Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story (2021) User Reviews

Almost perfectly executed

[ricewithaspoon · 8/10 · 30 July 2021]

If you watched "Dr. Death" about Dr. Duntsch (which is absolutely recommendable! Slater and Baldwin were exceptionally great and surprised me with their chemistry on screen..anyway...) ... this is about the real people.

Each one of them interviewed - surgeons, surgeons who operated with him, the mother of his child, his best friend and patients... (with deposition excerpts, court snippets) I am happy about very little re enactments/filler material - it"s really not worth mentioning (blurry operating rooms etc)...1 star less for that because I'd have loved them to go even more into medical details of each patient instead.

I cannot criticize anything besides that. Thank God, there are no distracting filters, flashy editing, or overwhelming sound design.. I always love to watch & listen to the real, actual people involved and perhaps get opinions of specialists regarding the subject matter.

[9.4] Tragic and eye-opening

[cjonesas · 9/10 · 29 August 2021]

A truthful and very sad documentary on a most tragic sets of events. Very well done, besides repeated dramatic footage/montage and score on many occasions throughout the episodes for the sake of drama. The story didn't especially need those. Also, blurred scenes in the OR were like walking on nerves. Real and cleared surgical procedures and scenes would have helped and contributed a lot better.

My sincere and deepest thoughts to the survivors and families of the deceased patients.

Most Intriguing Documentary I've seen

[AngelHonesty · 9/10 · 30 April 2023]

I am not one to sit and watch a documentary, but this one caught my attention. I binged watched all four episodes. I am so happy this guy was caught, its horrifying to see what he did and how the system failed the patients by protecting this guy. Thank goodness there are still decent people out there who were willing to put their jobs on the line to catch this guy. The story is captivating and well put together. I know some people commented that they didn't like the blurred operating scenes. It would have been nice if they had less blurred scenes but the show still got the clear message across and hearing all the victims and witnesses tell their story really gives the show all it needs to explain how horrible this man was. The really scary thing is this didn't happen that long ago. If you are a lover of documentaries or true crime this is a must watch.

Insane

[jonatanbomberhult · 10/10 · 15 October 2021]

Other then Making a Murderer and The Kalief Browder story, this might be the most captivating documentary I've seen. Outrageous! A total scandal! A must see!

Jaw-dropping.

[Dessiree143 · 10/10 · 25 March 2022]

I've watched many documentaries and I cannot think of another that left me this speechless. All I can say is, Thank God for Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson.

Unbelievable!

[tinagchristensen · 6/10 · 23 March 2024]

The real villain of this documentary is not Dr Death but the system. It is appalling that it took that long, 30 patients in much worse condition than prior to "operations" and 2 deaths. I couldn't care less if the surgeon is God in the OP room when all staff could see he was doing life-threatening damage to the "patients". I had alerted the media, the police and posted it on the walls, that a mad man was pretending to be a surgeon. The patients were victims, the operations were crime scenes and the surgeon a sociopath trying to commit manslaughter. The persons in the documentary took their time to get that man eliminated and the system, the hospital boards and the council should be charged with gross negligence and pay billions of dollars in damages to the families and the victims. The documentary is not focused on the failure of the system but on a sick man, who causes a lot of tragedies because no one really shouted STOP. It's entertaining but superficial. Even the title Dr Death is misleading. He was not a doctor, he was a murderer walking about with, not a gun, but a scalpel in his hand attacking random people and they let him do it far to long!

Excellent documentary, but I want more information.

[txriverotter · 10/10 · 17 November 2023]

This documentary is so well-done and seeing the in-depth coverage of the damage he did to people and families, and the efforts to stop Duntsch and hold him accountable for what he had done, kept me interested from start to finish. We binge-watched all four episodes.

However, I kept hoping they would get to Duntsch's years in college and Fellowship. How was this guy sent out into the world from an acclaimed medical school and Fellowship program, as the newest rising star in Neurosurgery, some kind of prodigal son, if he didn't know the first thing about the most simple of neurosurgeries?

I would love to see another documentary covering his education to find out how this happened. Or at least some explanation. It seems like someone in the Fellowship program at the very least, would have cottoned on to this guy's complete inability to understand the most basic duties of his career choice.

And he must've done very well in class, scoring high in testing or whatever they call it in med school, in order to get into such a prestigious Fellowship. How the hell did he test so high? Was someone filling in for him? Selling him the answers? Did he have a doppelgänger who was a medical savant? What?!

I would really like to hear about that and I kept hoping they'd cover more of his education. They did confirm that he was there in Tennessee when the one doctor called to make sure he even was Duntsch, because this guy was so flabbergasted that he could've made it thru medical school after seeing just one of the surgeries this guy botched.

I'm not complaining about this documentary at all. It was very good. And they covered a lot of ground. I would also like to see more about the years before he actually came to Texas and began maiming and killing patients, who were just looking for some relief from their chronic pain. Get the whole story, so-to-speak.

Nothing but blurred scenes

[bspsfg · 3/10 · 1 August 2021]

3/4 of this is blurred operating room or just blurred scenes. I had to turn it off. It could completely distracts from the series. Should have just been a podcast if that's all they could come up with.