Product Description

Italian horror master Mario Bava's most personal film. John Harrington and his wife Mildred run an exclusive Paris fashion salon devoted to wedding apparel for women. Unknown to all but himself, John has embarked on a spree of homicides, killing young brides on their wedding nights because, with each murder, his memory comes closer to revealing the traumatic event that branded him a dangerous psychotic. Fed up with his wife (who's no newlywed), John gets rid of her the only way he can--by presiding over her murder while wearing a wedding veil himself! But Mildred's ghost has no intention of letting him forget his vow: Till Death Do Us Part!

Production Info by Tim Lucas - Production Stills - Mario Bava Biographies - Director Filmography

1.66:1 - Color - English - Mono

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86323 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2000-06-06
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth) is a successful, handsome, somewhat vain young man who runs a fashion studio. He's also, unfortunately, quite insane. Driven by an overpowering Oedipus complex and the recurring image of his dead wife, Harrington has a compulsion to kill women after dressing them in bridal gowns. With each murder, the root cause of his psychosis is a little closer to being fully revealed, until a long-repressed memory finally comes clear. As with many movies of the giallo genre, Bava's film is somewhat short on plot and long on style. The director's questions about a shifting surface of reality come up again and again; Harrington's obsession with fashion and his own primping can be taken as metaphors for that issue. The narrative is reeled off in a somewhat offhand manner, though, and Harrington, though tragic, is not a character with whom the audience can sympathize. The film's long suit, however, is style, and Bava's trademarks are present throughout: red- and blue-lit sets, zoom shots, gauzy flashbacks, inventive camera work and compositions. Bear with the movie's story pretensions and sluggish pace, and you'll find a giallo that, while it doesn't rank with the best of Mario Bava, still has interesting points to recommend it. --Jerry Renshaw

Movie Credits
Dagmar Lassander Femi Benussi Jesus Puente Laura Betti Silvia Lienas Stephen Forsyth Director: Mario Bava

Customer Reviews

Middling Bava is still impressive
A unique blend of giallo and ghost story/tale of madness, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is quite an entertaining trifle. The plotting is careless, what with the police inspector showing up at just the right moment at least three times too many, but Mario Bava's many visual and editing flourishes are so clever they're downright witty. I particularly like the way the psycho, John Herrington, literally puts his wife at a distance by looking at her through the wrong end of his binoculars while she harangues him. Also wonderful is a transition where the camera pans across a line of mannequin heads that seem to float against the black background of a darkened room. The camera stops at the final head, which we realize with a start is Herrington, and we hear a woman's voice speaking. There's a momentary sense of dizzying disorientation before the camera suddenly continues its pan and we see the woman speaking and realize that we're in a different scene now. There's also a bit worthy of Hitchcock at his best involving a single drop of blood poised to drop from a dead woman's hand that threatens to expose Herrington while he's being questioned by the police. The picture and sound quality of the DVD is not in the same league as other movies in the Bava Collection such as Black Sunday or Black Sabbath, but it's safe to assume that Image did the best they could with the best source material they could find. Overall, perhaps not among Bava's very best films, but still more than worthwhile for those who appreciate imaginative, well-crafted filmmaking.

Great movie but very poor picture and terrible sound!
As always, my review is based on the QUALITY of the DVD.

I appreciate Image Entertainment giving us the opportunity to view "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" and another work of Mario Bava to observe. It is remarkable that we have this new entertainment medium and that we can enjoy these films from so long ago. But -- this DVD is the worst one that I own. The picture is lousy and the sound is awful. You get the 1.66:1 screen ratio, but that wouldn't be so bad if the picture was CLEAR. I'm not sure if this was released prematurely. Just take into consideration my review of picture + sound to make your decision if you really want to buy this. In addition, it comes in a snap-case although there are some notes within.

Volume is at an all-time low. I had to crank up my speaker and software volume to the maximum and still had trouble hearing the dialogue. You could not possibly eat potato chips and listen to this at the same time!

The movie itself is pretty good, perhaps worthy of three stars. Some good points: a nice, recurring love/fantasy theme music or melody. Perhaps the love theme is derived from the bridal costumes and weddings. Parts of the movie are quite haunting. There are no luscious beauties here at all found in other Bava films; the women are rather plain with the exception of what appears to be one beautiful, tall Black woman walking by (quick) and an extremely nice, long pair of legs close-up.

While the theme music is pleasant, there are nauseating guitar sequences during action shots. Horror buffs and people who crave gore will not find either in this movie. Own this only if you are serious about building a Mario Bava collection (I am).

probably the best this movie will ever look
Bava's intriguing and original twist on the Italian giallo (a genre he had pretty much invented with Evil Eye and Blood and Black Lace) with an empathic view towards the killer (who is never hidden like in other thrillers but revealled right at the start). However, this is not a harrowing portrait of perversity like Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer or even Psycho. Bava's colourful compositions and beautiful cinematography give the proceedings a decidedly playful appeal - and his surreal flashbacks whenever the killer strikes avoids the use of on-screen gore. His use of voice-overs in the opening is inspired, as our 'hero' ponders his madness, what drives him to kill, etc. All this is delivered with a suitible ironic european flavour that non-Bava fans may be rather baffled by.

It's a shame that 'Hatchet' didn't receive the sort of dvd treatment 'Black Sunday' or 'Lisa & the Devil' got from Image, but it's a solid addition to any collection of Bava's work or fans of early Italian horror. The image quality looks reasonable enough, but the sound quality is rather distracting, although perfectly audible. Of course there aren't any extras.