Diagonaldi Very well executed

Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

billcr12 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.

MartinHafer 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.

Mr_Ectoplasma "The Honeymoon Killers" is one of those films that you want to shut off because it's so damned tenebrous, but at the same time you don't really want to look away. The thin plot follows an overweight, depressed nurse who meets her prince charming after her mother places an ad in the lonely hearts section of the local newspaper. The problem? Her smooth-talking Latin boyfriend wants to take her along for the ride on a killing spree of innocent women. Among all of the drive-in grindhouse fare to come from the late 1960s-early 1970s, "The Honeymoon Killers" may be the cream of the crop; it's not sleazy enough to be shelved among its counterparts, but it's also not sophisticated enough by most standards to be thought of as anything else. It's a remarkably ugly film in just about every sense of the word— its characters are vile, its story is downright macabre, and it has one of the most downtrodden but effective endings of any of its peers of the time period. Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco turn in ingenious performances here and have a surprising chemistry with one another. Also featured is a young Doris Roberts (beloved mother on television's "Seinfeld") as Stoler's friend. Directed by Leonard Kastle (and his only feature film), it is well-shot and takes advantage of its stark black-and-white photography to create effective mood and make even daylight scenes potential threats. Other horror films of the era that feature similar use of photography (Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" comes to mind) may have done so more effectively, but what the photography really bolsters in this film are its bleak depictions of violence. The murder scenes in the film are tonally flat, and that may be why they are so shocking. There is no dramatic cue music, no thunderstorms outside, no killer with a knife— just silence, screaming, and the thwack of a hammer against the skull. Released in the wake of Charles Manson, it's not surprising that "The Honeymoon Killers" was relegated to the drive-in circuit, and in some regard it deserved to be there; at the same time, it had the chops to be playing at art house theaters as well. Its straight-talking documentary style strips the film of any and all potential variation in tone, but its flatness is part of what makes it so appalling and so realistic. It's gritty and expressionless, but still masterfully done and fraught with emotion. It's a remarkably well-made film, but it's so direct that it at times feels dangerous to watch; the fact that it's based on an actual killing spree only amplifies the sentiment. 9/10.

dougdoepke 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.