The Honeymoon Killers
Encyclopedia
The Honeymoon Killers is a 1970 American
film written and directed by Leonard Kastle
, and starring Shirley Stoler
and Tony Lo Bianco
. It tells the story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez
, the notorious "lonely hearts killer
s" who murdered at least 12 women in the 1940s. The soundtrack is from the first movement of the 6th Symphony of Gustav Mahler
.
) writes to a "lonely hearts" service, which results in a letter from Ray Fernandez
of New York City. Overcoming her initial resistance, Martha corresponds with Ray. He visits Martha and seduces her. Later, Ray sends Martha a letter ending their "relationship" and Martha calls him, threatening to kill herself because she cannot live without him.
Moved by her devotion, Ray asks Martha to visit him in New York. There, Ray reveals that he is a con man
who corresponds with lonely women with the intent to seduce and swindle them. Martha still proclaims her love for Ray, however, and she accompanies him as he moves from woman to woman. Posing as his sister, Martha can barely contain her jealousy as she watches Ray romance other women, though Ray promises her that he will never sleep with them. Ray marries a pregnant woman, Myrtle Young (played by Marilyn Chris
), and Martha gives her a fatal dose of pills after Young aggressively attempts to sleep with Ray.
Martha and Ray move onto their next target, and Martha attempts to drown herself after catching Ray in a compromising position. To placate her, Ray buys Martha a house in the suburbs; however, their attempt at living as a "normal" couple fails, and they resume their criminal activities. Ray, under the alias "Charles Martin", becomes engaged to the elderly Janet Fay (played by Mary Jane Higby) and takes her to the house he shares with Martha. Janet entrusts Ray with a check for $10,000, but she becomes suspicious of the couple. When Janet tries to contact her family, Ray and Martha hit her in the head with a hammer and strangle her to death. Her body is buried in the cellar.
Martha and Ray then spend several weeks living with the widowed Delphine Dowling and her young daughter. Delphine confides in Martha, hoping that she will help convince Ray to marry her as soon as possible because she is pregnant with Ray's child. Furious, Martha attempts to kill Delphine when her daughter enters the room with Ray. Ray shoots Delphine in the head and Martha drowns her daughter in the cellar. Ray tells Martha that they'll move onto another woman, reaffirming his promise never to betray Martha with one of his marks. Realizing that Ray will never stop lying to her, Martha calls the police and calmly waits for them to arrive.
The epilogue
takes place four months later, with Martha and Ray in jail and awaiting trial. Martha receives a letter from Ray in which he tells her that, despite everything, she is the only woman he ever loved. Titles on the screen then conclude the story, saying that Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez were executed on March 8, 1951.
(known as the producer of television's Firing Line
), writer/director Leonard Kastle
(known as a composer), cinematographer Oliver Wood,
and Shirley Stoler
and Tony Lo Bianco
(both stage actors). A wealthy friend of Steibel, Leon Levy
, suggested to Steibel that he make a film, and gave Steibel $150,000, the amount that Steibel suggested it would cost. After deciding the film would be about "The Lonely Hearts Killers"
, Steibel asked Kastle, his roommate, to do some research on the subject; financial limitations led Steibel to ask his friend to write the screenplay.
Steibel hired Martin Scorsese
to direct, but Scorsese was fired for working too slowly; a few scenes he did were included in the final film. Industrial film-maker Donald Volkman took over, but lasted only two weeks. Kastle then stepped in as director for the last four weeks of principal photography
.
Budgetary constraints meant that actors did their own hair and makeup, and special effects were not fancy. In a scene in which Martha bludgeons an old woman with a hammer, "condoms containing glycerine and red dye were affixed to the head of the victim with plaster of Paris. The hammer, a balsa-wood prop, had a pin at the end. When the pin pricked the condoms, the blood began to flow."
; it "performed weakly" at the U.S. box office in spite of critical praise. For example, Variety
magazine said it was "made with care, authenticity and attention to detail." Its "modest financial success" in Britain and France probably meant that its financial backer recouped his investment.
François Truffaut
called it his "favorite American film."
When Criterion Collection released a restored DVD edition of the film, The A.V. Club
review ends by noting the film's "nauseous mixture of laughs and shocks, and the fact that real passion drives Kastle's characters even when they plot against each other, is what makes The Honeymoon Killers such an enduring one-off. It works, as Gary Giddins
argues in the liner notes
to this beautifully restored DVD edition, as the perfect product of the same anxious, permissive age that produced Waters
, Night of the Living Dead
, and blaxploitation
. But it holds up just as well as a weirdly timeless love story with a body count
."
