Review of Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999) by Dominic D — 27 Jan 2008

Here is the story of a sad, lonely, stupid man. Fred Leuchter is an engineer, and a decent one it seems, but his life skills desperately need fine-tuning. As a vocation, he designs machines that kill people.

He sees himself as a humanitarian, delivering death as painlessly, as "comfortably" as possible. He only sees the engineering challenge of the death penalty instead of seeing it as a moral question.

That's precisely the kind of reasoning he uses when he's commissioned by Nazi apologists to "investigate the claims" of the Holocaust - and it ruins his life. This time, he even gets the science wrong (he's not a trained scientist after all), reaches false conclusions, thus becoming a star among neo-Nazis, which in turn destroys his business.

He's left wondering where he went wrong, even though it should be plenty apparent to everyone. Errol Morris makes another extraordinary documentary!