just returned from Europe where I had been singing in cafes and had no job prospect." Stoler and Chris had worked together in stage productions at The Living Theatre in Manhattan, while Lo Bianco had performed on Broadway. Filming Principal photography of The Honeymoon Killers began in August 1969, and concluded in October. During production, it had the working title Dear Martha. The majority of the film was shot in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. Steibel initially hired Martin Scorsese to direct, but Scorsese was fired for working too slowly, but a few scenes that he had shot were included in the final film. Scorsese conceded that he had "been fired with pretty good reason... It was a 200-page script and I was shooting everything in master shots with no coverage." Budgetary constraints meant that the actors did their own hair and makeup, and special effects were not fancy. In the scene in which Martha bludgeons Janet Fay with a hammer, "condoms containing glycerine and red dye were affixed to the head of the victim with plaster of Paris. The hammer, a balsa-wood prop, had a pin at the end. When the pin pricked the condoms, the blood began to flow." Musical score The film's score features portions of the 6th and 5th Symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Scholar Martin Rubin asserts that the incorporation of Mahler's symphonies "catapults us outside the often unbearable events and at the same time plunges us inside the main characters' (especially Martha's) inflated and distorted interpretations of those events." Film historian Rob Craig notes that the dramatic score gives the film an "uncanny essence of a Greek tragedy." Style Scholars and critics have noted The Honeymoon Killers for its black-and-white photography and camerawork that evokes those of a documentary film. Critics also observed the film's streaks of realism at the time of its release. Film scholar Martin Rubin notes that The Honeymoon Killers "contains strong undercurrents of documentary realism, but it pushes them to the point where they erode the balance of realism and expressionism that provides a basic framework for the Hollywood style." Rubin likens the film to a "putrescent version of Norman Rockwell's America." While its unglamorous depiction of violence has been noted by critics, Rubin contests that the film is not "completely heartless" due to the "discomfiting vulnerability of the victims and the undiluted horror of their deaths." Craig, however, describes