The Honeymoon Killers - Criterion Collection

Starring:Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby, Doris Roberts, Kip McArdle, Marilyn Chris, Dortha Duckworth, Barbara Cason, Ann Harris (II), Mary Breen, Elsa Raven, Mary Engel, Guy Sorel, Michael Haley, Diane Asselin, William Adams (III), Eleanor Adams
Director: Leonard Kastle, Donald Volkman
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

There's Bonnie and Clyde--then there's Martha and Ray. One-shot writer-director Leonard Kastle set out to make a film about lover-murderers that was everything Arthur Penn's movie was not. He succeeded. Consequently, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts Killers case of 1949, may be too lurid for some. But there's a heart beating inside its (tawdry) chest and Kastle clearly cared about these two crazy, mixed-up kids who should never have met. But met Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony LoBianco) did and proceeded to fleece several widows before doing them in. The film isn't graphic in its violence, but each murder is increasingly disturbing. Dramatic lighting and dark passages from Mahler keep the mood close and clammy throughout. Keep an eye out for Everybody Loves Raymond's Doris Roberts in a sharp cameo--and for shots directed by original helmer Martin Scorsese (fired for working too slowly). --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Description

Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) is sullen, overweight and heartbreakingly alone. Desperate for affection, she joins Aunt Carrie's Friendship Club and strikes up a correspondence with Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco), a suave, charismatic smooth talker who could be the man of her dreams—or a wicked con artist bound for trouble. Based on a true story and filmed in documentary-style black and white, The Honeymoon Killers is a stark portrayal of the desperate lengths a lonely heart will go to find true love, from brutally immoral killings to a passion that transcends all bounds.

Customer Reviews:

Really unexpected.......2006-10-05

I picked this up thinking - I'm not sure what I was thinking, actually. I guess I thought noir-ish crime drama. French film makers, apparently, really like this, and it's easy to see why. It's stark, honest and miles away from American studio formula. Much more like a European or Japanese film. Very strange at first (I can see why an earlier reviewer though 'John Waters'), this is an involving, compelling film made for almost nothing. If you like "Indie" films, foreign films or the documentary look of films like "In Cold Blood," grab this offbeat winner.

Sleazy but captivating.......2006-05-28

It seems nobody told the two leading actors (Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco) in this crime drama that it was a low-budget affair, because they act as strongly as if they were in a major blockbuster. Stoller plays an obese nurse from Alabama looking for love; what she finds through a lonelyhearts correspondence club (today it would be Myspace) is Lo Bianco, a Spanish immigrant in NYC. They write to each other, and then he comes to visit her. He steals her money - that's his racket - but she sticks by him anyway, and they team up to bilk other desperate women in the same way. It gets pretty gruesome after that, with Stoler turning into a jealous murderer after Lo Bianco marries Marilyn Chris. The atmosphere throughout the picture is frighteningly claustrophobic, and, again, Stoler and Lo Bianco give all they've got in their roles. The Mahler score also fits in well with the action. Thematically it's fairly low-brow, but the acting and gritty photography make up for that.

What a good thing for low budget.......2005-07-03

it helps this film's seedy atmosphere. It does remind one of John Water's early films in the acting department, but it is a truly engrossing film.This film takes a trip into the minds of 2 truly ill individuals. At one point, directly after the first murder, Ray Says to Martha "I want to make love to you"But Martha soon turns the tables on Ray when she discovers a lie....Avery good low budget film that works effectively

A fellinian nightmare!.......2005-01-16

The painful loneliness of a nurse who suffers a little problem of overweight (two hundred pounds) , lives with her senile mother . Martha decides to join a correspondence friendship club . She will receive torrid and voluptuous letters love from a Spanish born immigrant .He will visit her in Alabama and he will be back to NYC. They will rejoin very soon in New York and Ray confess her he is just a gigolo . But as you know sometimes the love is blind and she doesn't matter at all his venerable profession.

In this particular and light and shadow state of things , Ray will start to compose a real horror symphony . Betrayal , suspicion , infidelity , black humor, greed , and sinister fatality will be their fellow partners journey .

But as you know in love the domain relapses in those who love less . Ray hardly will change his previous costumes and Martha will act in consequence .

Those early seventies were impregnated of a gloomy poetry . The collective needed evasion . Those were the first films where the sci fi renewed with new proposals , the racism films , the first denounces about Vietnam War , The French May . In this sense you may remember that filthy cult movie for a great audience - Pink Flamingos - the most famous work of John Waters , Antonioni `s Zabrizskie Point , Kubrick ` s A clockwork orange , Michael Anerson 's If , Perry Henzel `s The harder they come , Dennis Hopper 's Easy Rider , Richard Rush's Hell' s Angels , Strawberry statement or Billy Jack to name the most representative items in this category of outlaw movies , made usually with a low budget but filled with a brutal denounce load and no satisfaction , not only by the teenagers but also the thirties generation who were the first generation post Beatles and Elvis Presley who decided to swim against the current making films which walked in the knife edge .

Curiously all those films were not authentically originals but were born from the French New Wave with two notable films : Breathless and Jules and Jim . In fact you can note a
little homage to Jules and Jim when the camera remains stationary in Ctaherinep's living room .

These characters are based in real events . The real Ray and Martha , the far descendents of Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy were executed in Sing Sing on March 7 1951 .

disturbing, but very impressive.......2004-12-03

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD of the film.

