Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation

Albert Fish, the horrific true story of elderly cannibal, sadomasochist, and serial killer, who lured children to their deaths in Depression-era New York City.

While Fish is well-known among serial killer fanatics, I do not know if he is well-known to the general public. He should be, or at least he certainly should deserve the honor. For all the films that have been made based loosely on Ed Gein, it surprises me that Fish seems to influenced practically no one in the artistic world (beyond Joe Coleman).

The biggest complaint about this film from other reviewers is that it is slow and boring. I will grant that it is a little bit slow, but you are dealing with a subject that has limited photos and even fewer videos. To compile this, the director had to stretch things a bit. Maybe it would have been better as 60 minutes, but I am still impressed by the images they were able to find (some I had seen before, some I had not).

I also liked that Fredric Wertham plays a role in here. I was not aware he testified for the defense of Fish, as Wertham is better known (at least to me) for his crusade against comic books and television violence. There is some irony there, I suppose, that a man who defends the insane ends up battling comic books for their erosion of morals.

Repetitive, slow as hell, filled with corny re-enactments and cartoonish voice acting, interviews with some of the smuggest people i've had the displeasure of seeing in a documentary.

2 stars because there's a bit where they read out the grace budd letter with cheesy sound fx in the background while shaking a camera at a house and zooming in and out and it was hilarious.

The story is so horrifying and gruesome, even by today's standards, that the director's attempts at dramatization add nothing and are more of a distraction. Multiple shots of roasting meat in the shape of ass? Really? And too much time is spent with two dubious "experts," one of whom proudly describes how he acquired Fish's confession letter in an act of larceny (anyone send a copy of this film to the cops in Westchester County?) and who creepily asserts that Fish MUST have loved Grace Buddd in order to do what he did to her. Huh? Anyone want to go dig around in THIS guy's backyard? And all of the religious motivation nonsense is completely at odds with what we know about sexual homicide. It's all about a toxic mix of extreme self absorption and the desire to control others with a nice positive feedback of orgasm. That's it folks. No religious motive here. The religious stuff may have helped him rationalize what he did and certainly sweetened the filth aspect for this guy, but that's probably it. Read Schecter's Deranged instead for a good Fish account.

I had the unfortunate chance to watch it in a theater. This is a TV documentary and not to be seen on theater!!

Many things bothered me, but the fact that the narrator was repeating the same informations 3 times through out the "docu" completely annoyed me.

It was very annoying how much effort the creators put into making it a shockumentary. But it was o-so- lame. Over dramatic narrator pointing out words like "pain" and "virgin" and "fish" and the dramatization focused on very handsome naked teens instead of the brutality and the character and the causes of Albert Fish. It only gave us a spoonful about Fish and repeated the same informations again and again and again and then "naked teens" and "virgin" and only had 2 interviewers!!

The worst one was this psycho horror artifacts creator who was mainly talking about himself and his origins and a few words about Fish as if he had something important to add to Fish's story. And the other one was a woman obsessed with Fish and his sexual life. At a point they had access to Fish's psychiatrist records and they didn't use real Fish's voice at all, and his sayings for not more than 5 minutes! Why??

In a few words don't waste your time with it, it's just super lame.

This was a good little documentary that could have been much better but still, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've always been fascinated with Albert Fish and other serial killers so it was very interesting to see documentary on the man. I was actually pretty disturbed through most of the film. I always say that I can watch any movie that I know is fake and it won't bother me, but when it's real, it really gets to me and this one did just that.

I loved the scenes where it just told the story of Albert Fish with a narrator. However, there were quite a few interviews with a bunch nobodies that no one cares about and those really annoyed me. I just want to hear the story, not a bunch of idiots babbling about how they know soooo much about Albert Fish. Other than that, it was very creepy the whole way through and completely chilling. Check it out.