Rating: 16/20
Plot: Raymond and Martha, a gigolo and a portly prostitute who met via an online dating service in the 1940s, team up for a series of con jobs that gradually become more violent. Raymond seduces lonely rich women and sweet-talks them into giving him money. Martha tags along as his "sister."
John Waters likes this movie a lot. I'm not sure if I would have thought the lead actress (Shirley Stoler) would have reminded me of Divine had I not known that before watching this. She does though, even her mannerisms and facial expressions. She's not a professional, and neither is Tony Lo Bianco who I almost would have guessed was one of Laverne and/or Shirley's friends a few years later. Their performances, combined with the low-budget feel and late-60's black 'n' white, give this a creepy realism somehow even though I could listen to arguments that it has the exact opposite effect. Both Lo Bianco and Stoler have these little nuances that just work somehow. I really liked them despite how awful their characters are. I think it's how they are played so casually, with a disturbing pinch of comedy. And I like how the characters are played. They're not romanticized at all, and really, with the amount of time we get to spend with the couple's victims, the emphasis is not even on them all the time. The clash with these naive women victims in their cheesy Americana homes and these cold-blooded criminals is jarring, mostly because of the way the characters are treated. It's cold, and it's dark. Very dark. You don't need to see what happens in the basement to put it all together and realize that. There are so many unnecessary scenes that add to the weird cadence of this thing--a new bride singing "America" in the bathtub, a chemical reaction in a hospital during the opening sequence, an attempted suicide by drowning. There's also some cool camera movements including the opening stuff in the hospital and a terrific series of shots in a hallway after the first marriage (while that gal is singing patriotically) that end with a shot of a transom with some copulating shadows. It was hard for me to believe or understand why this was director Leonard Kastle's only movie. He, by the way, took over for Scorsese who probably would have just messed the whole thing up. It's one of the more peculiar one-and-dones I've heard about though. After all, this was Francois Truffaut's favorite American movie. Doris Roberts is also in this for all you Everybody Loves Raymond fans. I don't think she's the character who says, "I'm not so sure Hitler wasn't right about you people," though. How's that for a line, by the way?
I would definitely recommend this to fans of cult movies, John Waters, movies based on true stories, or people who enjoy the television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
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