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Leonard Kastle's "The Honeymoon Killers," which opened yesterday at the Cine Malibu and neighborhood theaters, recounts the criminal partnership of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, who were executed for murder at Sing Sing Prison, in March, 1951.

Fernandez and the 29-year-old, 200-pound Mrs. Beck, known as the "Lonely Hearts Killers" at the time of their trial, made a career of stealing from lonely women whom Fernandez met through correspondence clubs, with Mrs. Beck, a trained nurse, posing as his sister. Two of their more recalcitrant victims were murdered, and a third died as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills administered by Mrs. Beck.

The movie follows the killers from just before their meeting (through a lonely hearts club correspondence) until just before their trial. Although it takes only the slightest (and most essential) liberties with the facts of the Beck-Fernandez case, "The Honeymoon Killers" is basically a fiction film—of a type virtually unknown in recent years, except as transmuted in the myth-making romanticism of, say, a "Bonnie and Clyde." Within the limits of its type it is one of the best and, curiously, most beautiful American movies in recent years.

Photographed in black and white, with fairly rudimentary sound recording and with lighting that seems always to come from natural sources or from whatever electric light bulbs might be at hand, "The Honeymoon Killers" virtually epitomizes the low-budget murder melodrama of everyone's fondest imaginations.

In fact, it is concerned with murder less as crime than as unambiguous event. There is no conflict between law and disorder, no trail of clues, no hot pursuit, not even much suspense. When Martha decides that Raymond has taken more than monetary interest in one too many of their victims, she calls the police and turns him, and herself, in. And that, without climax, is the end of that.

But "The Honeymoon Killers" has something else — a more concentrated, less cluttered, clearer vision than you are likely to have found in even the best conventional crime movies. Unusually seedy in all its particulars, utterly unflattering to all its characters, sufficiently horrible (but never gratuitously shocking) in the details of its murders, Kastle's film succeeds as a kind of chamber drama of desperate attraction and violent death.

Although it is profoundly involved with the quality of individual middle-class American lives, it completely subordinates anecdote to action and pathos, even the pathos of its central characters, to passion.

The secondary performances range from acceptable to excellent, with special praise for Mary Jane Higby as a 66-year-old Albany widow who proves especially difficult to kill. Shirley Stoler certainly looks the part of Martha Beck, but she brings to the role an air of grand disdain that seems reasonable as interpretation but sometimes awkward in performance. But Tony LoBianco, with slightly too much profile and a characterization that suggests an immensely humanized early Bela Lugosi, is brilliant.

The real star of the movie is its writer-director. Leonard Kastle is a 40-year-old composer who has not previously made films. Oddly, the musical background—selections from Mahler symphonies, which oversell every climax—is the only serious failure in "The Honeymoon Killers." But direction, the sum of those decisions that the filmmaker must feel as moral imperatives and that constitute the authorship of a movie, places Kastle among the important deliberate artists of his medium.

dad1153 wrote:Music cues from Mahler compositions and bad audio are supposed to [...] suck you into the authenticity of the moment

HistoryProf wrote:And I have to ask, has anyone ever actually ROARED with shock and laughter watching a movie by themselves at home? I realize hyperbole is HerrSchreck's leitmotif, but the image is incredibly amusing and uncomfortable all at once

dad1153 wrote:If the movie had been any good I would have overlooked (or minimized) the technical shortcomings. As it currently is though the bad sound/picture are just adding insult to having to put up with the lack of sick laughs/drama/compelling story and amateurish supporting performances. Again, remove Tony LoBianco from this (and to a lesser degree Shirley Stoler, who is good but needs Tony's charisma to bounce her performance from) and there's almost nothing good left besides a fatter Nurse Ratchet psychologically torturing her older mother (which a good movie does not make).

this movie is not the least bit entertaining or fun to watch

HerrSchreck wrote:There was a world that existed in obscurity and on the fringe in the period of the 1950's to the 1970's. It was found in the back of detective magazines, magazines about UFO's, wrestling mags-- personal ads that used to be placed... this when pornography essentially didn't exist for all intents and purposes beyond the secret smut in papas bottom drawer ...

Before Playboy, American men read the Police Gazette. The "girlie" photos in the Police Gazette were of women against whom violent crimes had been committed. Men gazed at the bloodied bodies, read the descriptions of the crimes, and tried to look further up the victims' skirts than the photos allowed ... Playboy made pornography and voyeurism wholesome for the new bourgeoisie of America ... No, wait; I'm sorry, that's not true. What happened was simply that the market became more specialized and efficient. Now the guys who are blatantly pathological have their own magazine and there are other magazines for every degree of more acceptable pathologies.

Gregory wrote:I should note that I don't necessarily endorse the generalizations he makes about "American men," but I think his point tells us a lot about the context of sexual repression and pathology during the era in which film noir and detective fiction were at their peak

HerrSchreck wrote:It's almost a sort of accidental expressionism, this low-rent patina hanging over the film, a byproduct of its production values fortuitously corresponding to the nature of the tale.

HerrSchreck wrote:So while I'm not surprised that there are folks that don't get what CC/Janus/critics see in the film, I can assure you guys with all due respect that this:

dad1153 wrote:this movie is not the least bit entertaining or fun to watch

is going to be, for many people, one of those "speak for yourself, pal," moments.

HerrSchreck wrote:It's been awhile since I've watched the film, but one thing I can say with absolute certainty-- and should probably be clear to any reviewer worth the mere weight of his sac-- is that this film is not going to be for everyone.

The quality of the sound and image, for instance: for me this lends to the experience of watching the film. As in the lifestyles of the characters themselves, so it goes for the execution of the film itself... fringe, fringe, fringe. An almost uncomfortable sense of untidy obscurity.. dirt and must, a sense of something stinky lurking just offscreen on the set that needs to be cleaned up.

It's almost a sort of accidental expressionism, this low-rent patina hanging over the film, a byproduct of its production values fortuitously corresponding to the nature of the tale.

HerrSchreck wrote: So while I'm not surprised that there are folks that don't get what CC/Janus/critics see in the film, I can assure you guys with all due respect that this:

this movie is not the least bit entertaining or fun to watch

is going to be, for many people, one of those "speak for yourself, pal," moments.

If the movie had been any good

this movie is not the least bit entertaining or fun to watch

I realize hyperbole is HerrSchreck's leitmotif, but the image is incredibly amusing and uncomfortable all at once

HerrSchreck wrote:Gentlemen, there is no need to be so sensitive. Specifically, I was responding to statements that dadnumbers made, like

If the movie had been any good

this movie is not the least bit entertaining or fun to watch

...these are blanket, sweeping statements about the film, which for me are always no no's on a board like this: assessments that run beyond the bounds of individual taste-- I'm perfectly entitled to respond "Speak for yourself," if you make "factual" pronouncements about the film. There's nothing offensive or wrong with saying "Speak for yourself" and I genuinely-- help me here-- don't understand why something like that should open a wound.

dad1153 wrote:Guess I'll have to make sure to bold and underline 'IMHO' after every definitive statement I make from now on.