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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 8. 1971

Film

Film

Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler), a 2001b nurse from Alabama; a lonely and possessive woman who becomes a vicious killer in the low-budget, American film "The Honeymoon Killers", which was shown to the wrong audience one Sunday in a city cinema recently.

Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler), a 2001b nurse from Alabama; a lonely and possessive woman who becomes a vicious killer in the low-budget, American film "The Honeymoon Killers", which was shown to the wrong audience one Sunday in a city cinema recently.

Many paucitous imbeciles who rely on their own insufficient knowledge can be moronic as well when treating the cinema as one treats an event in real life, either by commenting on it as a matter of fact, or as one who is disgusted because the demands made on the intellect aren't very great.

A lot of self-abusive confessing is revealed, and one can imagine a Society for the inclusion of rehabilitating these poor sordidly unashamed creatures, whom Gulp! preserve us, have the nerveless energy to tackle anything no matter how demanding or sensitive, with their usual appalling lack of discretion. Present company excluded, it can make me extremely mad to have to devote a page on the latest films shown here, most of them sludge, and only at the end do I have some sort of vague recollections of actually seeing most of them, and only one, the American semi-documentary on two killers, makes any sense.

John Frankenheimer's latest, "I Walk the Line" (Columbia) is melodrama, moonshinery, Tennessee greenery and old folk nearin' death, Johnny Cash, Gregory Peck, Tuesday Weld, and says remarkably nothing, stays persistently empty, and ends so distrubingly like awakening from a peculiar dream. Flouderinga bit I've decided I can't say anything about it, though there was a huge article in the American Cinema tographer mag on the thousand and one uses of certain lenses that were used. They didn't mention that they were all X-ray.

I should remember the equally vacant "Hoa Binh" (Warners for some reason) if only for humanitarian reasons, but I do not subscribe to the Vietnam monthly posing as Life and my heart was not touched, even if Mr. Coutard had vacated his little spot. Somewhere there is a land where war has been raging for over thirty years, but our Peace friend doesn't seem any part of anything as fictionalised and revolting as this.

The culturally primitive Burtons did their Doktor Faust (consult the libretto of Busoni's opera for further clarification of the devilry) in caverns and sets, with filters and Nascimbene, which must have set many a little schoolgirl's heart in a flutter, with its wispy halucinogenic hogwashing. Miss Taylor also wore cobwebs. Phillip Saville's "Oedipus the King" suffered the same fate, though I only lasted 20 minutes (which is nearly 28,800 frames, Newtown power supply included).

As if this departure into the rubber territory wasn't enough, the lowest and most vile expression of "the angry world tapering to a slender noddle of bile" has been retched in the form of "Soldier Blue" (Avco Embassy/Fox-bless 'em); for me the most horrid piece of cinema I have ever encountere; and one that nearly caused me to vomit if I hadn't accepted its chic phoniness and lurid emotionalism, and to hurl abuse at its maker, Mr. Ralph Nelson, who I wish to Christ would stop making films. I refuse to go into this, except to say it panders to a large audience in its pseudo-horrible way who gulp it up with alarming relish, with its dialogue (Miss Bergen, atrocious actress that she is, blasphemes, defecates, continually), its repulsive message to i mankind about the massacre (and guess what else?) of which we see absolutely nothing as the censor has removed well over 200 feet, thank God.

To hear an obviously well-made audience appreciating the crap it engenders is a terrifying feeling, and I still don't know why I didn't walk out. To be witness to the terrible things it does to you, and the way you are trapped in its sensationalising is pretty strange. As yet this monster has had no release in Britain or Australia, and I can understand why. Take a look at the advertising after you've left the arena, then look at your friends and those whom you love: that you have been witness to the allusion of cinematic garbage should be reflected in your pale faces.

Floating back again to surface entertainment, is 'The Owl and the Pussycat", or rather Pig-male-he-in, or something. Doris & Felix like wee Rock and Doris (!) do naughties, say naughties (again we have the specimen of emininity in Miss Streisand as a Christing, Jesusing, Bullshitting, and at one point a so obviously "polite fucka off!") And apart from the hysterical and tiring level at which this movie moves, it is just as funny. Directed is not the word but it was aided into a visual corset by Mr. Herbert Ross, and Buck Henry (who don't impress me) scripted the thing.

Amalgamated have let loose with Leonard Kastle's 'The Honeymoon Killers" onto the Sunday cinema circuit, assisted by a not too bad Monte Hellman, "Beast From the Haunted Cave", and so attracted an audience that restlessly jeered and reacted like some boxing match hooligans unconditioned by the amount of violent emotionalism on display.

Made in 1969, under the title "Dear Martha", and based on facts occuring around Alabama in the early 50's, the Film in stark clinical monotone (photog: Oliver Woods) documentises the incredible relationship between a 2001b nurse, Martha Beck, and her lover Raymond, of Spanish origin, who inveigle and frighten four lonely women into monelry submissions, and then death.

Not since a personal favourite of mine, Aram Katcher's "Right Hand of the Devil", has the low-budget, no-name, American cinema been so frighteningly realistic, and making no conessions to its audience. It has attracted a cult-following in the States, I believe, and in the UK was ignored. But one has to be brave and accept all its strangeness, the unashamed use constantly of sections from Mahler's 5th, 6th and 9th symphonies (we can expect to bathe in it with Visconti's "Death In Venice"), and above all the monstrous woman, played with superb sly ambiguity, and unconcern of her dimensions, by Shirley Stoler. Her greasy, smooth, lover with an unfailing attraction for the little old women's bank accounts, and hair-piece for suitable occasions, is Tony Lo Bianco.

It is boxed in with its terror of rooms, and flats, highways, and a Tanglewood lake; the two killers progressing from one silly lady to the next; sensitive dumb old biddies cherishing lies and sweet nothing murmerings. Murdering one, in turns, with a hammer (has ever a murder seemed so laughably real?) silently in the dark, shooting one in the head, drowing a child in a tub, Martha and Raymond are two persons who are charged with magnificent coldbloodedness.

I should hale this little masterpiece to be ignored by the majority of serious filmgoers, and I hope one day it gets its just deserve by a season at the Lido. The censor has cut 190 feet from it, but doesn't detract from the overall claustrophobic mood.

Some ecstatic news is that, indeed, Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy For the Devil, will be tried before the Censor this week, and should commence its Wellington screenings at the Paramount, from May 7 onwards.

Watch notices around Varsity, and papers for details. If the Censor rejects it, we need some support, and quick! Mr. Lester's disturbing "Bed Sittingroom" will have to wait til next time.