Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck
THE HONEYMOON KILLERS B+
aka: The Lonely Hearts Killers
USA (108 mi) 1969 d: Leonard Kastle co-director: Donald Volkman and Martin Scorsese (uncredited)
You’re a little on the heavy side, but you’re not an old bag, you know.
—Bunny (Doris Roberts)
—Bunny (Doris Roberts)
One of the true underrated classics of American cinema, shot on a B-movie budget of about $150,000, initially directed by none other than film novice Martin Scorsese who had the distinction of being fired after only ten days on this picture for working too slowly, yet he supposedly shot the two set-ups for the opening hospital scene, a long hallway pan and a follow-up shot in the hospital room where the nurse tartly scolds the staff for personal indiscretions, also the lakeside scene near the end that was actually shot first, a scene where Stoler nearly drowns, which apparently was quite legitimate. After a brief replacement by Donald Volkman, it was writer Leonard Kastle that assumed full-time directing duties, his one and only movie, but one that holds up well over time. French director François Truffaut claimed this was his favorite American picture, now a cult classic that is rarely screened. Everything about this picture stands out, from the opening bombastic music, ultra dramatic staccato bass strings from the opening Allegro movement of Mahler’s 6th “Tragic” Symphony, to the trashy premise that it’s based upon, targeting the lonely hearts personal ads as a get rich quick scheme. While it has a similar premise to Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947), another delicious black comedy about marrying and murdering rich women for their money, this one is actually a love story starring the always abrasive, overweight wonder Shirley Stoler as Martha Beck, the predecessor to John Water’s Divine, and her “Latin from Manhattan” playboy flirt of a boyfriend, Tony LoBianco as Ray Fernandez.
The wrenching melodrama is fast and furious, as is some deliciously campy dialogue as the couple falls in love through a flurry of over-heated letters, where Ray seals the deal by dancing a sexy Rumba in front of Martha and her mother where his gyrating backside glides past the camera, which leads Martha to sedate her mother, a pattern she continues using throughout the film, as she’s a jealously protective nurse who stocks up on pharmaceuticals. After ditching her mother in an Old Folk’s Home, she goes on a crime spree with her new beau, pretending to be his sister as he fleeces elderly spinsters as prospective brides out of their money, slyly encouraging them to convert all their assets to cash in order to start a new life together. But Martha’s all consuming jealousy becomes something of a liability, as rather than sneak out with the cash in the dead of night, as is Ray’s modus operandi, Martha is angrily confrontational with these women when they show interest in Ray, usually stirring up the hornet’s nest at the most inappropriate times. Initially, they simply make a getaway, but their methods grow more unsavory over time. Of interest, their targets are ordinary women, people we would easily recognize at the supermarket, yet the fact that they have money to throw around really irks Martha, creating an underlying level of hatred and contempt on top of the manic jealousy she feels from the excessive attention these frivolous women are paying Ray, all of which adds to an intolerable situation for an overbearing woman who wishes to totally and exclusively possess her man. Ray is driven by greed, pure and simple, but Martha’s actions, which lead to a kind of banality of violence, is based on simple jealousy. She simply can’t share her man with anyone.
Based on a real life couple that was sent to the electric chair in San Quintin in 1951, it’s interesting that no attempt was made to create a 50’s era look, like for instance Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), instead it has a timeless feel because the viewers become so intimately involved with the couple’s increasing level of antagonism towards the rest of the human race, becoming morally detached, off in their own universe where they are all that matters. Unusually seedy, photographed in a dimly lit black and white, the character’s actions are darkly disturbing, yet mysteriously, the audience is actually pulling for them to get away with it, so they have a perversely strange magnetic appeal. The violence shown is never gratuitous or exploitive, but instead reveals a near impossible level of desperation this couple reaches in order to protect themselves, becoming crudely realistic, where one of their victims is hit in the head with a hammer not once but twice, yet still she lingers for over a minute in screen time instead of dying instantly like they do on TV. Despite the extended melodrama, the film can be starkly realistic, especially in its portrayal of human motivations. Martha is one of the more provocative characters seen in awhile at the movies, as her size literally engulfs much of the screen, as does her shadow that adds even greater dimension, but her emotional realm is ferocious, as she can angrily show her disgust, express herself in a rage of discontent, or succumb to an equally outrageous moment of melodramatic hysteria, where she feigns suicide several times in order to attract the attention she needs. It’s fitting that in real life it was her final request to be allowed to sit in Fernandez's lap in the electric chair.
