Two filmic takes on the Lonely Hearts Killers
the true crime that's worth your time
[read both reviews right here with a paid sub, or click through to see SDB’s coverage]
There's something off-putting to me about the so-called Lonely Hearts killers case. Something beyond the facts, I mean; Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck lured their victims by means of lonely-hearts personal ads, put them at ease by pretending Beck was Fernandez's sister (albeit a much more romantically territorial sister than their marks might have expected), then murdered them (and their children, sometimes) after relieving them of savings and valuables, so: not cheery stuff. But the Zodiac case file isn't either, and I've historically felt less existentially grossed out by that case than by Fernandez and Beck.
Part of it is the inevitable focus, in any Lonely Hearts coverage or overview, on Beck's weight. "Morbidly obese" this, "grossly overweight" that…it's not the descriptors* themselves, it's that they so often seem substituted for actual analysis of the killers, singly or together. The unspoken "of course a fat girl would go along with Fernandez's con, because who else would want her," and the equally ugly reverse of that coin, "of course Fernandez only 'truly loved' Beck out of all the women in his life, because he could best leverage her specific neediness for his own ends" – it's as though that's the beginning and end of the story.
*and if you think that's bad, get a load of Gary Brumburgh's utterly pitiless IMDb bio of Shirley Stoler, who plays Beck in The Honeymoon Killers. The write-up laments Stoler's lack of leading-lady opportunities, but: dude, maybe she didn't get those parts because everyone was using phrases like "repulsive" and "pudding face"?
Granted, the story probably isn't terribly complicated; a folie à deux story usually isn't. A sociopathic love fraudster and a woman traumatized by abuse (as Beck alleged she'd suffered at the hands of her brother) found each other, and their good luck became everyone else's bad. Wasn't the first time, wouldn't be the last. Still, if you'll forgive the figure of speech, there's some meat on that bone besides shortcutty lookism**. Why did their cons work? Why do any love frauds work? How did they work differently/better in a pre-internet age, with different frowned-upons? What might it have said about law enforcement that such clumsy baddies did so much damage?
**like Beck running away from home as a teenager and taking…Truman Capote with her, a weird biographical sidebar I'd completely forgotten from Sarah Weinman's Atlantic piece from last year
1970's The Honeymoon Killers does worry loose a couple very interesting scraps – although that isn't what initially interested me. I found the film in the "crime" pulldown on the Turner Classic Movies app, started reading the notes, and discovered that it's apparently a cult classic, shot for peanuts, a favorite of Truffaut's, featuring a handful of shots composed by Martin Scorsese before he got fired for shooting too slow. I had a complicated knitting bind-off to do; The Honeymoon Killers seemed like the perfect companion to watch with 75 percent of my attention, since I already knew the ending.
Shirley Stoler is very good as Beck, suggesting (performing outright at times) an inchoate rageful struggle against the confinements of society's expectations for an unmarried woman who lives with her mother and isn't dress-pattern thin. The periodic remarks from other characters (including a neighbor friend played by Doris Roberts) about whether Beck "should" eat "those pretzels" or "really wants" dessert speak to my previous points about the reduction of Beck to this one aspect of her, and allude to the many ways in which the culture has always made similar remarks to women, about everything we do.
Tony Lo Bianco – who coincidentally passed away just last week at 87 – is also effective as Fernandez; the accent wanders around a bit, but that sort of makes sense for a not-quite-five-star-hot guy whose game relies on letting people hear what they need to. But mostly, it's the script, and the mother-of-invention modesty of the film's budget, that emphasize the frumpy and un-cinematic manner of these murders and so many others IRL. Janet Fay's demise is pitiable and squalid (and the culmination of a pitch-perfect portrayal from Mary Ann Higby of an old lady's combination of stubbornness and fluttery hesitancy) and takes for-goddamned-ever.
Ditto the last moments of Delphine (Kip McArdle), who has locked-in syndrome thanks to the pills Beck made her take. Both women feel real, people you'd know, impulsive or occasionally stingy or gossipy or anal-retentive. Maybe it's the budget, maybe it's that writer/director Leonard Kastle was primarily a composer and just had a slightly different "ear" for a true-crime story, but Honeymoon gets at something about monsters like Beck and Fernandez, that they're not in fact larger-than-life figures.
It makes a couple of bad decisions…
…but I recommend The Honeymoon Killers, and it occurred to me as I queued up Lonely Hearts to follow it that perhaps I should quit while I was ahead. Directed by Todd Robinson, Lonely Hearts is more faithful to time period in the production design (Honeymoon implies that it's taking place when the real murders did, but it's evidently the late '60s thanks to that teeny budget); more focused on law enforcement (Robinson's grandfather Elmer, played by John Travolta here, was the detective on the case); and not interested in tiptoeing around lookist land mines, instead casting Salma Hayek as Beck.
That last choice works. It frees the Beck "character" up to just be looking for her chance to break bad and then taking it, without having to wade into any commentary on unconscious bias. Travolta is less successful, which is frankly frustrating to me! His Robinson is paired with James Gandolfini's Charles Hilderbrandt, and on paper, this is a dream team – Tonys Manero and Soprano in a noir procedural based on a real case? Buntnip! What took so long!
In practice, the 'Fini is saddled with repetitive voice-overs even he can't get to move. Plus, putting his finely shaded version of midcentury masculine opacity next to Travolta's doesn't do Travolta any favors. I wanted Travolta to be easier in Lonely Hearts, to find a lane as a cop/PI, to use his charisma in the service of the character's bitter-chalk backstory instead of squelching it, and looking in more than one scene like he's swallowed a guppy. I see how it might have happened; Travolta The Icon has long since outpaced Travolta The Actor, so I wonder if actually directing the man is not something people have bothered trying to do after a certain point? Certainly Jared Leto as Fernandez got direction, because the Fernandez role looks like an all-you-can-chew scenery buffet for Leto's patented brand of Too Much, but he pitches it just right. Travolta is…Travolta in a wide necktie, and it's kind of a shame.
Lonely Hearts has a few nice moments: Laura Dern as Robinson's lady friend is great; it looks expensive, but doesn't fart around too much waiting for you to notice that; I wouldn't say I was "proud" of recognizing a handful of the credits' crime-scene photos from a book in inventory, but it was interesting. But I don't know that I recommend the film. If it were streaming anywhere for free, I might, and it should probably have a higher profile with these actors and performances, but it often feels mannered, in a way that suggests "stiff with apprehension about not doing a revered family member justice," versus noir stylization.
So you can skip it, and spend the time nicely asking the universe to get John Travolta a "one last cold case before I retire" gig in a prestige docudrama or limited series, helmed by a director who isn't afraid to break him down with two dozen takes until he does what he's capable of; I am not a crackpot.