The film was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.
, contrary to what the opening credits states, the film takes substantial liberties with the historical record, including how Fernandez and Beck actually met. The film does not disclose that Beck was divorced with two children whom she sent back to Florida
on Fernandez's orders. Nor does it mention Fernandez's wives and children. In addition, the assertion that Beck called the police contradicts accounts of the case.
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
film written and directed by Leonard Kastle
Leonard Kastle
Leonard Gregory Kastle was an opera composer, librettist, and director, though he is best known as the writer/director of The Honeymoon Killers, his only venture into the cinema, for which he did all his own research. He was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music studying under opera composer...
, and starring Shirley Stoler
Shirley Stoler
Shirley Stoler was an American actress best known for her roles in The Honeymoon Killers and Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties.-Career:...
and Tony Lo Bianco
Tony Lo Bianco
Tony Lo Bianco is an American actor in films and television.Lo Bianco was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a taxi driver. He is known for his roles in the cult films The Honeymoon Killers, God Told Me To, and The French Connection...
. It tells the story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck became known as "The Lonely Hearts Killers" after their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949. Between 1947 and 1949 they are believed to have killed as many as twenty women...
, the notorious "lonely hearts killer
Lonely hearts killer
The phrase lonely hearts killer, sometimes also want-ad killer, or matrimonial bureau murderer, is a journalistic term of art that refers to a person who commits murder by contacting a victim who has either posted advertisements to, or answered advertisements via newspaper classified ads and...
s" who murdered at least 12 women in the 1940s. The soundtrack is from the first movement of the 6th Symphony of Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
.
Plot
Martha Beck is a sullen, overweight nurse who lives in a southern town with her elderly mother (played by Dortha Duckworth), whom Martha eventually places in a nursing home. To help her find a man, Martha's friend Bunny (played by Doris RobertsDoris Roberts
Doris Roberts is an American character actress of film, stage and television. She has received five Emmy Awards. She began her career in 1952, and may be best-known as Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996–2005....
) writes to a "lonely hearts" service, which results in a letter from Ray Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck became known as "The Lonely Hearts Killers" after their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949. Between 1947 and 1949 they are believed to have killed as many as twenty women...
of New York City. Overcoming her initial resistance, Martha corresponds with Ray. He visits Martha and seduces her. Later, Ray sends Martha a letter ending their "relationship" and Martha calls him, threatening to kill herself because she cannot live without him.
Moved by her devotion, Ray asks Martha to visit him in New York. There, Ray reveals that he is a con man
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
who corresponds with lonely women with the intent to seduce and swindle them. Martha still proclaims her love for Ray, however, and she accompanies him as he moves from woman to woman. Posing as his sister, Martha can barely contain her jealousy as she watches Ray romance other women, though Ray promises her that he will never sleep with them. Ray marries a pregnant woman, Myrtle Young (played by Marilyn Chris
Marilyn Chris
Marilyn Chris is an American actress most notably known for her role as Wanda Webb Wolek on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live.-Career:...
), and Martha gives her a fatal dose of pills after Young aggressively attempts to sleep with Ray.
Martha and Ray move onto their next target, and Martha attempts to drown herself after catching Ray in a compromising position. To placate her, Ray buys Martha a house in the suburbs; however, their attempt at living as a "normal" couple fails, and they resume their criminal activities. Ray, under the alias "Charles Martin", becomes engaged to the elderly Janet Fay (played by Mary Jane Higby) and takes her to the house he shares with Martha. Janet entrusts Ray with a check for $10,000, but she becomes suspicious of the couple. When Janet tries to contact her family, Ray and Martha hit her in the head with a hammer and strangle her to death. Her body is buried in the cellar.
Martha and Ray then spend several weeks living with the widowed Delphine Dowling and her young daughter. Delphine confides in Martha, hoping that she will help convince Ray to marry her as soon as possible because she is pregnant with Ray's child. Furious, Martha attempts to kill Delphine when her daughter enters the room with Ray. Ray shoots Delphine in the head and Martha drowns her daughter in the cellar. Ray tells Martha that they'll move onto another woman, reaffirming his promise never to betray Martha with one of his marks. Realizing that Ray will never stop lying to her, Martha calls the police and calmly waits for them to arrive.
The epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
takes place four months later, with Martha and Ray in jail and awaiting trial. Martha receives a letter from Ray in which he tells her that, despite everything, she is the only woman he ever loved. Titles on the screen then conclude the story, saying that Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez were executed on March 8, 1951.
