Albert Fish [DVD]

Overall, this documentary does have a lot of good information about Albert Fish. The problem is the way in which the material is presented. I personally did not mind the narrator, whom I enjoy as a voice actor in other films, but the voice acting of the individuals depicted are truly horrendous. The reenactments are cheesy and poorly done, and the voice actors used (especially the voice of Fish himself) are difficult to listen to. They are very unnatural in their presentation. There are times that they attempt to reenact horrific moments, and it is enough to make the viewer uncomfortable- not because of the horrific content, but because of the delivery and the fact that (in lack of better terms) you feel embarrassed just listening to them. Another unflattering piece of this documentary are the awkward Joe Coleman segments. He is featured, presumably because of the shady way in which he happened to acquire Albert Fish's written confession via an accident and his conscious decision not to mention or bring light to said accident. He is brought into the documentary many times, and frankly, it would have been better without him. His unsavory character is revealed first in how he acquired the letter which is of no consequence to the actually telling of Fish's story, and is only perpetuated as he discusses his thoughts on Fish, which come across as admiration and praise for the cannibalistic serial killer. It would have been much more tasteful without his commentary. Not to mention, as the documentary progresses, Coleman regresses in his vocabulary and speech, to where he uses the F word repetitively to ineffectively describe and convey ideas about Fish and the situations involving him. It would have been significantly more enjoyable with him having never been featured. On the other hand, the interview segments with Katherine Ramsland (Ph. D) were interesting, insightful, and I feel were presented much more appropriately; and were significantly more useful in conveying ideas about the serial killer. The theories featured as to why Fish did the things that he did, and his relationship with Jesus and religion, the reasons he cannibalized his victims, and what he might have felt his role was in respect to the roles of others in the Bible were interesting. Unfortunately, they seemed like an afterthought, as they were not presented as clearly as they frankly could have been, and were really only supplemented with Katherine Ramsland's interviews. I feel the theories and the whole "point" can be easily missed due to this inability to coherently present them to the viewer, and bits with Coleman haphazardly thrown in the mix, which falls on creator John Borowski. It -feels- like Borowski just wanted to make a documentary, and put his "buddy" Coleman in, and since he didn't know how to do that but already promised his buddy he could be in it, he just let Coleman say whatever he wanted regardless of the impressions or outcome, had fun with that, then realized that he had a serious documentary to "hand in" for his next class, and threw in a couple theories near the end to be done with it. I have complained a great deal of the Coleman pieces, in part because they detract that much from what would have been a much better documentary, and was just nearly impossible to get past. I really wish there were more documentaries about Albert Fish, because unfortunately, this is one of the few in depth looks we have of him, and what could have been a great documentary is just kind of mediocre. I do not want to recommend this, however it is one of the few pieces on Fish to choose from. I feel bad for the narrator (the late Tony Jay), and for Katherine Ramsland, as I feel they were the best parts of this documentary, barring the black and white facts of "he did this, he did that". Borowski makes the serious subject feel nearly laughable, which is a completely inappropriate way of presenting this kind of topic.

...it is the simplest thing to search, I don't get it. It's easier to find THAT information than anything about THIS character.What a horrifying creature. Bad enough to actually DO that, but to write that bloody letter to her mother?? REALLY?Paganism, Atheism, Christianity and all the other Puppets in the Gallery of Theology: There isn't a Hell GOOD ENOUGH for this guy. It's BEYOND.If my daughter's murderers wrote anything remotely close to that to me...? The movie 7 Days comes to mind. (It's in French, still worth the watch if you are strong enough. But I guess if you watched THIS, then you can handle 7 Days.) I'm sorry if that's not allowed, but I thought it would give insight.And what's troubling is that people like Albert Fish are likely out there, except they don't send handwritten notes to people. I GUESS he wanted to be caught but I can only see the cruelty of it...probably based on my own experience with a dead daughter.

Albert Fish is the quintessential American serial killer. This docudrama doesn't break any new ground, but it did contain photos I haven't seen before and some additional background like the location of his activities on a map and aerial shots of the house where Grace Budd was murdered.It starts off very slow with the usual stuff that people have heard too many times before. Because it seemed to just be speaking to the uninformed (and because at the beginning it relies a little too heavily on period stock footage), I almost turned it off after 20 minutes. I stuck around, and got some new insight into his motivations that I hadn't heard before (although there was a little too much license taken with the Jesus imagery).Not bad, but not great. If you're out of stuff to watch and find the subject matter interesting it'll help you kill some time.

Graphic documentary. Made my stomach sick. Lots of facts. But what got me most concerned was not altogether the Albert Fish but I started to question the curator that collects serial killers possessions and seemed way too enamored and admiring, as well as defending and justifying Albert Fish's murders. Someone should check him out.Although I hope you have a stomach for the documentary it was informative.

Very weird movie about a very weird man's weird, nauseating life.There are some issues, there are some voiceovers that are SO not even close. They're so bad that I thought they must be speaking another language and English translation spoken. They are really that bad.In terms of research, all the specific CATHOLIC imagery would never be used by a strict, old school protestants. Even modern ones don't use crucifixes, rosary beads, pictures maybe. They also don't teach that Holy Communion (Catholic) is literally the body and blood (Catholic) but just a symbol, IF they even have communion, also called the Lord's supper and he not be given to him by a bishop, on his tongue. Bad enough he misrepresented the symbolism but includes the odd guy seemingly trying to link Catholicism with fish's protestant understanding of Christianity. It feels like the writer/director either did no research to learn what Fish would have been told or worse, he did research and chose to completely ignore it so that he could use the visuals that I mentioned above and others I did not include. That would be very offensiveThis was so poorly researched that I am wondering how much of the other 2, HH Holmes and the really evil guy Panzrir? that I watched prior to this one are as truthful as I assumed

First read about Fish when studying abnormal psychology. Considering forensic science at that time. He was but one cringeworthy individual that swayed me away from that major. What is more evil than dining on a childs flesh? Sorry he lived that long and propogated. As far as that curator that covets that horrific letter, well, he has real issues himself.

Je m'intéresse au sujet des tueurs en série et, parmi d'autres assassins, j'ai rencontré Albert Fish. J'ai appris l'existence d'un documentaire sur ce criminel. La recherche sur le Web s'est avérée immédiatement difficile et, comme dernière tentative, j'ai décidé de me tourner vers Amazon Fr. C'est un documentaire très bien fait à mon avis, et c'est pourquoi je suis heureux d'en avoir trouvé une copie. L'un des rares, ou le seul, à être doublé en italien.Le DVD est arrivé à la maison en parfait état. Ainsi, je constate, pour la énième fois, que le service d'Amazon est impeccable. Je vous remercie beaucoup.