The Honeymoon Killers is a classic black and white crime drama. Tony Lo Bianco is awesome as Raymond Fernandez, a man who with his partner, Martha Beck, lured lonely women to their deaths through magazine ads. He would have loved the internet. Tony mugs for the camera as he uses a Ricky Ricardo accent and delivers some really funny and twisted lines. Shirley Stoler is Beck, and the rotund woman is accurately cast as the real life 280 pound killer. A more recent telling of the story used Salma Hayek as Beck, a radically bad casting choice. Hayek is a knockout and the Beck was not a femme fatale. The true crime story is a compelling tale of pure evil and this film captures it perfectly.

A young Martin Scorsese directed bits of this creepy psychological thriller about Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck, the "Lonely Hearts Killers" who murdered a shockingly large number of women in a two-year spree in the late 1940s. As the camera prowls and the framing draws deliberate attention to itself, you can sense Scorsese – before, that is, he was sacked and replaced with Leonard Kastle. This would be Kastle's only film, and it's pretty good all things considered.How true is this "true story"? Not very. For a start it's clearly set at the time it was made (1969), and yet states in the epilogue that Ray (Tony Lo Blanco) and Martha (Shirley Stoler) met their fate twenty years earlier. But how about the more general truth of fiction? Here the film succeeds, focusing on the psychology of this chunky, frumpy lady and her lithe Latino partner-in-crime; the bitter jealousy and the vile scheming, and the growing tensions between them. It works well, thanks to a smart script with a sharp edge of ironic wit.Martha is a sad-sack who is empowered at work but desperately lonely at home. Ray is a vile opportunist whose control is cracked by the juvenile love he shares with Martha. It's a story of its time. These days the couple wouldn't need to lure the lonely through newspaper ads – they could swindle all their money over the internet. But Ray and Martha are hands-on and in-your-face, and the film portrays a collection of increasingly sinister encounters as they convince a series of sad spinsters to part with their cash. Ray wields charm like a scimitar, while Martha is like a wrecking ball.With its suburban sitting room setting and its unsettling blend of the OTT and the naturalistic, the influence on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is clear. When the killing begins, Kastle doesn't shy away. The death-by-hammer scene is genuinely shocking, even by today's standards.Mostly the movie eschews graphic violence in favour of tense episodes laced with morbid, mordant wit. You can see why it was disregarded at the time, just as you can see why it's being reconsidered today. For all its melodrama (Gustav Mahler parps over the serial killers' domestic dramatics) and its sleazy exploitation appearance, it's surprisingly subtle and has flashes of real craft. It is undoubtedly a genre-evading oddity – but an accessible one which will be enjoyed by anybody looking for something clever, nasty, and funny.

I loved this movie not only for how it was filmed in b/w but for this terrific cast. A young Tony Lo Bianco stole this movie from the rest of this excellent cast! Mr. Lo Bianco is the most memorable actor for my money and was perfectly casted. I would highly suggest viewing this film and I know you will enjoy it as we did here. I understand that there were a couple of big name directors fired early on in filming this movie mainly because the way they were using only master shots without close ups and or back up takes. I think this was Tony Lo Bianco's first film as I had only seen him acting on stage prior to this film. He always delivered a solid performance in the stage roles that I saw him in but this performance on film surely has to be the reason I started seeing him in more films after Honeymoon Killers. I'll never forget his role as "Sal Boca" in the great film "The French Connection" - if it were up to me he'd have won best supporting actor for that film. But here in Honeymoon Killers, he gets a chance to carry a film on his shoulders and carry it he does - in grand fashion of those great old actors of the B/W film days. I sincerely recommend this film to all film buffs or to anyone who likes a good story, a people picture, not a bunch of special effects, but a real story so well acted by all.

Chubby ex-nurse Martha Beck over-eats and gets confused as she and gigolo boyfriend Ray Fernandez murder their way across the Northeast.No doubt about it, the movie's a sleezeball masterpiece. There's maybe one likable character in the whole hundred-minutes-- a prison guard, of all people, and she has maybe all of five lines. The rest are either slimy (Ray), monstrous (Martha) or pathetic (the victims). Only an indie production would dare combine such ugly photography with such a succession of dismal characters. But, for a real shudder, imagine how a Hollywood studio would have prettified the same movie.Nonetheless, the sleeze has genuine style behind it, along with two tacky Oscars for the leads. As Ray, Lo Bianco exudes more oily charm than a BP platform, while a stretched-out Martha (Stoler) resembles nothing less than a beached whale. Just the thought of the two of them clinching is enough to sound an environmental alarm. And the fact that the kinkiest things turn them on makes the picture even worse and not even their "mad love" helps.I don't know how many movie details are based on fact, but two of the murder scenes are genuinely ugly. And the fact that it's nurse Martha, not the squeamish Ray, who handles the messes says a lot about gender equality. Most chilling to me, is the fact that these two psychos merrily bludgeon, shoot, and poison their way from one place to the next with nary a police siren in sight. It's almost like they're planning a vacation itinerary from one murder site to the next. In fact, it's a betrayed Martha who finally puts a stop to things. Anyhow, no movie I know makes crime and murder any more sordid than this one. And in my little book, that's a genuine achievement. Plus, I think the movie changed my mind about the merits of capital punishment.