Honeymoon Killers is a film based on the true story of Martha Beck, a nurse who meets an older man, Ray Fernandez, through a matchmating service and when she discovers that he is a swindler, she is upset but he explains that he really does love her. She then starts to help him swindle women out of their money and poses as his sister. Eventually, they start killing and Martha turns themselves in to the police when she feels remorseful.

The source material for the film included newspaper articles, court documents and other credible material.

The film has some nice acting and good cast choices for the time, but Shirley Stoler, who played the role of nurse Martha Beck, has a very striking resemblence to Louise Fletcher in this film! Some can't help but laugh because of this. It is a very sad story and the violence in the film was very intense for the time. It was made in 1970 and got an R rating, but today it would certainly get a PG-13 rating or maybe even PG.

The Criterion Collection placed some excellent special features on the DVD.

There in an interview with screenrriter and director Leonard Kastle, a theatrical trailer, and a slide show of information about the true story that inspired the film. It includes courtroom pictutes, newspaper articles, crime scene photos, and material about the Sing Sing prison where they were executed. It even shows the couple's last meal requests.

This film should not be missed.

Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack (High & Low/Tokyo Drifter/The Honeymoon Killers/Branded to Kill/Alphaville/Man Bites Dog) - Amazon.com exclusive

Average customer rating:

Criterion Crime Wave / IFC crossover promotion
Great movies, strange price
Great movies, silly collection

Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack (High & Low/Tokyo Drifter/The Honeymoon Killers/Branded to Kill/Alphaville/Man Bites Dog) - Amazon.com exclusive
Starring: Valérie Boisgel , Jean-Louis Comolli , Eddie Constantine , Michel Delahaye , and Jean-André Fieschi
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Manufacturer: Criterion Collection
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B00015WMP0
Release Date: 2004-01-11

Amazon.com

The six films in the Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack were shown together on on the International Film Channel in January 2004.

Although best known for his samurai classics, Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proved himself equally adept at contemporary dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a powerful showcase for Kurosawa's versatile skill. The great Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy industrialist who receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate coincidence the ransom demand is nearly equivalent to the amount Mifune has raised for a corporate coup. What follows is both a tense detective thriller, as the police attempt to track down the kidnapper, and a compelling illustration of class division in Japan--the "high and low" of the title. Far be it from Kurosawa to make a mere thriller, however; this loose adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom provides the director with ample opportunity to develop a visual strategy that perfectly enhances the story's sociological themes. --Jeff Shannon

In Toyko Drifter, Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond cartoon as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The twisting narrative takes hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) from deliriously gaudy nightclubs, where killers hide behind every pillar, to the beautiful snowy plains of Northern Japan and back again, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Suzuki's extreme stylization, jarring narrative leaps, and wild plot devices combine to create a pulp fiction on acid, equal parts gangster parody and post-modern deconstruction. --Sean Axmaker

Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out of shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired killer who loves his work, but when he misses a target, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. --Sean Axmaker

1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Jean-Luc Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. --Jeff Shannon

The Belgian satire Man Bites Dog is dark, dark, dark--but also right on the money in its sly sendup of the media's fascination with violence and its complicity therein. This mock documentary has a trio of filmmakers shooting a cinéma vérité feature about a garrulous serial killer who lets the film crew follow him around as he selects victims and then dispatches them. But at what point does filmmaking become participation? These hapless documentarians soon find out as their subject eventually pulls them into his world, including a gun battle with a rival film crew and their own criminal star. Gruesomely hilarious, with a deadpan wit that's hard to resist. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews:

Criterion Crime Wave / IFC crossover promotion.......2004-01-20

From the other persons reviewing this 6 DVD bundle there seems to come confusion as to why Amazon would group said discs. The reason is for cross promotion with The Independent Film Channel (IFC) who will show all six movies on January 30th and 31st of 2004. Of course, all are Criterion titles as well, and the budding collector may feel compulsion to buy all of these at once to achieve a discount (an extra 5% PER title above individual prices here at Amazon) and saving on S&H. Aside from the tie-in to IFC, Amazon is supporting a contest with prizes to be given away and you can register here at this site.

All that being said, there is no other reason these titles would form a cohesive box set, but then again, it is not being sold as such. Unlike other Criterion box sets (which to this point have always showcased a single director), this is working off of a theme and not someone's body of work. There is no mention of a "box" to house all these DVDs, but instead are just bundled together in a group. Each of these films though are solid titles, with Man Bites Dog being far and away my favorite and the two Suzuki films probably being the least appealing (though, still good films).

If your first introduction to the Criterion Collection is from watching these films on IFC at the end of the month, you will come to find the company to be the Rolls Royce of DVDs. From film restoration to bonuses to retrieval of obscure cellulite, Criterion is unparalleled in the retail field and is a must for any serious film students or lovers of great cinema.

Great movies, strange price.......2004-01-17

This is a great collection of classic films. I have all
but one on DVD or Laserdisc.

I am confused on the pricing. ..

Great movies, silly collection.......2003-12-16

Each and every one of these films are fantastic...from the police procedural of Kurosawa's High & Low to the cinema verite nastiness of Man Bites Dog to the goofiness of Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. That being said, they are all different one from the other and have little in common (with the exception of Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill...both by Suzuki), and other than an at times tangential relationship to the crime genre (Godard's Alphaville is "crime" film only to the extent that a private investigator is used as a plot device), it's strange why in the world these films are grouped together. Well, all of them are issued by the Criterion Collection...but even Criterion Collection boxed sets have a stronger kinship, as in the Hitchcock and Kurosawa boxes.

Truly a mystery why these are being marketed this way.

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