Psycho Killer: Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon

            “A woman should live only until her wedding night. Love once, and then die!”

            These are the unhinged narrations of our killer as he carries the body of his latest victim to the incinerator. John Harrington is a handsome, charming young man, owner of a bridal parlor and fashion house, married to a wealthy (if shrewish) heiress, and just so happens to be completely out of his gourd. He has a repressed memory about the death of his mother that he desperately wants to unlock. Each time he kills, he remembers a little bit more…

            When Mario Bava made Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), he was in a sort of creative purgatory between two iconic phases in his career. From 1960 until about 1966, he had made for himself a reputation as Italy’s premier horror filmmaker, with a slew of hits that began with Black Sunday (1960), and ended with Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966). During that period, he also managed to single-handedly invent one of the most popular subgenres of Italian cinema, the giallo, with a cycle of three iconic works: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Blood and Black Lace (1964). It should also be noted that the first tale in Bava’s famous portmanteau Black Sabbath (1963) – titled “The Telephone” – can be considered a giallo blueprint, and may actually be the earliest example of the director playing with these themes.

            After Kill, Baby… Kill!, Bava didn’t touch horror for at least three years, and his star seemed to have ceased it’s rise in that regard. The popularity of the swingin’ 60’s fashion and James Bond capers forced him to hop on that quintessential Italian cash-in train, and he turned out two different secret agent romps – one fairly good, the other not so much. The not-so-much arrived first, in the form of Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). Obvious connections to Guy Hamilton’s Goldfinger (1964) notwithstanding, it’s just a bit too clear that Bava wasn’t exactly at home in the world of slapstick sendups. This isn’t to say that he wasn’t adept with humor, as Hatchet for the Honeymoon in particular features some very witty cutaways and wink-wink references. But the bluntness of Dr. Goldfoot strikes an odd chord when compared with the subtlety of the director’s superior works. The better of the two spy flicks was Danger: Diabolik (1968), regarding a master thief and his sensual sidekick pulling off daring heists! Ultimately, while both of these films are serviceable, neither quite rose to the heights of Bava’s previous films, and his next (the western spoof Roy Colt & Winchester Jack [1970]) is also often considered a low point.

            The next phase in Bava’s career would ultimately serve to enshrine his legacy as a visionary horror filmmaker and cement his influence on the future of the genre with films such as Baron Blood (1972), Lisa & the Devil (1973), and the infamous A Bay of Blood (1971). That second phase began upon his return to the giallo film with this unique twist on the genre he himself helped to create.

            Hatchet for the Honeymoon is admittedly a bit of an odd duck. It’s a giallo for certain, but it features a few elements that are decidedly at odds with the well-established format of what giallos should be. First and foremost, the audience is made aware of the killer’s identity right from the start. Not only that, but said killer is, in fact, our main protagonist, and we are treated to every thought in his head. Moreover, his motivations are suddenly and clearly laid out; leaving no room whatsoever for the classic “whodunit” aspect so integral to this genre.

            The very first scene shows John creeping down the corridors of a moving train, until he bursts in on a newlywed couple mid-coitus, and uses a cleaver to very quickly bring about the “til death do us part” section of their vows. In the very next scene, John (played by Stephen Forsyth) introduces himself, “My name is John Harrington, and I am a paranoiac.” From there, we follow him as he describes his need to uncover his memories, how he has murdered five women and buried three of them in his hothouse, and muses over the sentience of a housefly (or lack thereof).

            Film historian Tim Lucas (author of Mario Bava: All the Colours of the Dark) remarks in his commentary for the film that John Harrington’s character bears a striking resemblance to Christian Bale’s sociopath in American Psycho (2000). It’s an interesting observation, but there is one significant difference: Harrington is a bit more self-aware than Bale’s Patrick Bateman, going so far as to plainly state that he is, in fact, “quite mad”. Said self-awareness bleeds from the character into the rest of the film, as evidenced by several sight gags and editing jokes that pop up around every murder.

            After the killings on the train, John cleans the blood from his cleaver using the dearly departed bride’s wedding dress – a not-so-subtle jab at the loss of virginity – and then proceeds to leave a “do not disturb” sign hanging on the cabin door as he leaves. Elsewhere, after he cremates another victim in the hothouse furnace, the film cuts to John’s wife Mildred exclaiming, “Do you smell something burning?” before popping the lever on their toaster to reveal two blacked slices of what was once bread…

            That Hatchet for the Honeymoon is structured so differently from other contemporary giallos is perhaps it’s greatest strength. The same year as its release, another film came out that unleashed a wave of ‘yellow fever’ in the Italian film industry. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), directed by Dario Argento, set the standard for the next several years regarding how giallos were to be approached. The films hit cinemas within a few months of each other. Argento’s first screened in Milan at the end of February, while Hatchet gained wide Italian release on the 2^nd of June. It’s hard to say which of these pictures went into production before the other, but considering that Bava was a quick worker, comfortable with low budgets, and had already released one film earlier that year, it’s quite possible that Bird was completed first. Nevertheless, it’s difficult not to view Bava’s picture as thinking ahead of Argento’s debut masterpiece. While the rest of Italian thrillers were still obsessed with trench-coated killers in black gloves and whispered voices, Hatchet for the Honeymoon wanted to attack something deeper. After all, Mario Bava had already done that with Blood and Black Lace, and as his filmography bears out, he never really liked to make the same movie twice. Even when he adapted Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians into two different productions, the results were remarkably dissimilar. Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) is a largely bloodless affair, concerned more with atmosphere and psychological unease; while A Bay of Blood (1971) is so gory that it is often cited as the real granddaddy of slasher films, with at least one scene being directly lifted by Friday the 13^th part II (1981).

