The World of Paranoiacs: Hatchet For The Honeymoon (1970)

Hatchet For The Honeymoon (Il rosso segno della follia) (Italy, 1970)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Stephen Forsyth, Dagmar Lassander and Laura Betti

My name is John Harrington. I'm 30 years old. I'm a paranoiac. Paranoiac. An enchanting word, so civilized, full of possibilities. The truth is, I am completely mad. The realization which annoys me at first, but is now amusing to me. Quite amusing. Nobody suspects I am a madman. A dangerous murderer. Not Mildred, my wife. Nor the employees of my fashion center. Nor of course my customers...

...Says a bridal-shop owner, who would later make the dire decision of killing his own wife, a stray away from his usual victims of bride-to-be. Apparently, John murders in order to usurps a childhood memory of yet another kill and his first uxoricide should have been nothing more than another stroll in the mad park for him. But, no soon after slaying his wife, John would not only start to see what seems to be her ghost, dressed in black gown and giving him the death stare, but when the rest of the world made it clear they can see his wife, it all leads to him question if he really murdered her that one night, or has he finally snapped himself lost in his own madness?

Thus the mystery of Hatchet begins and, well, it's frankly an underwhelming one; we know early on that John's crazy, thus strongly implying we can't completely trust his claims of being a vile murderer so the film, more or less, sets itself largely as a character study following a madman rotting lower and lower into paranoia and depression which has its downbeat yet impish moments. It implies here and there that a bigger picture is in play, but the end result is pretty as anti-climactic as its obvious reveal.

Production-wise, the movie looks fine and the acting here is decent, especially our lead Stephen Forsyth who plays his character with much sophistication and calmness until to his psycho persona spirals out of control in a manner predating that of American Psycho (2000)'s own titular madman's descent to dementia. The sets are beautiful and the wardrobe is fantastic, pretty much showing director Mario Bava's eye for set-pieces that flourishes with detail.

In terms of thrills and spills, Hatchet For The Honeymoon carries itself with a fine run of murder set-pieces including an early kill inside a train with our John, cleaver at hand, slowly sneaking behind a bride to be and her fiance' during their love making. This, of course, doesn't come anywhere close to the grand murder itself, which also acts as an example of Bava's approach on black comedy; after merciless hacking his wife upon a murderous epiphany, John finds himself so uncontrolled that he didn't have the time to clean up the mess when two police men arrive at his door, questioning him about the suspicious growing numbers of disappearing brides. Struggling to keep them from going further inside, the killer shop owner gets darkly hilarious close calls as the dripping blood of his late wife begins to blot a carpet inches away from a cop with thrillingly entertaining results.

The further the plot goes, the more it dips into Freudian surrealism, a factor that Hatchet for the Honeymoon uses to somewhat succeed in brooding some creepiness out of its themes of guilt and repression. Henceforth, while not one of Mario Bava's finer works, the film still sits well in its position as an eye-candy psycho-thriller with bits of proto-slasher goodness, delivering gruesome meat cleaver kills and uncomfortably sly humor. All in all, a twisted piece that one shouldn't miss.

Bodycount:

1 male and 1 female hacked to death with cleaver

1 female cleaver to the face

1 female hacked to death with cleaver

1 male hacked on the neck with cleaver (flashback)

1 female hacked on the neck with cleaver (flashback)

Total: 6