Production
The film was the first for producer Warren SteibelWarren Steibel
Warren Steibel was a producer and director who worked in the television and film industry throughout his career, and is perhaps best remembered for his long friendship with William F...
(known as the producer of television's Firing Line
Firing Line
Firing Line was an American public affairs show founded and hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. Its 1,504 episodes over 33 years made Firing Line the longest-running public affairs show in television history with a single host...
), writer/director Leonard Kastle
Leonard Kastle
Leonard Gregory Kastle was an opera composer, librettist, and director, though he is best known as the writer/director of The Honeymoon Killers, his only venture into the cinema, for which he did all his own research. He was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music studying under opera composer...
(known as a composer), cinematographer Oliver Wood,
and Shirley Stoler
Shirley Stoler
Shirley Stoler was an American actress best known for her roles in The Honeymoon Killers and Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties.-Career:...
and Tony Lo Bianco
Tony Lo Bianco
Tony Lo Bianco is an American actor in films and television.Lo Bianco was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a taxi driver. He is known for his roles in the cult films The Honeymoon Killers, God Told Me To, and The French Connection...
(both stage actors). A wealthy friend of Steibel, Leon Levy
Leon Levy
Leon Levy was, according to Forbes magazine, a "Wall Street investment genius and prolific philanthropist," who helped create both mutual funds and hedge funds. He co-founded the mutual fund manager Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in 1959. There he started dozens of mutual funds that, at his death, had...
, suggested to Steibel that he make a film, and gave Steibel $150,000, the amount that Steibel suggested it would cost. After deciding the film would be about "The Lonely Hearts Killers"
Raymond Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck became known as "The Lonely Hearts Killers" after their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949. Between 1947 and 1949 they are believed to have killed as many as twenty women...
, Steibel asked Kastle, his roommate, to do some research on the subject; financial limitations led Steibel to ask his friend to write the screenplay.
Steibel hired Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
to direct, but Scorsese was fired for working too slowly; a few scenes he did were included in the final film. Industrial film-maker Donald Volkman took over, but lasted only two weeks. Kastle then stepped in as director for the last four weeks of principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
.
Budgetary constraints meant that actors did their own hair and makeup, and special effects were not fancy. In a scene in which Martha bludgeons an old woman with a hammer, "condoms containing glycerine and red dye were affixed to the head of the victim with plaster of Paris. The hammer, a balsa-wood prop, had a pin at the end. When the pin pricked the condoms, the blood began to flow."
Reception
The film was initially marketed as an exploitation filmExploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
; it "performed weakly" at the U.S. box office in spite of critical praise. For example, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine said it was "made with care, authenticity and attention to detail." Its "modest financial success" in Britain and France probably meant that its financial backer recouped his investment.
François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
called it his "favorite American film."
When Criterion Collection released a restored DVD edition of the film, The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
review ends by noting the film's "nauseous mixture of laughs and shocks, and the fact that real passion drives Kastle's characters even when they plot against each other, is what makes The Honeymoon Killers such an enduring one-off. It works, as Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic, author, and director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970...
argues in the liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
to this beautifully restored DVD edition, as the perfect product of the same anxious, permissive age that produced Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
, Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
, and blaxploitation
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1970. It is considered an ethnic sub-genre of the general category of exploitation films. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, although the genre's audience...
. But it holds up just as well as a weirdly timeless love story with a body count
Body count
A body count is the total number of people killed in a particular event. In combat, a body count is often based on the number of confirmed kills, but occasionally only an estimate.-Military use:...
."
The film was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.
Historical accuracy
Although inspired by true events and uses the real names of the "The Lonely Hearts Killers"Raymond Fernandez
Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck became known as "The Lonely Hearts Killers" after their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949. Between 1947 and 1949 they are believed to have killed as many as twenty women...
, contrary to what the opening credits states, the film takes substantial liberties with the historical record, including how Fernandez and Beck actually met. The film does not disclose that Beck was divorced with two children whom she sent back to Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
on Fernandez's orders. Nor does it mention Fernandez's wives and children. In addition, the assertion that Beck called the police contradicts accounts of the case.
See also
- Lonely Hearts, a 2007 film about the same events.
- Deep CrimsonDeep CrimsonDeep Crimson is a 1996 Mexican crime film directed by Arturo Ripstein, written by Paz Alicia Garciadiego and starring Regina Orozco and Daniel Giménez Cacho...
, a 1996 film about the same events.