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.