            As for Hatchet, while certainly not without the red stuff, it is comparatively tame. During the majority of the murders depicted, we don’t see every strike of the cleaver, but rather a little bit more of John’s suppressed memory. It’s a uniquely unsettling choice on Bava’s part. He forces us to be as interested in the new tidbits as our killer is, and thus we become at least somewhat complicit in his drive to hack virginal brides to pieces. That uneasy atmosphere is definitely at odds with the typical giallo picture, especially in the vein of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, where the audience is invited to help the hero solve the mystery, instead of helping the murderer understand his psychosis.

The very nature of this approach leads Bava to employ a style that is decidedly less “slick” than Argento’s film (and by extension, all the other famous imitators that came after). The gliding, uninterrupted, wide-angle tracking shots that define Bird, Deep Red (1975), The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971), and even Bava’s own Blood and Black Lace, are virtually ignored here, in favor tighter, more claustrophobic close-ups. And when the camera does pull back, rarely is there a shot that doesn’t have some sort of object in the immediate foreground. A quintessential example happens in the first half of the film, where we follow John into the attic of his mansion and are greeted by his own personal display of mannequins in wedding dresses. As the camera pulls away, we see him at the far end of the room, but our view is obstructed by a forest of lifeless figures, closing in like a mob of the living dead. As he staggers through the crowd, he arrives at the chest of drawers where he keeps his cleaver, and we see him at a cockeyed overhead angle, as though we were peering in through a crack in the low ceiling. The insistence at keeping us at such a closed-in vantage point mirrors the narrative perspective: we are stuck in our killer’s head both narratively and visually.

I have often cited Hatchet for the Honeymoon as being one of the few films I deem to be legitimately frightening. Others may no doubt disagree, as the metric of what one considers scary is just as subjective as what one finds funny. Still, in an age where fright flicks by and large try to generate their scares through loud noises and sudden jump cuts, Hatchet puts in the time and effort to get under the skin of its audience. The aspect of this film that gives me the chills is also perhaps the quintessential component that differentiates it the most from other standard giallos: it has a ghost.

In particular, it is the ghost of John’s wife, Mildred; played with scenery-chewing glee by the great Laura Betti. Betti had just won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her role in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968). Legend has it that, after her win, she immediately called Mario Bava, joking, “Maestro, now that I’m famous, when will we be working together?” Responding in kind, Bava supposedly rewrote the script for Hatchet specifically to give her a prominent part. It’s no surprise that she hand-and-foot steals every scene that she’s in, to the point that even a sideways glance can pull our attention away from the killer we’re supposed to be following.

Perhaps one of the very few predictable turns in the film is when John flips out and kills her. After all of her shrewish behavior – from making fun of his impotence to denying him even one night without her presence – we had to expect that was where things would lead. It’s certainly the most gruesome murder of the entire picture, with John chasing her down the hallway in a bridal veil and a deranged misapplication of lipstick. The unexpected comes after, when she starts appearing to others at random, and throwing John into a panic as he knows that he just buried her under the flowerbeds in his hothouse.

When she finally appears to him, simply to let him know that everyone will see her except him, it is by slowly walking up the stairs that she was murdered on as we watch through the frame of the bedroom doorway. It’s a supremely chilling image, and one that Guillermo del Toro almost certainly had in mind when we first see the ghost of Edith’s mother at the beginning of Crimson Peak (2015), standing at the end of the hall from her bedroom. When he’s finally caught at the end (not really a spoiler, all giallo killers are eventually nabbed), she returns to him in the opposite manner: only he will see her, for the rest of eternity.

No analysis of Hatchet for the Honeymoon would be complete without at least a passing mention of Dagmar Lassander. Lassander is possibly the only really normal part of this giallo, having been a staple in several others up to this point, most recognizably as the heroine in Luciano Ercoli’s freshman effort The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1969). She turns in an excellent, if rather usual, performance here as a potential love interest for John with some motivations of her own. She would also play a number of roles for Lucio Fulci, most notably in House by the Cemetery (1981), which places Hatchet for the Honeymoon as a curious point of intersection between these three greatest of Italian genre directors – Bava, Argento, and Fulci. Lassander worked for two of them, and Bava would end up contributing his special effects prowess to Argento’s Inferno (1980), on which his son, Lamberto Bava, also worked as a producer.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon is often cited as one of Mario Bava’s more middle-of-the-road works. Not as lauded as Black Sunday or Blood and Black Lace, but certainly better regarded than headscratchers like Four Times That Night (1971). I, for one, think it deserves a bit better. It’s a tightly directed thriller with no shortage of chills, and winking sense of humor that should appeal to those whose wit leans on the darker side. Highly recommended.