The Honeymoon Killers, 1970, the real folie a deux

At first sight one might assume that The Honeymoon Killers (1970) is just another exploitation film. After all, its poster looks cheap and provocative: an obese woman, in her underwear, receives the passionate caresses of her lover... all done with a black and white photograph, and a two-color background (white and pink). It looks like a story of fetishism and forbidden passions... until we see that the couple is sitting on a trunk from which an arm is sticking out, meaning that inside there is a corpse. So... Is it a black comedy?

The poster is nothing more than a reflection of the dramas the producers had to go through to find a commercial profile for the film. And it definitely doesn't do it justice. The Honeymoon Killers is neither an exploitation movie nor a black comedy, but a brutal account of the adventures of a couple of psychopaths who left a trail of dead in the late 40's. It is a film more akin to In Cold Blood (1967) (the chronicle of the adventures of two amoral criminals, based on the immortal text by Truman Capote) than, for example, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), another explosive combo of violence and sex.

Everything about the film is unusual, starting with its genesis. The director and screenwriter Leonard Kastle was a renowned opera composer, who together with a couple of partners (producer Warren Steibel, cinematographer Oliver Wood) wanted to make a thriller based on the facts of the police chronicle, and that had the most realistic approach possible. The budget was very small (only u$s 150,000), so the first thing they did was to hire a cheap, novice director (Martin Scorsese!!), who was fired soon after because his perfectionism implied doing several takes of the same scene, something that exhausted the scarce money reserved for the expensive cinematographic material. In view of this, Kastle decided to take over the direction and, although he was an inexperienced amateur, he ended up succeeding thanks to the ferocity of the script and the film's great casting.

With the exquisite documentary atmosphere created by the black-and-white photography (chosen more for a cost issue than an artistic decision), The Honeymoon Killers perfectly captures the essence of the toxic relationship between Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez. She, an overweight nurse, huge, sour, overbearing, disenchanted with life. He, a fourth-rate Latin lover who disguises his early baldness with a toupee. Compared to the actors chosen to play them (Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco), the real-life Beck and Fernandez look vulgar and prematurely aged.

But unlike other murderous couples - and the most obvious case in point is Bonnie & Clyde (1967), of which The Honeymoon Killers is the total antithesis, as it romanticizes neither the violence nor the actions of the protagonists, apart from showing them as if they were models so beautiful that they should belong on the cover of Vogue magazine. - these lovers would not cross paths until they were in their early 30s. Fernandez was a hustler who found his victims through the “Lonely Hearts” section of a popular women's magazine - the prehistoric version of Tinder (!), where single men and women would post ads looking for a friendship or a courtship -. He would locate widows, spinsters, women devastated by loneliness, whom he would seduce (first through letters, and later in person) with cuddles and kind words, some promise of marriage, and then steal money and jewelry, and disappear without a trace. On the other side is Martha Beck, fed up with her life (in charge of her elderly mother... and with a couple of details that the movie omits, such as having been abused at an early age, or having two children, one fruit of a fleeting night of love, and the other, of a marriage that barely lasted six months) ends up writing to the Lonely Hearts section (in the film, a friend does it for her - Doris Roberts, decades before Remington Steele and Everybody Loves Raymond -). Fernandez sees easy prey in the overweight woman - another desperate, lonely soul looking for companionship at all costs - and quickly makes contact. The thing is, when they meet, Martha is blinded by the Latino...to the point of faking suicide, a childish behavior but one endorsed by her friend to force Raymond to contact her again. As the fiery Latin lover remains interested in her, Martha decides to abandon her job, her possessions and even her family (she rushes her mother into a nursing home; and, in real life, leaves her children with friends), and throws herself headlong after Fernandez, even if it means forcing her way into his life. Such an act of passion dazzles the Latino, who decides to open up, tells her about his particular way of life and decides to make Martha an accomplice in his scams. She will introduce herself as his sister, a detail that initially increases the efficiency of the deception since the victims feel safer (!) having another female presence in the house as soon as the stranger Fernandez introduces himself to them. Poor them. They have no idea what awaits them.

