Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)

Best movie of this year hands down!

How sad is this?

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Stephen Forstyh plays John Harrington (and he looks a LOT like the French actor Alain Delon). John is a real screwball. He's married to a woman who hates him and vice-versa but she won't divorce him. Obviously he holds A LOT of hostility towards her and their marriage, as for kicks he dresses up women in wedding gowns (and, later in the film he himself wears a cute bridal outfit) and hacks them to pieces. All the while, he talks to the audience and admits that he's crazy and is having a dandy time.I am sure since this is a Mario Bava film that it's SUPPOSED to be a horror film, but I swear it felt like a comedy. This is because the dialog is so laughably bad it seemed as if they must be trying to make us laugh. Now this might not be completely the fault of the writers or Bava. Since the movie is dubbed into English, perhaps the translation is horrible because the dialog sounds so ridiculous throughout the film. Or, perhaps the movie just sucks. All I know for sure is that it sure takes him a long time to start the killings and the film had some horrible music. In fact, I think the music actually was pushing John to kill--I know it almost did that for me!! It's a shame, actually, as some of the ideas in the film (especially John's hallucinations late in the film) were quite good and this should have been a very scary and tense film.My advice is to see the film. The die-hard Mario Bava fans love everything he does, so they'll be happy. As for the rest of us, we could all use a good laugh--and this one's full of them.

Master Italian filmmaker Mario Bava once again directs with plenty of style, giving spice to an amusing plot that prefigures the slasher film "He Knows You're Alone" by a decade.The handsome Stephen Forsyth stars as John Harrington, the owner of a bridal shop. He's gone mad, yet still has the ability to reflect on his condition. He's married to a witchy woman, Mildred (Laura Betti) who refuses to divorce him, and is a haunted individual, living with a long ago trauma and witness to visions of himself as a child. This trauma now spurs him to murder his own models whenever they plan on getting married.As we can see, this story isn't a matter of whodunit. We're with our killer every step of the way, aren't entirely unsympathetic to his condition, and wait to see how soon the cops will catch up to him. In the meantime, Bava does amazing things with colour and atmosphere, crafting a powerful visualization of his protagonists' deteriorating mind.It takes until the second half for the movie to really kick into gear. Until then, it goes easy on the horror, with the murders parcelled out carefully and Bava making sure to cut away before things get very graphic. The second half gets effectively eerie, with the hallucinatory imagery really taking over as Johns' conscience starts to eat away at him. One wonderful sequence has the investigating detective (Jesus Puente) dropping in on John and interrogating him while the body of his most recent victim is still quite warm! (Bava fans will delight in seeing his earlier horror anthology "Black Sabbath" playing on TV during this sequence.) The music score by Sante Maria Romitelli is beautiful and haunting much of the time, yet gets appropriately discordant at certain points.A capable cast makes the most of the material, no matter how poorly they may be dubbed. Forsyth is believable at all times, Dagmar Lassander is appealing as the newest model to be hired by the shop, Betti is a hoot as the icy wife, and Femi Benussi is easy to watch as one of the unfortunate murder victims. Fans of European genre films will also recognize Luciano Pigozzi and Gerard Tichy among the supporting players.This isn't one of Bava's very best works (his period in the 1960s is when he really shone), but it's still pretty good of its type and deserves some respect and attention. If you're fan of Italian horror, it's well worth a look.Seven out of 10.

It seems that the 70's is a rather under-appreciated decade for Mario Bava, as it is usually overshadowed by his 60's cannon, with films such as "Black Sunday" or "Black Sabbath". Still, his 1974 film "Lisa and the Devil" is what I consider his masterpiece; 1972's "Baron Blood" is a great old-fashioned Gothic classic; 1971's "Twitch of the Death Nerve" is mindless gory fun; "Shock" is a simple-yet-effective ghost story; and last but not least, there is "Hatchet for a Hooneymoon". Usually depicted as one of Bava's weaker efforts, "Hatchet..." is as influential as "Kill Baby Kill" or "Twitch...", as seen in such critically-acclaimed works as "American Psycho" or "Santa Sangre". Here, we have Bava's ever-present visual flair, combined with a fresh Scroogesque twist on the typical giallo formula. The script is intelligent and gripping, filled with some interesting Freudian motifs represented mostly through the protagonist's doppelganger, as well as including some well-developed and complex characters that you really care for. The charismatic Stephen Forsyth is perfectly cast as the protagonist, and is as seductively creepy as he needs to be. Laura Betti is also terrific as his cold, manipulative wife. Interestingly, Bava seems to play homage to the other great Italian director - Federico Fellini, as he does his own 'La Dolce Vita'-type satire of the plastic Italian high-society in this film. The film also has some of the most beautiful and lyrical scenes of Bava's entire career, both visually and in substance, such as John's 'danse macabre' in the room full of mannequins. These moments blend magnificently with Sante Maria Romitelli's bittersweet score, which captures the film's melancholic tone and perverse humor. The one thing that may put some viewers away is the lack of violence which doesn't really hurt the whole thing, but doesn't add anything to it either. Overall, a mesmerizing combination of ghost story with gialli, that is definitely not to be missed by any fans of the Maestro or Italian horror cinema in general.

John (Stephen Forsyth) is trapped in a marriage he cannot escape because his wife (Laura Betti) controls the money. he has a secret that no one suspects - he is a serial killer.He kills women on their honeymoon and some that are leaving him to get married. He is trying to finds some answers. he is completely crazy, of course.Inspector Russell (Jesús Puente), who seems to be channeling Columbo, is trying to find out what happened to several women who are missing. He shows just as John has killed his wife, who continues to haunt him even after she is buried.He eventually discovers the secret he has repressed in this suspenseful film that forgoes nudity and gore for suspenseful terror and madness.