Film
The Honeymoon Killers
A grubby, black-and-white true-crime film about the real-life Lonely Hearts Killers, shot with almost no visual glamour and barely any music. Shirley Stoler's Martha is heavy, furious and desperately unlovable, which is the point — this isn't Bonnie and Clyde glamour, it's loneliness curdling into complicity. Slow, uncomfortable, and hard to shake.
If you liked this
Bonnie and Clyde1967
The other killer-couple touchstone, and the one this film seems to be arguing against — glossy, sexy, mythic where Honeymoon Killers is deliberately squalid. Watching them back to back is its own education.
But If you want grit and discomfort, its stylish romanticism might feel like the wrong medicine.

Monster2003
Charlize Theron's transformation into Aileen Wuornos shares Martha's unglamorous physicality and the same refusal to let a female killer be seductive or clean. Bleak, empathetic, unflinching.
But Emotionally punishing in a very different, more overtly tragic register than the flat affect of Honeymoon Killers.

Fargo1996
Coen-brothers bleakness with a similar interest in dumpy, unglamorous criminals doing terrible things in flat, unromantic settings. Dark comedy where Honeymoon Killers has none, but the moral chill is kin.
But The comic tone is a real shift — this is funnier and more forgiving than the film it's paired with.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Gun Crazy1950
This is the B-movie ancestor of the killer-couple film: same low budget, same moral bleakness, decades before Bonnie and Clyde glamorized it and Honeymoon Killers ungl amorized it right back.
A stripped-down noir about a besotted man and a trigger-happy woman on a robbery spree — shot cheap and fast, with the same unglamorous, matter-of-fact violence Kastle would later borrow.
But Studio-era restraint means less graphic detail and more suggestion — a quieter, more classical thriller.

More like this (8)
Natural Born Killers1994
The trashy, hyperkinetic opposite number — same lovers-who-kill-together premise cranked into satire and MTV chaos. Useful as a study in how differently this story can be told.
But Its manic style and media-satire target are about as far from Kastle's austerity as a film can get.

Sightseers2012no page yet
A British caravan holiday turns into a killing spree fuelled by petty resentment and codependent love — Martha and Ray's dynamic reimagined as pitch-black comedy.
But Broad, silly humor sits oddly next to the queasy realism of the original — comfort viewing, almost.
Badlands1973
Another spree-killing couple, but told through a teenage girl's dreamy, detached narration — the flatness of tone is a close cousin to Kastle's approach, minus the ugliness.
But Its lyrical, elliptical beauty is the opposite of Honeymoon Killers' deliberate homeliness.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile2019
Ted Bundy seen through the eyes of a woman who loved him and couldn't quite believe the truth — the same slow horror of loving a predator, played for tension rather than trash.
But Zac Efron's charisma makes Bundy magnetic in a way Kastle's film pointedly refuses to do for Ray.

Dirty John2018
A true-story con man seduces lonely women for money, told with soapy, page-turning momentum — the same predatory mechanics, dressed for a wider audience.
But Glossier and more melodramatic; it wants you gripped, not implicated.

The Act2019
A true-crime miniseries about a toxic, codependent mother-daughter relationship that curdles into murder — slow-burn psychological horror built from real desperation, not spectacle.
But Its focus on abuse and manipulation is a very different emotional key than Martha and Ray's grim double act.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst2015
Trades fiction for documentary, but asks the same question Honeymoon Killers asks about Ray: how does someone charm their way past every warning sign, right up until it's too late?
An HBO documentary series following real-estate heir Robert Durst, a charming, unsettling man suspected of multiple murders — investigative journalism that gets uncomfortably close to its subject.
But No fictional shaping, no catharsis — just a slow, procedural unease that some will find frustratingly unresolved.

Harold and Maude1971
Same year, same premise of two unlovable misfits finding desperate devotion in each other — this is what that need looks like when it isn't warped into violence.
A tender, funny, deeply odd love story between two social outcasts who find in each other the connection the rest of the world denies them — no murder, just loneliness answered.
But Whimsical and warm where Honeymoon Killers is airless and cruel; tonally it's almost a rebuke.

People
Cast
Shirley StolerMartha
- Mary Jane HigbyJanet
Doris RobertsBunny- Kip McArdleDelphine
Marilyn ChrisMyrtle
Dortha DuckworthMother
Barbara CasonEvelyn- Ann HarrisDoris
- Mary BreenRainelle
Elsa RavenMatron
Mary EngelLucy
Directing
- Leonard KastleDirector
- Diane AsselinScript Supervisor
Writing
- Leonard KastleScreenplay
Production
- Paul AsselinAssociate Producer
- Warren SteibelProducer
- John HaleyProduction Assistant
- Michael HaleyProduction Manager
Recommended by
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, True Romance, Fresh