billcr12 The Honeymoon Killers is a classic black and white crime drama. Tony Lo Bianco is awesome as Raymond Fernandez, a man who with his partner, Martha Beck, lured lonely women to their deaths through magazine ads. He would have loved the internet. Tony mugs for the camera as he uses a Ricky Ricardo accent and delivers some really funny and twisted lines. Shirley Stoler is Beck, and the rotund woman is accurately cast as the real life 280 pound killer. A more recent telling of the story used Salma Hayek as Beck, a radically bad casting choice. Hayek is a knockout and the Beck was not a femme fatale. The true crime story is a compelling tale of pure evil and this film captures it perfectly.

rooee A young Martin Scorsese directed bits of this creepy psychological thriller about Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck, the "Lonely Hearts Killers" who murdered a shockingly large number of women in a two-year spree in the late 1940s. As the camera prowls and the framing draws deliberate attention to itself, you can sense Scorsese – before, that is, he was sacked and replaced with Leonard Kastle. This would be Kastle's only film, and it's pretty good all things considered.How true is this "true story"? Not very. For a start it's clearly set at the time it was made (1969), and yet states in the epilogue that Ray (Tony Lo Blanco) and Martha (Shirley Stoler) met their fate twenty years earlier. But how about the more general truth of fiction? Here the film succeeds, focusing on the psychology of this chunky, frumpy lady and her lithe Latino partner-in-crime; the bitter jealousy and the vile scheming, and the growing tensions between them. It works well, thanks to a smart script with a sharp edge of ironic wit.Martha is a sad-sack who is empowered at work but desperately lonely at home. Ray is a vile opportunist whose control is cracked by the juvenile love he shares with Martha. It's a story of its time. These days the couple wouldn't need to lure the lonely through newspaper ads – they could swindle all their money over the internet. But Ray and Martha are hands-on and in-your-face, and the film portrays a collection of increasingly sinister encounters as they convince a series of sad spinsters to part with their cash. Ray wields charm like a scimitar, while Martha is like a wrecking ball.With its suburban sitting room setting and its unsettling blend of the OTT and the naturalistic, the influence on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is clear. When the killing begins, Kastle doesn't shy away. The death-by-hammer scene is genuinely shocking, even by today's standards.Mostly the movie eschews graphic violence in favour of tense episodes laced with morbid, mordant wit. You can see why it was disregarded at the time, just as you can see why it's being reconsidered today. For all its melodrama (Gustav Mahler parps over the serial killers' domestic dramatics) and its sleazy exploitation appearance, it's surprisingly subtle and has flashes of real craft. It is undoubtedly a genre-evading oddity – but an accessible one which will be enjoyed by anybody looking for something clever, nasty, and funny.

Mr_Ectoplasma "The Honeymoon Killers" is one of those films that you want to shut off because it's so damned tenebrous, but at the same time you don't really want to look away. The thin plot follows an overweight, depressed nurse who meets her prince charming after her mother places an ad in the lonely hearts section of the local newspaper. The problem? Her smooth-talking Latin boyfriend wants to take her along for the ride on a killing spree of innocent women. Among all of the drive-in grindhouse fare to come from the late 1960s-early 1970s, "The Honeymoon Killers" may be the cream of the crop; it's not sleazy enough to be shelved among its counterparts, but it's also not sophisticated enough by most standards to be thought of as anything else. It's a remarkably ugly film in just about every sense of the word— its characters are vile, its story is downright macabre, and it has one of the most downtrodden but effective endings of any of its peers of the time period. Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco turn in ingenious performances here and have a surprising chemistry with one another. Also featured is a young Doris Roberts (beloved mother on television's "Seinfeld") as Stoler's friend. Directed by Leonard Kastle (and his only feature film), it is well-shot and takes advantage of its stark black-and-white photography to create effective mood and make even daylight scenes potential threats. Other horror films of the era that feature similar use of photography (Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" comes to mind) may have done so more effectively, but what the photography really bolsters in this film are its bleak depictions of violence. The murder scenes in the film are tonally flat, and that may be why they are so shocking. There is no dramatic cue music, no thunderstorms outside, no killer with a knife— just silence, screaming, and the thwack of a hammer against the skull. Released in the wake of Charles Manson, it's not surprising that "The Honeymoon Killers" was relegated to the drive-in circuit, and in some regard it deserved to be there; at the same time, it had the chops to be playing at art house theaters as well. Its straight-talking documentary style strips the film of any and all potential variation in tone, but its flatness is part of what makes it so appalling and so realistic. It's gritty and expressionless, but still masterfully done and fraught with emotion. It's a remarkably well-made film, but it's so direct that it at times feels dangerous to watch; the fact that it's based on an actual killing spree only amplifies the sentiment. 9/10.

Lechuguilla A young woman named Martha (Shirley Stoler) and her Latin lover, Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) conspire to defraud lonely old ladies of their money. Ray charms the women into marrying him, on receipt of their money. And Martha tags along, posing as Ray's sister. Based on a true-life 1940s murder case, the film could have been quite significant. But a poor script, poor direction, and generally poor acting short-circuit the effort.What slays me is how Ray could be physically attracted to Martha, a big mama who bitches, whines, moans, and exudes anger at every opportunity. In real-life, Martha was indeed heavy-set, and she practically threw herself onto Ray, who then used her in his marriage scam. That motivation doesn't come across in the film.Further, the script's dialogue lacks subtext. Characters say exactly what they think, which renders sophomoric interchanges. And the story takes way too long to get going. For the first half of the film, not much happens.Though Tony Lo Bianco gives a credible performance, the rest of the performances are below average. Stoler is just annoying, as is Doris Roberts with that phony Southern accent. The actress who plays Janet Fay overacts and has a nasal voice that makes her performance campy. I could not take her seriously.You would think that the director would have placed the story within a proper 1940s context. But at no time did I get any sense of the 1940s. Indeed, with some campy performances, cheap sets, and sophomoric dialogue, the film comes across almost tongue-in-cheek, a relic from the 1950s Ed Wood school of film-making.I know this was a low-budget effort. But it takes little or no money to write a good screenplay. And a good director can do wonders with settings and performances. The only factor that saves this film for me is knowing that the events described really happened. I can, to a limited extent, thus overlook the lousy cinematic end product.