IMDb RATING
7.5/10
5.8K
YOUR RATING
A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.
- Awards
- 1 win & 8 nominations
Fred A. Leuchter Jr.
- Self
- (as Fred Leuchter)
Caroline Leuchter
- Self
- (voice)
Adolf Hitler
- Self - Leaves Plane
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Errol Morris
- Self - Interviewer
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAll of the states which bought one of Leuchter's lethal injection machines have subsequently stopped using them because they were too difficult to operate and maintain.
- Quotes
Fred A. Leuchter Jr.: The human body is not easy to destroy and it's not easy to take a life humanely and painlessly without doing a great deal of damage to the individual's body.
Featured review
A distinctive presentation of fascinating material
Leuchter is an expert in execution technology (designer of electric chairs, gas chambers, etc.), whose career was wiped out when he got swept up in the Holocaust revisionism movement (he testified, as an expert witness in a defamation suit, that the Auschwitz crematoria could not and did not serve as gas chambers). In this vivid documentary, Morris lets Leuchter speak for himself (which reveals him to be a man of limited horizons with a - let's say - quirky moral code, likely undone by hubris rather than evil [although Morris may deliberately be making that as far as possible an eye-of-the-beholder issue]), while providing a blizzard of visual accompaniments that emphasize the lurid raw material of Leuchter's life (a strategy indicated by the B-movie undertone of the title), and flirt with his obvious sense of his own heroism. Leuchter has more than enough rope here to hang himself, and pretty much gets the job done. Morris doesn't try to explore the issue of Holocaust revisionism generally, pretty much taking our revulsion on faith: if anything, from my limited previous reading on the subject, that's doing Leuchter a favor. Anyway, revulsion or not, it's hard not to be fascinated by a man who can calmly chatter about his value-pricing approach to selling death machines (although custom made, he tells us, they're sold at "off the shelf" prices).
helpful•157
- allyjack
- Sep 20, 1999
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Mr. Death
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $507,941
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $24,125
- Jan 2, 2000
- Gross worldwide
- $507,941
- Runtime1 hour 31 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999) officially released in Canada in English?
Answer