Leuchter

March 8, 2012
Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.
The first thing that got my attention was the title of the documentary: “The rise and fall” makes me remember a documentary that shares almost all of its words, “The rise and fall of the Third Reich” which narrates history of Nazi Germany during WWII. I believe the name of the documentary sets the tone for what’s coming next.Mr. Death begins with Fred Leuchter explaining what he does for a living. He builds electric chairs used for executing prisoners. He does this for a living and state prisons ask for his help in designing these electric chairs. He says “He does it so prisoners can have a more dignified execution”. What an irony, how can he say someone is going to have a more dignified execution. Where is the dignityin getting killed by electric shock or lethal injection? He describes how he is shocked by the condition of the execution equipment used in prisons. He explains that sometimes the electric shock is so high that limbs of the executed prisoner would come off. He even claims why wouldn’t they put pictures on the wall for the prisoner to see before he dies. He narrates how he spent his childhoodbeing around prisoners because his father worked in a prison. He would have contact with prisoners in death row. I think this is one of the main reasons he decided to give them a more “humane” execution.
In this documentary I believe the director clearly manipulates the viewer with different ways of manipulating the camera, scenes, music and light. The first scenes portray Leuchter in a frontal shot,music in the background is almost fearful when relating it to the story. He also plays with light, by contrasting colored shots black and white. In the scene when Leuchter is describing his electric chair, the colors turn to black and white, the video turns to slow motion and the background music is extremely terrifying. Morris also plays with the camera by shooting different angles during theinterview; he shoots from a bottom angle and a side angle. He also keeps recording Fred even after he stops talking, in which regular documentaries would have stopped already. This captures Fred’s gestures after he’s stopped talking which makes it look evil.
Even though he wasn’t qualified to do the scientific research needed to prove if the Holocaust did exist or not, doesn’t mean Leuchter isn’tan intelligent person. The way Fred expressed his ideas and narrated how he constructed and carefully thought of the process to build these “killing machines” are actually impressive. They give a sense that he really knows what he is doing even though he is not a licensed engineer. Being an engineer is not an easy thing and the fact that he is able to construct an electric chair or a lethalinjection machine is pretty astonishing. His eloquent way of speaking may have been a good reason of why he was chosen to build the electric machine for several prisons and the lethal machines even though he did not have any educational background to prove his knowledge. I think that’s why he got the contract to redesign New Jersey’s lethal machine; because of his fluency and his successful electricchair that gave prisoners a more humane execution. Unfortunately, these skills didn’t qualify to make the proper research about the Holocaust’s existence. After being contacted by Zundel, he went to Auschwitz to do research in the alleged gas chambers and check if there was any remaining evidence of hydrogen cyanide. The way he conducted the research was terribly unprofessional and not planned at all.He started taking pieces of the walls even though they are national monuments. He took samples with his bare hands, hammer and a chisel and put them in bags. How was he expecting to find any evidence if the samples were about 50 years old, exposed to weather, people and animals. He even took a sample that was submerged in a puddle of water. Did he expect that puddle was 50 years old? When he...