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
The homespun conformist
He seems to be concocted by a joint effort between Flannery O'Connor and Philip Roth: Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. builds more humane death technology. He brings electric chairs into the twentieth century and suggests that TV sets be brought into the killing room for the victims of lethal injection. For a while, the director Errol Morris is fascinated by the visual properties of geeky, big-gummed, brown-suited Fred, who reveals his churning interior self in only one way: he confesses to consuming forty cups of coffee and six packs of cigarettes a day. He seems like the obsessive, narrowly niche-defined folk of Morris' FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL--AI geeks and topiary gardeners. Then history intervenes.
A Holocaust denier on trial for libel in Canada calls Fred as his star witness, proclaiming this mix of Babbitt and Kevorkian as a world-class expert. And so Fred takes his bride (the waitress who served him his daily forty cups) on a honeymoon to Auschwitz, where, in an almost comic act of desecration, he hacks chunks of brick from the deathhouse walls to prove they contain no Zyklon B. After pride cometh a fall, and Fred is ruined--and in the process Morris has minted a meditation on the roots of evil that joins together "Twin Peaks" and Sophocles.
The most tightly focussed and probably the best of Morris' documentary features, MR. DEATH is probably the most eloquent spokesman of Morris' continuing theme--the metaphysical delusions ordinary mortals use to get through their very mortal days and nights.
A Holocaust denier on trial for libel in Canada calls Fred as his star witness, proclaiming this mix of Babbitt and Kevorkian as a world-class expert. And so Fred takes his bride (the waitress who served him his daily forty cups) on a honeymoon to Auschwitz, where, in an almost comic act of desecration, he hacks chunks of brick from the deathhouse walls to prove they contain no Zyklon B. After pride cometh a fall, and Fred is ruined--and in the process Morris has minted a meditation on the roots of evil that joins together "Twin Peaks" and Sophocles.
The most tightly focussed and probably the best of Morris' documentary features, MR. DEATH is probably the most eloquent spokesman of Morris' continuing theme--the metaphysical delusions ordinary mortals use to get through their very mortal days and nights.
helpful•1512
- nunculus
- Jan 2, 2000
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