The Honeymoon Killers **** (1970, Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby) – Classic Movie Review 6689

My funny Valentine: Martha loves Honeymoon Killer Ray.

Writer-director Leonard Kastle’s really chilling 1970 B-movie crime thriller The Honeymoon Killers is a long-time cult classic, with exceptional, creepy performances from the stars Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco. It is excitingly and tautly written, and imaginatively directed by Kastle, in his only film.

Stoler is sensational as obesely fat, plain, chocoholic hospital head nurse Martha Beck, who is put in touch with thin, balding, toupée-wearing Latin gigolo Ray Fernandez (Lo Bianco) through a lonelyhearts column in late-Forties Alabama.

Martha falls obsessively for Ray and, discovering that he is making a lucrative career out of conning middle-aged spinsters and wealthy widows out of their savings, and then bumping them off, joins him on a ruthless killing spree, posing as a nurse and her brother. But Martha is a bitter woman who gets easily jealous. Can she trust him with these women and does he really love her?

Shot by Oliver Wood, the stark black and white images point up the banality of the story with its tawdry settings and bleak backgrounds, turning the low budget to advantage. The film is both authentic and surreal, heightened in mood by the weird expressionist compositions and incongruous use of Gustav Mahler’s music on the soundtrack (Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 and 9).

Challengingly, we are made to care for a couple of killers, as with Bonnie and Clyde, so that the doomy story’s inevitable tragic outcome is strangely touching. However, The Honeymoon Killers is handled and made in a totally different way and Kastle said about Bonnie and Clyde: ‘I was revolted by that movie. I didn’t want to show beautiful shots of beautiful people.’

Kastle’s screenplay is based on the true story of the so-called Lonelyhearts Murders by multiple murderers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, who were suspected of murdering up to 20 women between 1947 and 1949, convicted of the murder of Janet Fay, and executed in the electric chair in Sing-Sing in on 8 March 1951.

There is only one act of graphic violence in the whole movie, but The Honeymoon Killers is not for the squeamish. Kastle recalled that for the murder sequence of Janet Fay, they bought condoms, filled them up with fake blood, and put them on Mary Jane Higby’s head, with a tin plate over it covered with her night cap. They put small nails in the rubber hammer so it would pop the condoms.

Martin Scorsese started the direction but was replaced after a week of shooting because of creative differences by Donald Volkman, who was replaced by scriptwriter Kastle. Allegedly, Scorsese was filming scenes in master shots and not shooting close-ups or other coverage, making editing impossible. According to Kastle, Scorsese was fired trying to get a perfectly lit close-up on a beer can.

The Honeymoon Killers was re-released to new acclaim in 1997 in a startling new 35mm print to accompany the release of Arturo Ripstein’s updated film version of the story, Deep Crimson (1996).

Also in the cast are Mary Jane Higby, Doris Roberts, Kip McArdle, Marilyn Chris, Dortha Duckworth, Barbara Cason, Ann Harris, Mary Breen, Mary Engel, Guy Sorel, Michael Haley, Diane Asselin, William Adams, Eleanor Adams and Elsa Raven.

The Honeymoon Killers is directed by Leonard Kastle, runs 107 minutes, is made by Roxanne, is released by Cinerama Releasing (1970) (US) and Cinerama Releasing UK (1970) (UK), is written by Leonard Kastle, is shot in black and white by Oliver Wood, and is produced by Warren Steibel and Paul Asselin (associate producer), with music by Gustav Mahler.

It was released by The Criterion Collection in 2003 in the US on DVD and by Arrow Films in 2015 in the UK on Blu-ray and DVD.

François Truffaut named it his favourite American film.

In Australia, it was judged obscene and banned in 1971 and finally passed in October 1989.

Kastle died on 18 May 2011, aged 82, never having made another film. ‘One thing I can always say,’ he said, ‘I never made a bad film after Honeymoon Killers.’

Tony Lo Bianco recalls: ‘Honeymoon Killers was made for $125,000. I’m not sure you can buy a pack of cigarettes for that now!’

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6689

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