Morris first presents his subject as a schlubby but terrifying little ghoul. Leuchter\u2019s geeky glasses and thick Boston accent belie his macabre mission and worldview. <\/strong>Like a Dr. Frankenstein in reverse, the engineer wants not to create life, but to craft perfect death. In businesslike <\/strong>talking head interviews, he details the tweaks he has made to electric chairs, gas chambers, and lethal injection machines, and frankly details the dangers and indignities his improvements have allegedly avoided. (Electrocution can apparently make human flesh like \u201cthe meat coming off a cooked chicken,\u201d or make the convict \u201cquite frankly, piss on the floor.\u201d) <\/strong>He does his grisly work with total moral certainty: <\/strong>a proponent of the death penalty, he nevertheless believes in making executions as humane as possible. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Morris has always been fascinated with the weird and the morbid, and he leans into this by playfully portraying Leuchter as a mad scientist. In a cinematic tableau in the opening credits, he places his subject in a metal cage. It\u2019s the command center of an enormous laboratory, with bolts of electricity flashing all around. <\/strong>When Leuchter takes us on tours of his death chambers, slow-motion, black-and-white footage, and canted angles make his incongruous grins look maniacal. <\/strong>Morris also includes clips of Thomas Edison\u2019s infamous film Electrocuting an Elephant, <\/em>linking Leuchter to the inventor who performed a lethal experiment on a beast to test and promote his new cinematic technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Morris (particularly in films like Thin Blue Line<\/em> and Standard Operating Procedure<\/em>) loves an investigation, even an insane one. <\/strong>The meat of Mr. Death<\/em> is a cautionary tale about doing your \u201cown research,\u201d as Leucter\u2019s alleged \u201cexpertise\u201d leads him into full-blown Holocaust denial. When called to testify for the defense of \u201crevisionist historian\u201d Ernst Z\u00fcndel (on trial in Canada for spreading hate speech), Leuchter glibly enters Auschwitz with a chisel and a hard hat, and concludes that the Nazi gas chambers never existed. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he\u2019s an unrepentant grave robber, chipping away at these sacred sites to procure samples that prove nothing. Footage taken by a videographer shows Leuchter as rather proud of himself, and a little thrilled that he\u2019s where he shouldn\u2019t be and might get caught. Morris edits this footage with chiaroscuro shots of shadowy men lurking around corners. Stylized close-ups show hands dramatically performing Leuchter\u2019s meaningless measurements. Everything has the air of a creepy fantasy, all the more terrifying because it\u2019s such obvious fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For morality\u2019s sake, this nonsense must be cut down with a quickness. Mr. Death<\/em> does this thoroughly, with a counter-investigation conducted by Robert Jan van Pelt. An architect and historian of the Holocaust, van Pelt is the genuine expert and the film\u2019s voice of reason. Where Leuchter\u2019s \u201cinvestigation\u201d rests on <\/strong>the derring-do of his swaggering excavations, van Pelt does the less glamorous work of diving into the archives. He reveals documents (architectural plans and telegraphs placing orders for gas) that spell out an irrefutable truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Morris\u2019s great skills is his ability to cut and weave shots of text and documents together to make them both rhetorically convincing and visually compelling. (Here, where all the text is in German, the feat is even more impressive.) Close-ups of the relevant documents, tied together by van Pelt\u2019s narration, shut down any possible \u201crevisionism.\u201d Van Pelt treats the archive of this history with humility and reverence, and there are lovely close-ups of his hands untying the ribbons of files. They do more than words could to affirm the power of the real work of history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For all the fun Morris has playing with horror movie tropes, Mr. Death <\/em>has greater depth because he <\/strong>does not believe in monstrosity. Leuchter is all too human, and <\/strong>his story ends as his feet of clay dissolve. When Leuchter\u2019s views are made public, he becomes too toxic even for work on death machines. <\/strong>As he tells of his woes (not only lost jobs, but lost apartments and a divorce that seems like it was a long time coming), Morris makes him into even more of a sad sack; bleak black-and-white reenactments show Leuchter standing on the side of a deserted highway after his car is impounded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because he\u2019s a student of the weirdnesses and vagaries of human existence, Morris lingers on the strange twists of fate that brought about Leuchter\u2019s disgrace. <\/strong>Had Z\u00fcndel not come knocking on Leuchter\u2019s door, would he ever even dreamed up the idiocies that ruined him? <\/strong>Morris tends to reserve judgment and look at a person\u2019s character from many angles. But just because he looks like a schmuck doesn\u2019t mean that Leuchter isn\u2019t guilty of the most profound and stubborn hubris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If his moments of generosity toward Leuchter are troubling, the discomfort works because Morris is at the height of his powers. He can make a coherent and fervent case against appalling falsehood while also fleshing out the odd circumstances and quirks of character that could unexpectedly lead someone down such a bizarre and awful path. Morris may have slantwise ways of looking at the world, but it doesn\u2019t stop him from pinning down the awful truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mr. Death” is streaming on AMC+<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/mr-death2-1024x576.jpg\")
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