The Honeymoon Killers

Year of Release:  1970
Director:  Leonard Kastle
Screenplay:  Leonard Kastle
Starring:  Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Marilyn Chris, Doris Roberts
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Crime

Raymond Fernandez (Lo Bianco) is a con man who meets women through lonely hearts adverts and fleeces them out of their money before running off.  His latest victim is sullen, nursing administrator Martha Beck (Stoler), who tracks him down and the two genuinely fall in love, and she joins him in his scams, posing as his married sister.  However, Martha's jealousy of Raymond's victims soon leads to murderous consequences.

This is based on the true story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, the "Lonely Hearts Killers" of the 1940s, and while the basic plot ad the lurid title might promise lurid thrills, this is a bleak, downbeat and gritty film, shot in grainy black-and-white on a very low budget, with an incongruous soundtrack taken from the works of Gustav Mahler.  It has an almost documentary like realism, and feels like a precursor to films such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) as well as numerous true-crime docudramas.  The central couple are never entirely monstrous, as horrible as their crimes are, there is a thread of humanity to them, and their love is believable.  However their victims are presented sympathetically, their vulnerability and loneliness, as well as the horror of their deaths makes the relatively restrained violence much more harrowing than many more graphic films.  The film is very well cast with great performances, especially from Shirley Stoler as the dead-eyed Martha Beck.  There is also a strong vein of very dark humour running throughout.
The film was originally set to be directed by Martin Scorsese, who was fired early into production, although some sequences that he directed remain in the film.  Apparently, he was fired because he was moving too slowly.
This film has attracted a cult following since it's release and, in 1980, legendary French director François Truffaut named it as one of his "favourite American films".

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco are The Honeymoon Killers