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No less fascinating a subject, but a less successful film, is the latest documentary by Errol Morris, director of the quirky Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, and the Sundance-winning Stephen Hawking chronicle A Brief History of Time. Featured in the last Upstate Film Society series at the Carmike, it looks into the mind of a guy who made a name for himself back in the 80s with the manufacture and design of "execution equipment."
Sympathetically professing to be "a proponent of capital punishment...not a proponent of capital torture," Leuchter developed such a favorable reputation after redesigning Tennessee's electric chair that he was consulted by other states on upgrading gas chambers, lethal-injection devices, and even gallows. He was doing pretty well for himself when unexpectedly hired in 1988 as an expert witness by the legal team defending Holocaust revisionist Ernst Zündel from felony charges in Canada. Seems that you can get thrown in jail for telling pernicious lies up North, so Leuchter made a well-paid research junket to Poland to check for cyanide residue in the crumbling walls. Though an engineer, he proved woefully ignorant of practical chemistry, and Zündel was convicted despite Leuchter's opinion that the gas chambers were a myth...which helped make Leuchter a hero to the Aryan Nation. Unfortunately for him, the personal empowerment he came to enjoy while speaking on the racist circuit couldn't forestall the downfall of his professional reputation when the word got out to his former clients. Suddenly the states weren't too interested in buying killing machines from a Nazi sympathizer.
Mr. Death accomplishes the task of getting us to take a focused look at one life in totality, something that a documentary can do perhaps better than any other medium. But it's almost two separate movies joined at the hip, the first too short and the second not short enough. The first, laden with detail and trivia about various execution processes, is morbidly fascinating, and would make a great tract for Amnesty International or anyone else opposing the death penalty (warning: there's a particularly gruesome, grainy 1903 sequence of Thomas Edison's engineers electrocuting an elephant to prove the supposed quick, merciful nature of voltaic demise). But the second, in taking off unannounced in an entirely different direction, while telling an interesting story, dilutes the impact of what comes before. Were Morris's direction more engaging this go-round, such distraction might be easier to take. But any intrigue piqued by a flashy opening sequence that could have been lifted from Fritz Lang's Metropolis has before the halfway point been dissipated by endless shots of Leuchter pontificating to the camera. Considering the guy admits to a 40-cup-a-day coffee habit, it's a wonder he doesn't blame his misfortune on Juan Valdez. C
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