MR DEATH is one of my favourite types of documentary: those that tell a story you're completely unfamiliar with, but which turn out to be extremely compelling and indeed gripping thanks to the stuff being presented. In many ways, this is a simple story of one man's fame and later infamy, although director Morris uses it as a springboard to embrace some wider concepts, such as capital punishment and the Holocaust.One of the important things that I took away from this was that Leuchter is no villain: just a misguided man who didn't necessarily deserve all the hatred aimed at him. Yes, he made a grievous mistake, but to destroy his life as a result of that error? "Let he who is without sin...", etc. The political side of the documentary is especially interesting as a result.

Here's the major lie by omission - the film and interview of the chemist conveniently excludes the fact that Leuchter also took brick samples from the delousing chambers at the camps in the exact same way as he did from the alleged homicidal gas chambers. His delousing chamber samples registered extremely high amounts of cyanide, proving that the cyanide is in fact easily detectable, even when diluted due to the crushing of large samples.Further, the archives were misrepresented as evidence. The items claimed as evidence were normally ordered and used in all camps in the delousing chambers, even the dozens of camps in Germany which have since been proved to have never had any homicidal gas chambers at all. The homicidal gas chamber lie originally included camps in Germany and several other occupied countries, but over time as more research has been completed, claims of homicidal gas chambers have been dis-proved in nearly all camps except for the remaining few in Soviet captured Poland that Leuchter tested. See the controversy about Leuchter? With his testing, the last bit of the homicidal gas chamber lie is laid to rest. That embarrasses many people. The documents in the archive are nothing but evidence of materials for normal delousing chambers that were used in all camps to actually keep prisoners alive by treating clothing and buildings to eliminate Typhus carrying lice - the real killer in the camps. Many thousands continued to die of Typhus even after the camps were liberated. The film goes further in deceiving people by claiming that "Vergasungskeller" used in the archives is evidence of homicidal gas chambers, since it means gasification chamber, but this is actually what the delousing chambers were referred to. Homicidal chambers would be called "Gaskammer."For those more knowledgeable about the actual lack of evidence, it's clear this film was made for one reason; to attack Fred A. Leuchter because he's a threat to the homicidal gas chamber lie being dis-proved in the last few camps. The film relies on opinionated slander from Holocaust Museum employees calling Leuchter names like, "Neo-Nazi," lying through omission and distortion of evidence, clips of Hitler mixed in to stir emotion, and even weird camera angles, dark lighting, and odd music all in an attempt to attack Mr. Leuchter.One positive about the film is that it probably backfires on some, stirring their interest to do actual research into the subject. However, because the film is clearly designed to protect a lie and slander someone, I cannot give it more than one star. Lies and slander about such an important subject are unacceptable.If you want to see a good film watch David Cole's actual tour and interview of the curator of the main Auschwitz camp. The curator admits there were no homicidal gas chambers found after the war. Obviously, the Soviets created them out of regular buildings in order to fabricate evidence to match the war propaganda they had spread. David Cole is a Jew by the way, and his film is called David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper.We've all been told a tremendous lie. There never were any homicidal gas chambers.

This is a documentary that feels like a compressed news broadcast. Errol Morris, the reason why Werner Herzog ate his shoe, makes this documentary about, well, the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., also known as Mr. Death. During the 70's and 80's, Mr. Leuchter found himself in a successful niche improving upon and creating new machines to implement capital punishment. Though he was not a licensed technician, he sold blueprints and homemade machines to state penitentiaries as well as acted as a consultant on the lethal machines in prisons across the country. Where Mr. Leuchter went awry was when he was contacted to investigate the truthfulness to the claim that Nazis used lethal gas to exterminate thousands of people at concentration camps in Germany and Poland. His research found him knee deep in the ruins of Auschwitz, taking rock samples off the walls of gas chamber rooms to take back to the United States for arsenic analysis. His research turned up no traces of cyanide in the wall samples nor evidence of the structural integrity of the supposed gas chambers to safely contain the gases. He presented his findings to the trial of Ernst Zundel, a holocaust denier on trial in Canada for publishing documents refuting the Holocaust ever occurred, and was successively outcast from society as a fellow Holocaust denier. Through Morris' ninety minute film, we are shown the relative success of a man quickly sink to the bottom of the world's hating order through the publication of one research project. Mr. Leuchter is portrayed as objectively as possible in this film, sometimes even going to black while his voice continues, but the sheer tenacity of this man makes me grit my teeth with rage when I think of him. His lack of concern for human life and the sufferings of others and his ambivalence towards people as both models of death and financial gain is a horrifying example of what kinds of people do what kinds of things in this world. The movie was well made with nice interludes of beautifully shot slow motion 35mm as well as video footage from trials, video from Leuchter's own research in the tombs of Auschwitz, and the interviews of Leuchter sitting and talking about his work as calmly as a dove coos.

The documentary "Mr. Death" was a portrait of a man who designs execution machines for a living. He went from designing an electric chair for the state of Tennessee to somehow being an expert on all types of execution machines. There are scenes where he is strapped to the electric chair from Tennessee, with a crazed look on his face. I think this scene and one other, where he is testing his electric chair make Fred seem totally crazed. When testing the chair he was just starting at the camera, looking with anticipation to pull the lever to turn on the chair. He seemed so thrilled. This made me question if he is a credible person through out the film. Is he really thrilled to kill?