electric chairs built to his standard. Strangely, some of these officials felt he also had the ability to construct lethal injection machines as well, despite his lack of knowledge. Morris uses subtle points like this to lead us into the second part of the film: "The Trial of Ernst Zundel."

From this moment on the film enters the realm of the surreal. "Surreal" is a term which is way overused these days by many writers, but I feel it is entirely appropiate here due to the bizzare contradictions that are raised. Zundel's historical revisionist paper entitled "Did Six Million Really Die?" landed him in trouble with the Canadian government. He contacted Leuchter based on his reputation as an execution specialist and Leuchter agreed to testify in defense of what he wrote. Why? Leuchter states that it was Zundel's right to write and publish whatever he wished, that is, if you believe in free speech. That's a fair argument, but knowing Zundel's affiliation leads to some unsettling conclusions about Leuchter. To make matters worse, Leuchter undertakes his own investigation of three of the death camps in Poland. Ignoring the immense archival evidence available at the local libraries, Leuchter concludes, based on his own meticulous measurements and concrete samples of the infrastructure that there was no way that the Holocaust could have happened, because he felt that the structures simply weren't designed to kill people. If so, then what were they? Leuchter offers no explanation for this. Instead, he publishes his findings and is almost immediately taken in by Neo-Nazi organizations on a whirlwind tour throughout America and Europe.

Morris seems to ask us one question in particular over and over again throughout the film: Which is more important, free speech, even if it is mired in ignorance and denial, or a "responsibility to the truth", which is what Leuchter ironically states in one of his speeches. His answer seems to be: You decide.

Rating:
Summary: Morris Shines a Light on Fred Leuchter
Review: Against the baritone backdrop of Fred Leuchter's reminiscences, film maker Errol Morris takes a journey inside the mind of the brilliant engineer of execution systems in Mr. Death: The Life and Times of Fred Leuchter. The film is difficult to evaluate, particularly from a revisionist perspective: Morris's films are supposed to be exercises in irony, not documentaries in a strict sense. Yet the whole aim of revisionism is to dispel the double-visions, and the superstitious delusions, which make irony possible. This simply means that if Morris had made a positive contribution to revisionism, the irony would have been tragic, but if he had made the kind of movie he wanted to make, the irony would have been non-existent. As a result, instead of a revisionist breakthrough, or a delicious satire, Morris has been left with very little, except, possibly, a friend.

The first third of the movie involves a quiet back and forth between Leuchter, whose smoky voice, tinged with a Boston accent, is unmistakable, and Morris, whose constant snorts of laughter remind us of the man who would be Curly. Superimposed throughout are the kind of visual juxtapositions for which Morris is famous: Fred mugging while tied up to an execution device, streams of dark brown coffee pouring as Fred discusses his forty cup a day habit, a Currier & Ives print as Fred discusses the possibility of more humane methods of execution.

A more dramatic turn takes place about forty minutes into the film, as Leuchter discusses his role in the second trial of Ernst Zuendel in 1988, who was tried for "spreading false information" because he distributed a pamphlet that contradicted the standard Holocaust story. In an attempt to defend his position, Zuendel, at the behest of Robert Faurisson, hired Leuchter, who wrote the report that bears his name.

It has been said that the film has undergone several changes since it was first shown: it seems that at an early showing at Harvard in late 1998, several in the audience found themselves agreeing with Fred's common sense arguments, while others felt that Morris was "defending a Nazi." (Of course, Fred is neither a Nazi nor a racist.)

We can imagine what must have been Morris's amazement when he calibrated audience reactions that he had never expected to hear. Had the ironist, recalling Nietzsche, found his own irony? But it seems likely that the problem can be traced back to Morris himself, just a little too confident of his ability to discern the reality that none of his subjects could see.

