Nightmare Honeymoon (1974)........barely qualifies as a movie. It's more of ragged piece of debris left over from the 5 year ruinous reign of MGM by former CBS Lizard-In-Chief James T. Aubrey.......
Not for nothin' was Aubrey dubbed 'The Smiling Cobra'......a reviled corporate buccaneer who spent a hateful lifetime running roughshod over TV and movie superstars, producers and directors.......
In the wake of his MGM turbulence, Aubrey's take-no-prisoners, slash-and burn leadership left behind a string of cheap, rotten, forgettable movies......all them ripped to shreds in the editing room by Aubrey..........(not to mention his vicious battles with directors Blake Edwards over "Wild Rovers" and Sam Peckinpah over "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid"....)
If nothing else, "Nightmare Honeymoon" serves as prime example of MGM's toxic Aubrey era.........
We wouldn't even try to guess how this movie started out or its original intentions.........all that 's left of it is an ugly, jumbled mess that emerged from the Aubrey meat grinder......
It kicks off as some sort of half-assed Tennessee Williams community theater production..........a big ole Southern Fried Weddin' between a pampered Belle (Rebecca Dianna Smith) and her studly beau (Dack Rambo), a Vietnam vet.......
The bride's Big Daddy (Pat Hingle) and the wedding guests seem bound and determined to torment the newlyweds with a marriage-destroying hazing........this bunch relentlessly pursues the couple like the super-posse in "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid"......
The plucky kids, however, escape into the Louisiana backwoods, where they promptly run afoul of two hit men (John Beck, Roy Jensen) The eye-bulging, drooling Beck, who carries on like a Grade Z refugee from an Ed Wood movie, knocks out Rambo and rapes Smith.......
Seeking revenge on behalf on his now traumatized bride, the couple manages to hunt down the hoodlums in New Orleans, leading to a tedious protracted showdown that takes almost half the film's brief running time.........
Slow, nasty and stupid, the film chooses to showcase its very worst element.........John Beck's embarrassingly awful work as the deranged killer-rapist.......(we'd guess that maybe James Aubrey looked at this trainwreck performance in the editing room and saw a complimentary mirror image of himself.....)
Like most of the bedraggled, damaged movies that hobbled out of Aubrey's MGM production slate, "Nightmare Honeymoon" was seen by few and enjoyed by none..........
But let's not forget to mention James Aubrey's one singular achievement ....(his one and only reason for his tenure at MGM).....amid all the wrecked films and cancelled prestige big-budget projects.....he left the studio functioning at a small profit.......but its golden,glory days were long gone, dust in the wind.......and all of its memorabilia sold off by Aubrey for quick cash.....
As for "Nightmare Honeymoon".......Zero Stars (0)......BQ recommends no RSVP for these nuptials.......presumably, the deceased Aubrey is keeping busy in Hell, overseeing production of more movies just like it......
Maybe Trump can watch them all when he gets there........
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