Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172128 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-04-16
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, 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.

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.

AGED AND FADED
"Hatchet for the Honeymoon" tells a story of a mentally-disturbed young man working in fashion business who's obsessed with mannequins in wedding dresses. He's a paranoid as he admits himself in the beginning of the movie and has rather strange relationship (so to say) with women in general and with his pissed-off wife.
Although we may call "Hatchet..." one of the first maniac movies because there were few pictures at that time to explore the mind of a serial killer, this film also tries to be what it's not. It tries to be a slasher, a detective-story, all-in-one. Hence it gets too puzzle-headed to my opinion.
I wouldn't call it a bad movie, it was rather fresh and innovative for its time but now it just looks a little faded. More to it Mario Bava had much better pictures - "Blood and Black Lace" for example. So if you're a big fan of Bava or giallo in general don't hesitate to buy it. If you're not, I'm afraid you will be a bit disappointed.