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.

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.

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.

Ever since I was a child, I've been hooked on true crime TV shows and documentaries, so I've seen countless versions. But, my goodness, I know the victims are long dead, but the level of disrespect in this is off the charts. This is the most shameless, exploitative, low-brow tripe masquerading as a true crime documentary I've ever seen. It's almost like the creepy, pretentious superfan they kept talking to had directed the documentary. The different narrators are laughable, from the "old-timey newscaster" voice to the "ghostly" woman voice to the voice meant to be Albert Fish's, they all increase the awfulness tenfold. The documentary trivializes the deaths by focusing on terrible, "artsy" "reenactments" and inserts (that all look like total crap, BTW).

This documentary was made by a failed film school student who loved Albert Fish. I'm actually curious to know about Albert Fish, but I'd do better watching a random on YT talk about it. In fact, there are YT channels who do a better job than this by far.

The voice acting is disgustingly overdone and the speculations by the interviewees are unfounded. The owner of the Odditorium is not a real expert and his rambling about Fish is not helpful. The reenactments are bizarre and weirdly drawn out and make it hard to take the story seriously. Examples: bare bottoms being spanked over dramatic music; an old man painting a wall with fake blood (twice); a tied-up man being whipped; a young man standing against a cross with arrows coming out of him while an old man stares at his ribs; Jesus standing in front of two angels; raw beef being chopped with a dull knife; an old man writing with a fountain pen and laughing while classical music plays on the radio. When there isn't an uncomfortably long reenactment scene, there are photos and clips of random images, most of which are irrelevant to the story. It was pretty clear that a lot of the pictures were grabbed from a Google search for some generic topic (the most egregious was the inclusion of a painting from an H. P. Lovecraft story as a reference to cannibalism). Any images that are actually important to the information (like a photograph of Fish) are used over and over and over again and are buried in the muck of "flavor." Really bad.