Deep Crimson: Director's Cut (Great Restorations)

Show & Culture

The life of a man who preys on unsuspecting women for a living is changed when he finds an accomplice in the woman who loves and controls him. "Deep Crimson, macabre and perverse, is based on a true story from the 1940s, about the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’ – a couple who posed as brother and sister, victimized lonely widows and then killed them. Their story was told in a 1970 American film, The Honeymoon Killers by Leonard Kastle, but now here is Arturo Ripstein with a Mexican version that combines black comedy with horrifying heartlessness." (Roger Ebert) "Ripstein loses Kastle's overt satire and shoestring aesthetic, but the satirical underpinnings remain. A former assistant to Luis Buñuel and an impressive stylist even when budgetary restrictions have clearly limited him to a handful of sets, Ripstein uses Cacho's seduction of a variety of women – from an aging alcoholic floozy to a widow made gullible by her piety – to cast a suspicious eye at several strata of Mexican society." (The A.V. Club)