Bloody Mexican “cult film” to be shown uncut

It will be shown this Friday in the Lugones Room of the San Martín Theater the complete, uncensored version of a film as captivating as it is terrifying, “Profundo crimson”, by Arturo RipsteinMexican variant of the American one “The Honeymoon Killers”which was also strong, although not as strong as the true story it is based on.

It’s about two lovers, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, convicted for the death of two women and a baby girl, which is just a part of their crimes. According to the chronicles, between 1947 and 1949 they killed about twenty, mostly widows or spinsters with money. Fernandez He seduced them and together they murdered them. He was born in Hawaii, the son of Spanish immigrants who returned to their homeland. For a while he followed them, had a wife and four children in Spain, and then abandoned them. Back in the US, he made a career as a swindler of lonely women.

One of them was Martha Seabrooknurse, pretended widow of a soldier killed in the war, single mother, then married to a driver who gave her the surname Beck and another pregnancy. They got married in a hurry and six months later they divorced, when the man verified that the child was not his. Shortly after Martha met Fernandezwho swindled her like all the others, but there was something unusual: she fell so in love with him that she abandoned her two children and formed a couple for love and crime. What can be called a real ““crazy love”.

It would be very unpleasant to tell here what their methods were, and what they did with their victims. Only that on March 8, 1951 Both ended up in the electric chair at the Sing Sing prison., making mutual declarations of eternal love. He was 36 years old, she was 30, and a little overweight. To execute her, a larger chair had to be installed.

At the cinema

In 1970 Leonard Kastle made “The Honeymoon Killers” (original title, “The Honeymoon Killers”), his only film, with such success and praise that he never dared to make another one. protagonists, Tony LoBiancoa qualified supporting actor who died days ago, and Shirley Stoler (photo 2))who established herself definitively in 1975 as the imposing head of a prison camp before whom she humiliated herself Giancarlo Giannini in the memorable grotesque of Lina Wertmuller “Pasqualino Seven Beauties”.

“The Honeymoon Killers” It has remained a milestone in authentic American independent cinema. In 2006 there was another version, more to Hollywood’s taste, “Lonely Hearts”with Jared Letoalthough it has very little of seduction, and Salma Hayekwho is not overweight at all. In this film, parallel to the story of the murderous couple ran the story of the police investigation, with John Travolta and James Gandolfini (“The Sopranos”) to the head.

The director, Todd Robinsonhad a reason for incorporating this parallel story: his grandfather Elmerembodied by Travoltawas the policeman who found the criminals and sent them to prison. Apart from that (and the fleeting appearance of Ellen and Sam Travoltabrothers of the actor) the film does not go beyond the correct level.

In between, there is the not at all correct and more intense Mexican free version “Deep Crimson”1996, from the master of unpleasant passions Arturo RipsteinIn it, the characters are called Nicolás Estrella and Coral Fabreand are interpreted by Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Zama”) and Regina Orozcowhich I had just done “Rebellious women”. As the biggest victim, the Spanish Marisa Paredes.

Impressive, the character of a jealous and obsessive ugly girl that she plays Regina Orozco for “Deep Crimson”. With it he won all the awards, and the film spent its twenties, with peaks in Venice (Best Screenplay, Music and Production Design) and Havana (Best Film, Director and Music, composed by David Mansfield).

curiouslyRipstein was not satisfied. For its international sale, the French co-producer Martin Karmitz He had cut 15 minutes from it, particularly those that he said were too shocking from a moral point of view. Karmitz produced 14 films Claude Chabrolall full of morbid but elegant, and many of the so-called auteur cinema (Resnais, Kieslowski, Bellocchio, the Taviani brothers, Loach, even “The Fish Boy” by Lucía Puenzo) and knew how to place those works in halls and festivals. Now you might think that all those awards were for the cut Karmitz of “Deep Crimson”.

But Ripstein He kept the negatives of his work and presented it in its complete version at the last Venice Film Festival. New viewers and devotees of the “director’s cut” applauded it. Others considered the addition unnecessary. It will be shown tomorrow, in a single showing, as part of a cycle of early works by Ripstein.