In recent interviews, Morris has chosen to stress his fascination with death, as well as his status as a Jew who lost relatives in the Holocaust. There's probably an element of self-exculpation here, but there's also a hint as to what may have been Morris's original conceptual problem. Jewish himself and brought up on the mindset that simply accepts every aspect of the Holocaust with uncritical acceptance, he no doubt thought that any one listening to his interviews with Leuchter about Auschwitz would regard them as hysterically absurd, as, well, concentrated camp. But the problem was that for once Errol Morris broke the surly bonds of satire and found himself soaring weightless in reality. Leuchter is not a stupid person. His ideas are not insane. His report, although flawed, contained a genuine core of insight and inspiration. But Morris could not see any of this; for once, he could not appreciate the irony. Twenty years ago, he had college students laughing as old folks talked about meeting their dogs in heaven. He figured that Fred Leuchter would be just as funny. He was wrong: as the saying goes, the joke was on him. By all accounts there have been several alterations made to the film. First and foremost, Morris had to rebut Fred's arguments on Auschwitz. To do this

effectively, he enlisted the help of the eager Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor of architecture from Canada, who shows in this film a remarkable talent for self-promotion and for confusing otherwise straightforward arguments with vast expanses of rhetorical fog. Morris also called on James Roth, the chemist who had originally confirmed Leuchter's findings, but who now disavowed the value of his own testimony with arguments that misstated the observed properties of the chemicals in question. While those adjustments tended to deflate Fred's arguments for the uninitiated, they did nothing to dispel the sense of injustice the audience was bound to feel for Fred, whose life was destroyed -- to put it bluntly -- by activists who will not accept that anyone can publicly disagree with their cherished beliefs. So the film was again trimmed, a potential slant showing Fred as a free speech martyr, and another, accentuating the anti-Germanism of the

traditional Holocaust narrative, also, apparently, ended up on the cutting room floor. There's really not much left to do with the film, now, except to try spin control before viewings. At a recent premiere in Los Angeles, Morris appeared and came dangerously close to betraying the man who had trusted him by calling him crazy. It's probably not easy for Morris to say these things. Not easy because, even if he believes them, what comes across in this film is a genuine liking and rapport between Morris and Leuchter. Morris, a brilliant and eccentric film maker, could appreciate the brilliant eccentricities of Fred Leuchter, even if he didn't believe them. And as Morris must understand by now, is that Fred wasn't destroyed so much for what he did or said about any one thing, but just because he is a brilliant eccentric- which means that next time it just might be Errol Morris' turn. But, as we noted at the beginning, a film that underlined that

truth wouldn't be funny anymore. It would be a tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully, Errolesquely ambiguous
Review: Errol Morris delivers again in this fascinating study of a man who fancies himself a death expert.

The beauty of the film is that it is not, as I anticipated, a look at a man's descent into antisemitism. It's more about a small man whose heart begins in more or less the right place, but is not bright enough, or wise enough, to see when his ego has led him astray.

Fred Leuchter is a self-styled "execution equipment" specialist who manages to make a name for himself among state officials who require such gear. He's recruited by a Holocaust denier to check out Auschwitz, and he dutifully goes to dig up samples for scientific study. He's evidently prevented by his pride, or limited intellect, from seeing that he's made a terrible mistake after his evidence is shown to be amateurish.

The principal character can be admired in the early part of the film for his resolute concern that executions be humane. One gets the feeling that Mr. Morris, given the time he devotes to it, expects us to see great irony in such a concept as "humane execution." However, even I, as a capital punishment opponent, can certainly appreciate the value of striving for relatively quick and painless executions.

But therein lies the delicious ambigiuity of an Errol Morris film. On the one hand I'm inclined to see the filmmaker as having an agenda he's backing with irony, but it's just as possible he's merely setting me up for the decline of his protagonist, as it were. Of course, he's doing both, and more. It's a testament to what be done with documentary.

This is a fabulous study of what 40 cups of coffee a day can do to a man.

Rating:
Summary: Life is Odd, Shows "Mr. Death".
Review: Errol Morris shows himself to be a master filmmaker - a great director, of storytelling, talent, photography, and editing. His film, "Mr. Death" is, to me, a "perfect" film. It's a singular work by one man (Mr. Morris), so consistent in his directorial, visual and editorial presentation, that no other filmmaker of the past or present (except perhaps Sydney Pollack, or Martin Scorcese) can touch him for being able to deliver a mood. With "Mr. Death", Mr. Morris shows himself to be so much more talented than egomaniacal directors with big budgets like James Cameron, for example. The film "Mr. Death" is great because, like the individual whose story is told, the film is perfectly off-center, running exactly parallel to everyday life. There's no doubt that Mr. Morris is a genius. With "Mr. Death", Mr. Morris does exactly what filmmaking needs someone to do - tell the strangest possible story with feature film-mood-quality in an editorially documentary style. Anyone who backs this guy's next project is doing filmmaking, and the art of social commentary a favor.