Although today the term is on everyone's mouths thanks to the 2024 sequel to Joker, Folie à Deux is a term used by psychology - described in 1877 by psychiatrists Charles Lasègue and Jules Falret - to define a state of shared madness. Like as a classical ballet step where two dancers move perfectly in sync with the music (the real origin of the expression), these individuals - who live together most of the time, always walk in pairs and range from sibling pairs, parent-child relationships or, the most common case, marriages - form an unreal and delusional image of themselves, ranging from their own moral value system (which they consider superior to the rest) to the formation of a false image of perfection in front of all those around them. Violence is not uncommon in Folie à Deux cases since anyone who dares to challenge their erroneous opinions or criticize their way of life is automatically considered an enemy, and is simultaneously attacked by the delusional duo, either verbally or physically. Folie à Deux cases do not necessarily end up in the police chronicle; many of them are seen as functional and even charismatic people... until someone from outside discovers the true nature of the relationship when, by accident, he ends up questioning one of their elaborate and artificial value system, which for them constitutes the supreme offense. The next step is to receive their full wrath.

But how does a Folie à Deux come about? Each case is different, but the most deeply rooted theory is that there is a dominant person who acts as a corruptor and subjugates the person who accompanies him, either through emotional blackmail, constant siege by a system of rewards and punishments, until the victim - who must be an emotionally damaged person, that's why he does not dare to abandon his victimizer - ends up submitting to his will and his flawed system of thinking... and eventually both work in the same tune. In the case of The Honeymoon Killers, Martha could have gone on for years as a bitter spinster but incapable of violence, and Fernandez would have continued her scams without killing anyone. But when two toxic people meet, are attracted to each other and have the same vibe (and more so when the passion component is fierce), the flawed personalities are enhanced and end up creating a two-headed monster.

The theme, of course, passes through Martha. Shirley Stoller lacks the innocent-looking matronly aspect of the original Martha Beck; instead, she exudes an animal sensuality that transcends the screen, a woman who is comfortable with her own body and wields it as a weapon to manipulate Fernandez. And for the Latino, this woman's ferocity drives him crazy: hers is devotion bordering on the unhealthy. But, of course, therein lies the seed of disaster. Because Martha cannot remain immune to a situation where a bunch of strange hands caress her beloved's face, let alone kiss him. Fernandez is exclusive to her, he is her property. Although she has Fernandez's promise that he will never have sex with her victims - because the scam is based on a promise of marriage that will never materialize, and many of the victims wish to taste the sweetness of love before the ceremony -, it is impossible to control the unhealthy jealousy that her lover's “work” provokes in her, and that in the end explodes in the most brutal way possible. In one of the cases, the bride's insistence on having sex with the handsome Raymond is so great that Martha finally decides to knock her out, giving her an overdose of opioids and abandoning her on the seat of a bus. The poor woman - semi-conscious, almost incoherent - won't make it to her destination alive.

The drama with this is that they have already crossed a line... and this is the point of no return. They are not the smartest criminals in the world and Martha's mercurial personality leads them to make one mistake after another, be it scenes of misplaced jealousy, mutual blackmail, overly affectionate reconciliations that end up being shocking to strangers who see them as brother and sister. Then murder becomes the norm, not as something planned, but because it is inevitable: it is the emergency solution for when Martha loses her temper, and the two of them improvise as they go along. Suddenly the two deranged individuals have found in homicide a common and even exciting link: when an old woman is hammered to death, Raymond is so excited and has so much adrenaline that he ends up having sex with Martha in the other room, a few meters away from the corpse that has not finished cooling down.

But much of this happens because the victims are not the picture of sanity either: they are a bunch of old, widowed or desperate women who have no qualms about opening the door to strangers and telling them all their secrets - even offering them money - in order to get a promise of marriage and alleviate their loneliness.

