Albert Fish's story is one of the most fascinating and shocking American tales of the 20th century. If you haven't heard of him or seen this film, feel free to take the time to Google his name and get some backstory.If you've already done that, then this film isn't really going to tell you anything new. "Albert Fish", the film, offers a confusingly paced story told through cheaply produced reenactments, with input from subjects without any real qualifications to be exploring the mind of a serial killer, sexual predator, and psychopath.The film opens with the story of the Grace Budd murder, including a voice-over (portraying Fish) reading the infamous letter. During which we hear melodramatic sound effects including a second voice-over (portraying Budd) squealing "I'll tell Momma!" with a tone so campy I literally started laughing out loud. It's then explained how Westchester Police used the letter to finally arrest Fish. So right off the bat the most horrific and compelling chapter of Fish's disturbing life is laid out to us, removing all drama it could've held later.But that's OK. This film isn't interested in drama. It's interested in exploring Fish's religious psychosis without any real narrative to follow. And it insists on laying out the depth of Fish's psychosis not through psychoanalyses, but through lots of projection from its interviewees and even more cheaply made dramatizations portraying what the film insists are the visions Fish had. Fish may very well have had some extreme religious psychosis, but the film makes little effort to produce the evidence of this.It also provides little background of Fish himself. Mentioned sporadically throughout the film are anecdotes about his childhood and adult life, but rarely is this explained in any detail or with any connection to a narrative. The film notes his married life, fatherhood, and abandonment by his wife with little interest in the psychological impact any of these aspects had.Many reviews have claimed Joe Coleman's inclusion in the film was superfluous, but I disagree. Coleman was the perfect allegory for what the film was trying to accomplish: heavy projection in lieu of evidence or thoughtful examination. Coleman's credentials hardly make him an authority on the subject of serial killers. Such as they are, his greatest attributes seem to be having a creepy collection of souvenirs and apparently stealing the Grace Budd letter from the police. Unable to speak authoritatively on Fish, he instead openly uses his own religious background to speculate greatly on the motives for Fish's crimes. Eventually he claims that he (Coleman) personally was meant to own the letter.If you are hoping to learn anything new about Albert Fish, head to the library, because you won't find it here. It you'd like to literally watch paint dry (there's a reenactment in the film which gives us this opportunity) feel free to watch this film.

I had the unfortunate chance to watch it in a theater. This is a TV documentary and not to be seen on theater!!Many things bothered me, but the fact that the narrator was repeating the same informations 3 times through out the "docu" completely annoyed me.It was very annoying how much effort the creators put into making it a shockumentary. But it was o-so- lame. Over dramatic narrator pointing out words like "pain" and "virgin" and "fish" and the dramatization focused on very handsome naked teens instead of the brutality and the character and the causes of Albert Fish. It only gave us a spoonful about Fish and repeated the same informations again and again and again and then "naked teens" and "virgin" and only had 2 interviewers!!The worst one was this psycho horror artifacts creator who was mainly talking about himself and his origins and a few words about Fish as if he had something important to add to Fish's story. And the other one was a woman obsessed with Fish and his sexual life. At a point they had access to Fish's psychiatrist records and they didn't use real Fish's voice at all, and his sayings for not more than 5 minutes! Why??In a few words don't waste your time with it, it's just super lame.

This was a good little documentary that could have been much better but still, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've always been fascinated with Albert Fish and other serial killers so it was very interesting to see documentary on the man. I was actually pretty disturbed through most of the film. I always say that I can watch any movie that I know is fake and it won't bother me, but when it's real, it really gets to me and this one did just that.I loved the scenes where it just told the story of Albert Fish with a narrator. However, there were quite a few interviews with a bunch nobodies that no one cares about and those really annoyed me. I just want to hear the story, not a bunch of idiots babbling about how they know soooo much about Albert Fish. Other than that, it was very creepy the whole way through and completely chilling. Check it out.

First off, I was expecting a different type of film with ALBERT FISH than what I got. For some reason, I was under the impression that the film would be a "dramatization" of Fish's life, but instead got a pretty straight-forward documentary. As far as documentaries go, it holds up pretty well, but I didn't really get a lot from this film that I didn't already know about Fish already.ALBERT FISH chronicles the life and crimes of the sexually-deviant serial-killer of the same name. We are given some background on his upbringing and some by-the-book details of some of the crimes that Fish admitted to when he was finally caught and imprisoned.This documentary is relatively interesting and the facts are handled well - I just found that the information that was provided was much the same as any information that could be gleaned by reading any material about Fish. I didn't really learn anything new or find this particular docu to be very enlightening or provide any new insights to the man or his actions. Worth a look to docu-enthusiasts, or to anyone who may be interested in Albert Fish but doesn't know any details about him. Those that are already familiar with Fish and his actions will probably not gain a whole lot from this one...6.5/10