In that one (check your video store), an obese nurse joins up with a smooth little gigolo in a scheme whereby he marries hapless old ladies, then murders them for their money. The killings are shockingly nasty, but The Honeymoon Killers gets its undeniable power from the very odd protagonists' intoxicating l'amour fou.

Deep Crimson is The Honeymoon Killers transplanted to 1940s Mexico and moved from black-and-white to color, perhaps the better to display the blood. Raymond has become the migraine-tormented Nicolas (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who carefully pastes down his hairpiece before courting lonely widows. His soupy claim is to be from Spain, Don Quixote-in-exile seeking his Dulcinea.

Martha is Coral (Regina Orozco), an unhappy nurse whose helper duties include serving at the morgue, which is why she reeks of formaldehyde. She dreams of romance with suave movie star Charles Boyer. But the only movie personage she resembles is Petunia Pig. The old cliché about hugely stout people applies: she does have pretty features, but they're all above the neck.

It takes a while, but Nicolas and Coral connect. That's after he robs her and she doesn't mind, and after she thrusts her children into an orphanage so she can be only his. When his wig flies away, she weaves him another, out of her own hair. That's love!

But what cements their passion is, of course, the murders, and there are four of them, increasingly gorier. "Why did we do it?" she asks, in a rare moment of self-doubt. "We're accomplices," he says. "Eternal accomplices." "Yes," she agrees, a haunted Medea, "united in blood and death."

I appreciate Arturo Ripstein's directorial skill (he's Mexico's best), the way he plays with the tensions of three in the frame: Nicolas, and whatever woman he's courting, and the jealously homicidal Coral, as she pretends to be Nicolas's sister. As conceived by Orozco, who is also a Mexican opera singer, Coral is both terrifying and pitiable. But how about those killings?