A different way of telling a story

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Interesting if flawed film deserves it's cult status. Shirley Stoler plays an obese nurse who teams up with her toupee-wearing gigolo boyfriend, Tony Lo Bianco, to romance and swindle money from lonely rich women. Writer/director Leonard Kastle made this film in response to "Bonnie & Clyde," which he felt was too romanticized of a young-lovers-on-the-run crime story. Kastle instead makes this a gritty, black & white, kitchen sink drama type of film that often seems intentionally repellent and off putting to it's audience, which I quite liked. What I didn't like was Stoler's over-the-top performance, which seemed more appropriately placed into a low-budget John Waters film than a legitimate drama. Despite her over-acting, it's a fascinating tale of jealousies between the two lovers and never knowing who is going to stab who in the back first. An interesting note of trivia is that Martin Scorsese was the original director on this film, but was fired over creative differences. Overall, "The Honeymoon Killers" is a fascinating film and although French New Wave director François Truffaut called this his favorite American film, I'm not sure I'd go quite that far.

"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.

I here compare this film with its remake The Honeymoon Killers (2006) The two films go together since the former is a remake of the latter. They have to be watched together, one after the other, no matter in what order. The story is pathetic and pitiful. A man takes advantage of the loneliness of some women to literally "abduct" them from sanity and "infect" them with infatuation, which enables him to clean them up of their possessions. But one really falls in love and she abducts him from sanity and infects him with her jealousy into killing the women on whose backs they live. A killing couple, supposedly brother and sister, who skim and milk the crowd of solitary and lonely middle class women.The older film (1969) in black and white was a small budget thriller and it shows how jealousy is mounting and building up in the woman and how she manipulates the man into becoming a killer, till the moment she discovers he is a liar. Then she will cause his downfall herself and her own at the same time. Pure jealousy confronted to a lying partner in a situation that can only give birth to extreme jealousy. It is not easy to be a female pimp of a male gigolo. But the man and the woman are both perfectly composed and logical till the end. The beginning though seems too slow.The more recent film (2006) shifts the vision of the criminal situation from a more or less objective unidentified abstract observer to a team of two cops following the murderers and the bloody trail they leave behind. And the observer is the partner of the main detective. This film shifts the criminal idea from pure jealousy in the woman to insanity in the man. He is a killer instead of being a manipulated gigolo. He is not lying to the woman but she can't stand what she makes him do, hence she is crazy somewhere too. But she will not cause his downfall. They will be caught up by the cops from New York because he starts enjoying killing simple witnesses or passers-by. But here the beginning is turned into some circus parade.This latter film intensively also shows Old Sparky, the full execution of the man with it and only the first phase for the woman. It becomes a graphic film against death penalty since Old Sparky is positioned both at the beginning and at the end of the film, sandwiching the story between these haunting visions. The technique used in this color film is a lot more dynamic and lively than in the older film. But it does not really add to the subject except the vision of Old Sparky but it is an easy explanation to declare a criminal crazy. He might be deranged and get deranged by his own crimes but he has to be sane and perfectly well balanced to go on with killing and escaping. That's why he is shown as losing his mind when at the end he leaves corpses along the road and does not run away.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

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.