The Honeymoon Killers

Martha is a nurse; heavy, lonely, and living with her mother. She joins a correspondence club. A reply comes from a man named Ray. Ray is Spanish, attractive and attentive. He is in fact a swindler; he finds lonely women through the clubs, takes their money on a promise of marriage and leaves. Martha finds out. She does not leave; she joins in. The two begin working together: Ray handles the women and Martha is introduced as his sister. But Martha is jealous, and each time things end worse. Leonard Kastle writes and directs. Shirley Stoler plays Martha and Tony Lo Bianco plays Ray. The events behind the narrative are real: a series of murders in America in the forties filled the press and the two responsible were executed. Kastle was in fact a composer; he made this one feature and never made another film. Martin Scorsese was working as director at the start of the production and was dismissed soon after; that is the most told story about it. The image is black and white and coarse; the narrative carries no aesthetic concern anywhere, and that is its strength. Mahler is used as music, a choice deliberately at odds with the register. The violence is sudden and unadorned; the scenes are not drawn out. It was particularly liked in Europe and found defenders among French critics. Who it is for: viewers who like dark cinema and low budget American independents. Who it is not for: the technical quality is crude, the characters repellent, and the subject uncomfortable.