"I'm not so sure Hitler wasn't right about you people"This is a god damn great movie based on the real story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. Kastle was able to make such an eerie atmosphere of the two eccentric characters in a very skillful way. I'm not really sure how a man with this skills of direction, has only made one movie!! The Honeymoon Killers was in some moments noir, fully suspenseful with a great use of lights and shadows, not to mention the astounding close-ups.

Back in the late 1940s, Martha Beck was an obese, angry and lonely lady. When she met Ray Fernandez through a lonely hearts club, she became extremely dependent on him and agreed to follow him on his exploits. As for Ray, he was a con-man and made his money marrying women--after wards, he or Martha would soon murder them! They are known to have killed four people (including a 2 year-old) but estimates are this serial killing couple killed as many as 20! Not surprisingly, the story was a huge sensation when the press got involved!About 20 years later, this film version of their exploits was made. It obviously was a very low-budget project and was shot in black & white (by 1970 hardly any films were made this way) as well as had unknown actors (some of which, such as Tony Lo Bianco and Doris Roberts, became famous later). Interestingly, the only American filmmaker I can think of still making black & white films at this point was John Waters...and I can't help but think the movie was have been AMAZING had Divine starred as Martha! Playing it for camp instead of as a straight drama would have been interesting!So is this film any good? Well, a lot of it depends on the audience. If you are a serial killer junkie, then you have to see it. As for me, I don't particularly enjoy seeing dramatizations of serial killers' exploits as sometimes the films are incredibly graphic and may tend to glamorize these evil folks' exploits. "The Honeymoon Killers" generally is NOT very graphic, though when they use a hammer on one of their victims, I gotta admit that she was really, really annoying I was rooting for them to killer her...and quickly! The acting is better than you'd expect with a cheapo project and the film does hold your interest. Still, it is very yicky at times and is something I'd rather not see again!By the way, the way the couple got caught was probably fiction. I read about this hellish couple and this film's ending didn't exactly jibe with police records. Quite a few of the other incidents in the film have been altered a bit to seemingly make the film more cinematic and interesting (such as never mentioning that Marth had two children before meeting Ray). The clothes and hairstyles also make the film look like this happened about 1970...but it actually was set from 1949- 51.

True-life serial killer flick The Honeymoon Killers takes a long time to live up to its claim as a shocking cult classic, spending more time on the killers' unusual love affair than the actual murders; thankfully, when it eventually gets around to depicting the violence, it doesn't disappoint—for a film shot in 1969, the killings are extremely uncomfortable viewing.The film is based on real life killers Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez, an insecure, overweight nurse (played by Shirley Stoler) and a gigolo con-man (Tony Lo Bianco) who fall in love after meeting via a lonely hearts club; posing as brother and sister, the pair trick lonely desperate women out of their savings, but turn to murder whenever their plans go awry.Shot in a lo-fi, docudrama style (no doubt as a result of the very low budget), The Honeymoon Killers is rough around the edges, the pacing is often sluggish, and the dialogue dreary, but the film still achieves a certain sordid appeal thanks to its sickening subject matter and memorably nasty murder scenes, which include a callous hammer attack/strangulation and the drowning of a child.

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