Red Wedding Night

I say strange because I'm not quite sure what exactly "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" was supposed to be (but enjoyed it nonetheless). It features many of the traditional giallo elements - a black-clad killer, lots of beautiful young women who may as well have "Murder Victim" tattooed on their foreheads, incompetent detectives, childhood psychological trauma, spooky childhood toys... Yet it also diverges from the giallo blueprint in some ways by incorporating an odd, Twilight Zone-style supernatural element into the plot, and also a wry commentary on bourgeois married life. There are clear elements of both Psycho and Peeping Tom in the story, and it also predates both the 1980 slasher film He Knows You're Alone, and the Bret Easton Ellis book (and later film) American Psycho.

As usual with Mario Bava, the cinematography, production design and lighting are all beautiful to look at, and there are two great suspense set-pieces: the scene where the killer waltzes with his next victim to the eerie tune of a music box in a shadowy, elegant store-room full of creepy plastic mannequins in wedding dresses; and the scene where he talks to the suspicious cop while his dead wife's arm is hanging from the staircase and dripping blood onto the carpet.

It's also a surprisingly funny film in many ways. Special mention must go to Laura Betti's hilarious performance as Mildred, the evil wife from hell.

All in all, "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" is an intriguing and often underrated addition to Mario Bava's formidable canon. Stylish, entertaining and darkly funny.

A note: Was this movie ever called in English HATCHET FOR A HONEYMOON, rather than the awkward HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON? I seem to recall this from a Leonard Maltin book circa 1978. Or am I as cracked as Bava's protagonist?

For my money, this is primo vintage Bava--which is to say Dario Argento in top hat and tails, Jess Franco with a finishing-school diploma, or, to look at the glass as half empty, Richard Lester after three hits of dirty windowpane acid.

To top this voiceover narration, you'd have to go either to BARRY LYNDON or, on the other hand, MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE: "My name is John Harrington. I'm thirty years old. I am a paranoiac. Paranoiac! What a marvellous world. So delicate. And full of possibilities. The fact is, I'm completely mad." And so is Bava's odyssey through the crazy-straw-shaped brain of J. Harrington, Esq., a hunky sociopath whose sexual fires are only stoked by burying a hatchet in the flesh of virginal-looking brides in their white-veiled drag--and, when they have the ill fortune to be there, their bridegrooms.

The hyper-lusciosity of Bava's style suggests a Bertolucci blissfully unconcerned with agrarian collectivism. Mate that rococo with Nicolas Roeg's brand of kaleidoscopus maximus and you have an inkling of what Signior Mario is up to. Note to Greil Marcus: as a sequel to "Lipstick Traces," how about a book tracing the parallel histories of canonical surrealism (Bunuel-Dali-Aragon-Bataille) and Italian horror of the seventies?

1969's "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" remains under the radar in regard to the work of Italian director Mario Bava, familiar Hitchcock plot devices utilized quite differently and accompanied by a deceptively lush, romantic score. Not an obvious rip like "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" but a more subtle, first person take on "Psycho" scripted by Santiago Moncada ("Bell from Hell"), kicking off with the revelation that Stephen Forsyth's John Harrington is an admitted paranoiac going about the business of murdering newlywed brides by a compulsion to decipher a mystery from his childhood. His wife Mildred (Laura Betti) berates him for failing to live up to his duties as a husband, unable to make love to her on their wedding night because of 'those footsteps,' and using her wealth to rebuild the fashion business he inherited from his late mother (shades of "Blood and Black Lace"). With his handsome looks and muscular physique women are attracted to Harrington, outwardly charming yet still very much a child in his mind, carefully preserving his boyhood playroom for occasional visits. He also frequents a secret room inhabited by mannikins clad in all kinds of wedding gowns, where he produces the cleaver needed to commit each murder, another victim to inch closer to a terrible secret that he cannot remember. When Mildred goes too far with her insults and patent refusal to allow for a divorce, he does what any self respecting maniac would do, puts on a wedding veil himself to claim her as another piece to the puzzle, just as the nosy police inspector (Jesus Puente) arrives moments too late to catch his slippery quarry in the act. This doesn't free our hero from persecution, for his wife was a practitioner of spiritism and the occult, proceeding to haunt him by appearing at his side for all to see, all eyes but his, in a twist that finally pushes him over the edge for one last killing to end his trauma. Stephen Forsyth was a Canadian actor whose on screen career ended with this role, not an easy one to play or to earn any measure of sympathy, but we are allowed access to the character's thoughts (and shown the killer's perspective through his eyes), telling the tale in his own way and coolly disregarding his persistent enemies. For once credited as his own cinematographer, Bava delivers a rich tapestry of beauty underlying the depraved actions of a psychopath, covering his tracks almost too easily even as the blood dripping corpse of his hacked wife (with cleaver still embedded in her back) can be seen reflected on a tabletop right in front of the frustrated inspector. In this sequence, Harrington is shown watching a horror film on television, in fact Bava's own "Black Sabbath," as Boris Karloff advances on a screaming young woman, a self reflective yet heartfelt tribute following the actor's recent death in February 1969. Shooting in Barcelona commenced in Sept. 1968, budgetary problems preventing completion for nearly an entire year, still a relaxing period for the director who proclaimed this his favorite non-Karloff film.

Interesting, complex look at a man who must kill young brides in order to unlock the secret of who killed his own mother. With each hacked bride, the main character of Harrington sees more and more of his terrible childhood memory when he saw his own mother axed. The acting in this film is nothing terribly special, nor is the story, but Bava'a direction is a visual treasure to behold. As always, he makes the most he can with the camera lens. Some of the shots are inspiring as Bava directs our attention through small orifices sometimes like a small window. His use of a room with mannequins is very effective too. Bava even has fun with his little joke of having Harrington watching Bava's own Black Sabbath on television when having just killed his wife he is visited by the police. Style and visual artistry ripen all around only to be harvested by Bava's gluttonous camera lens. The plot, although missing huge pieces of coherence and logic, is fairly well-crafted. The acting is adequate. I particularly liked the actress that played Harrington's vitriolic wife and the character of the police inspector.The sense of the sixties and fanciful colours pervade almost every scene, and the soundtrack is very suitable to this material. For some horror fans, the film may seem somewhat slow, but it kept my interest throughout.

John Harrington runs a model agency specialising in bride gowns. He likes model railways and occasionally dressing up as a bride. The latter means he's in killer mode doing what he must do or, as he puts it, 'continue to wield the cleaver' until his 'issues' are resolved. The title suggests a similarity to Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers but in reality the films are far apart. Kastle's film is gritty, almost documentary-like and contains the massive presence of Shirley Stoler, while Bava opts for a style flamboyant even by giallo standards and has a handsome cast to match.

The spirit of Psycho looms large, though Bava's lightness of touch offsets the potentially gruesome subject matter - there's a very funny scene in a kitsch disco (with terrific music) where the cleaver wielder is thrown out for suggesting a threesome involving one of the dancers and his dead wife. It's true to say that it's style over substance, but that's the point