Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

Director: Errol Morris

Institute History

Description

From Gates of Heaven to Fast , Cheap & Out of Control , Errol Morris has generated some of the most compelling, entertaining, and influential movies of our time. Morris’s latest effort,Mr. Death, is no exception, bringing his trademark investigative prowess, visionary direction, and sardonic humor to document one of the most fascinating characters in recent memory: Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., self-styled humanist and “execution technologist.” Morris’s agenda is never mere portraiture; rather, in unveiling Leuchter’s involvement in Holocaust denial, his mission is to understand humankind’s capacity for evil.
In February 1988, Ernst Zundel, author of the anti-Semitic pamphlets Did Six Million Really Die? and The Hitler We Loved and Why , commissioned Fred Leuchter’s pseudo-scientific investigation into the use of poison gas in World War II Nazi concentration camps. Without authorization, Leuchter stole into the “alleged” former gas chambers, illegally collecting mortar samples for forensic analysis. The now infamous Leuchter Report claimed that there was no evidence of poison gas in the camps and concluded that the Holocaust was a fictional creation. Leuchter fully expected his involvement with Ernst Zundel to be the crowning achievement of his career, but instead it proved his downfall.
Where did this man come from? What are his credentials and motives? Is he a hatemonger, an anti-Semite, or merely a poor, deluded tool of the neo-Nazi movement? Morris bypasses a more obvious historical discourse on bigotry, examining instead the origins of evil: vanity and self-deception.


Errol Morris, Director
Errol Morris’s nonfiction
features include Gates of
Heaven , which Roger Ebert called one of the ten best films of all time, Vernon Florida , The Thin Blue Line , and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control . His portrait of Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time , won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1992. Morris has received three fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He did graduate work at Princeton University and U. C. Berkeley.

— Rebecca Yeldham

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]