What follows is increasingly extreme. And things get totally out of control with the last victim, when Martha discovers that she is pregnant by Raymond. How is that possible, when he promised never to touch anyone but Martha? Of course it's possible: all these contrived romances take time to mature - weeks, months - with Raymond and Martha living with the victims while investigating their fortunes and personal assets. And since Raymond loves to feel desired by two women at once, he finds it impossible to refuse the lust of the flesh. All this leads to a frightening situation: once again Martha has appealed to the opioids, but the victim is still conscious... only she has become paralyzed. Her eyes look terrified as the brothers' facade crumbles in front of her and, the most shocking, they are discussing how they are going to kill her. And just at that moment the victim's daughter enters the bedroom: a girl barely 10 years old... Yes: The Honeymoon Killers are going to commit that taboo: the murder of a child. It doesn't matter if it's suggested - it's just noises and screams -, the shock is still monumental.

Not everything works in The Honeymoon Killers. Kastle doesn't always hit the right tone in the scenes. There are bursts of classical music (free because it is in the public domain) to break up the monotony of dialogue and silence, but it's not a soundtrack that complements the story and is distracting. The period setting is not consistent, especially with the cars they use and the shots on public roads. But when the action moves indoors, the tension becomes unbearable.

The grace of the film lies in the formidable performances of the central couple. Tony Lo Bianco is very good in the role of the Latin gigolo - in fact he will have a very good career in film and TV in the 70s and 80s, in mobster roles or as a guest actor - but it is the brutal intensity of Shirley Stoler that carries the film forward. It's a shame that Hollywood relegated her to filler roles - if The Honeymoon Killers had been shot today, there would already be producers and screenwriters writing her custom roles -. She had another chance to shine as the sadistic Nazi prison commandant in Lina Wertmüller's Seven Beauties (1975). But she would never again get a leading role. She would play very minor roles in film, television and even on Broadway, until her death in 1999 at the age of 69.

Not even Leonard Kastle would film again. First and only time as director and screenwriter, he would continue composing operas until his death in 2011.

And what happened to the real Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez?. Unlike the end of the film - which Stoler's character decides to self-report to the police, as she knows she will never have a future with Raymond and, as she says in one scene “I'd rather see you in prison than in the arms of another woman” - the couple decided to stay a few days in the victim's luxurious home, which caught the attention of the neighbors who in the end decided to file a complaint upon seeing these strangers and not the mother and daughter. Fernandez immediately confessed and both went to trial in 1949. Even with the distance, their relationship continued through ardent letters sent from one jail to the other. When they attended the trial, they smiled and kissed in public as if they were a loving couple. And Martha was more concerned about what the press said about their weight than about the murders they were accused of. Seventeen in all, although they could only prove the guilt of one - that of the last victim -. That was enough to send them to the electric chair, where they were executed on March 8, 1951.

The Honeymoon Killers is the best version - the most truthful, brutal and shocking - of the adventures of Beck & Fernandez. The story would be made into movies several times (Mexico's 1996 Deep Crimson; Lonely Hearts, USA, 2006; Alleluia, a 2014 French-Belgian co-production), but they would all make the same mistake, as a matter of stupid industry prejudice: Martha and Raymond would now be slim and beautiful as magazine cover models (Salma Hayek as Martha! Jared Leto as Raymond! ), which completely nullifies the shocking premise of the story: that two ordinary people, antithesis of the ideals of beauty, can have a relationship as passionate as it is sickening, and that these ordinary and harmless-looking individuals hide, under their pathetic facades, two bloodthirsty monsters capable of committing the most terrible crimes a human being could execute, all without the slightest remorse of conscience.

Other articles this month:

• From Superman to Diabolik: Europe Doesn't Believe in Superheroes (in Spanish, challenge: What would the story look like from the villain's point of view?)
• Clint Eastwood, archetype of modern anti-heroes (in Spanish, Challenge: The rise of antiheroes)
• “What kind of American are you?”, Civil War (2024) (in English; challenge: My 2024 WTF Cinema Moment).
• The Honeymoon Killers (1970): the original Folie à Deux (in English, challenge Outlaws Couples)
• Love Lies Bleeding (2024): Queer Noir (in English, challenge Fresh Focus Cinema)