The Honeymoon Killers is a swift, sound, and dark cinematic exploration of the real Lonely Hearts Killers case. A crabbily depressed overweight nurse, Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler), is pressured into joining Aunt Carrie’s Friendship Club by her friend and mother’s nurse, Bunny (Doris Roberts). She quickly gets a letter from Raymond “Ray” Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco), instigating the two becoming pen pals, meeting, and starting a relationship. Ray reveals his plans with the club: he uses the letters with fake identities to trick wealthy lonely women around the U.S. into a quick marriage only to steal their money and ditch first thing. Desperate from the pressure of her loved ones and the need to be loved, Martha agrees to assist, and the two embark on increasingly risky ventures throughout.

Killers demonstrates the similarly killer anxieties that women have faced throughout the U.S. for centuries. While the need to love and be loved is universal, women have been unjustly raised to believe they’re only love-worthy when thin, pretty and husband-devoted. The nuclear family, at least in U.S. norms, is enshrined by the feminine role; a position that would mentally drown even the toughest souls. Martha’s actions throughout, thanks additionally to a borderline sociopathic take from Stoler, demonstrate tradition’s toxicity to the extreme. No matter how fatal Ray’s requests can be, she forces herself to adjust and adapt to keep being loved. Whether or not Ray truly loves her, Martha must fill her role because it’s what she’s been force fed — even as she literally attempts to drown upon seeing Ray with another of their victims. Especially given Killers’ release in 1970, this is a rare gem of cinematic symbolism.

Killers is also just a tightly scripted and enlivened thriller. The gradual chaos build from victim to victim is irresistible, as each crime becomes equally more personal and fatal, going from messy fraud to near-mass homicide. Ray and Martha’s chemistry is both electric and tense, creating a lasting dichotomy and leaving viewers second guessing Ray’s true feelings for Martha. Stoler is occasionally too stiff and more general backstory would’ve added more impact, but it’s still mysterious, intense, and painfully cathartic. Killers offers plenty of thrills and thoughts, so long as you have the stomach for some progressively dark deeds.

Screens on 35 mm Saturday, 7/6, 11:59 p.m. @ Coolidge
Part of the month-long repertory midnight series: Slaught(her)