Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie Review

Murderous mama's boy strikes again...and again.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater September 18, 2012

With 1963's The Girl Who Knew Too Much and 1965's Blood and Black Lace, Italian cinematographer-turned-director Mario Bava near- singlehandedly invented the giallo and its key, proto-slasher-film staples—the over-the-top grand guignol bloodletting, the uneasy tone of eroticized death, and the black-gloved killer wielding a gleaming and indisputably phallic blade. It's the most deliciously baroque of all the horror sub- genres, high on style and melodramatically intense. Through the 1970s and early '80s, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Umberto Lenzi would further the form with their own lurid b-movie masterpieces of terror, but Bava will always be considered the granddaddy of the genre.

He had his share of both hits and misses, and 1970's Hatchet for the Honeymoon falls somewhere in between. Unlike the later fan-favorite Twitch of Death Nerve, Hatchet isn't nearly as violent as its slice'em, dice'em title would suggest—the original Italian title, Il rosso segno della follia, translates more appropriately to The Red Sign of Madness—but its weird-if-overdone Freudian psychological flavor, creepy imagery, and urbane soundtrack make it a decent addition to the giallo canon.

John clearly has some issues to work out.

The film has a classic giallo cold open hook. A man in black emerges from his train compartment—we get a tense first-person view as he stares down the corridor—and sneaks into the room of a newlywed couple trapped in a naked embrace. The man raises an enormous meat cleaver and the film cuts to a surreal, almost dreamy kill sequence—out of focus, shot through glass and water—that isn't explicit at all but still disturbs. When the deed is done, the man wipes the blood off his flesh-penetrating blade using the now-dead bride's wedding veil, an image that carries the perverse connotation of a virgin deflowered by death.

There's no whodunnit mystery here. Our man in black is immediately revealed as the dapper John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth), a mutton-chopped clotheshorse who describes himself as a paranoiac. "An enchanting word, so civilized and full of possibilities" he muses in voiceover narration while shaving in the mirror. "The fact is that I'm completely mad...no one suspects I am a madman, a dangerous murderer." John is a sociopath of the Ted Bundy variety—intelligent, charming and charismatic, a deadly ladies' man with an ax to grind against the fairer sex. And he has plenty of opportunity to grind that ax—or, in his case, a kitchen cleaver he strokes and polishes suggestively—since he runs a fashion house that specializes in wedding dresses and honeymoon lingerie. His mansion is overrun with trim models in white bridal garb—who often leave the fashion trade to get hitched—and we learn that several of them have gone missing over the last few months. "A woman should only live only until her wedding night," is his credo. "Love once and then die!" Police Inspector Russell (Jesús Puente) suspects John, but the careful killer has left no evidence behind. His preferred method of body disposal is to cremate the remains and use the resultant ashes as a "special kind of fertilizer" for his hothouse garden.

The film is essentially a why-dunnit, gradually unraveling the knots of John's tangled psyche. Like most serial killers, he has mommy issues—including a sizable Oedipal complex—and in this case they stem from witnessing his dearly beloved mother's murder as a child. He can't recall who hacked his mom to death, but every time John himself dices up an innocent young women, another gap is filled in his memory and he gets ever closer to solving this prime riddle of his life. "I must continue killing until I find out the whole truth," he says. It's all bunk, psychologically speaking—and I'll give you one guess who mommy's killer actually was—but it provides a mostly satisfying framework for the film. Plotting and complex character motivations were never Bava's strong point, although—to be fair—the film was written not by Bava but Santiago Montaga, the prolific Spanish author and screenwriter.

What's unusual about Hatchet for the Honeymoon is that it's not just a serial killer flick; there's also a bizarro ghost story element as well. John's shrew of a wife, Mildred (Laura Betti)—who insinuates that he's impotent—runs the business side of the fashion line and refuses to grant her husband a divorce, though they actively hate one another. "We will stay married until death do us part," she says, unaware of the foreshadowing in her declaration. Of course, John finally has enough of her and snaps—he chases her around insanely, wearing lipstick and a wedding veil—and she too ends up as ashes, which he carries around in a leather duffel bag. Mildred comes back as a specter that everyone but John can see—and then as a spirit that only he can see—an absurd turn of events unless we consider that the revenant Mildred is just a figment of John's unloosed imagination. (Possible, but the fact that other people can see her make this theory unlikely.) More interesting is the sub-plot involving Helen—played by Italo-horror scream queen Dagmar Lassander—a gold-digging model who wants into John's pants, or at least his pockets, and doesn't realize she's gambling with her life.

Not as violent or as poetically atmospheric as some of Bava's other films, Hatchet is often somewhat unfairly overlooked. There are some problems with the narrative—which is definitely half-baked, over-explanatory, and Freudian in a rather simplistic way—but if you can get beyond the cliches, the movie has a charmingly hammy early-1970s swagger, set to a swinging soundtrack with, in one particular scene, a distinct yé-yé/go-go vibe. And the film does have its moments of skin-crawling creepiness, particularly anytime we enter the grand hall where John keeps a collection of pale, wedding dress-wearing mannequins with whom he occasionally makes out. There's some Norman Bates here in some of John's effeminate, momma's boyish qualities, but the character is more of a less-deranged prototype for American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, an ego-maniacal materialist with an unstoppable instinct to kill.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

With Black Sunday—also released this week—and Hatchet for the Honeymoon, we get to see the two sides of Mario Bava's cinematographic style. The former, shot in stark black and white, is gloomy and gothic and oppressive, while the later is luridly colorful, especially with that characteristic Crayola-red 1970s fake blood hue. Though it hasn't been given a comprehensive, frame-by-frame restoration—let's face it, no one's gonna pony up the cash to give that treatment to a second-tier giallo—Hatchet makes good on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's true to its slightly beat up source, but still an obvious upgrade over previous home video editions. The print Kino has worked from has its share of minor age-related damage—white and black specks, small scratches, hairs stuck at the edge of the frame—but nothing out of the ordinary for a film from this genre and of this time period. More importantly, Kino hasn't touched the image with DNR, edge enhancement, or other unnecessary filtering. It looks like the print was run through the telecine machine, given some light color corrections, and immediately ported over to Blu-ray. No compression issues either. Color seems accurate and adequately dense, and though the film will never be sharp sharp, clarity gets a significant boost here, with more visible detail and fine texture where you expect to see it.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's one thing for the picture quality to be true to a slightly beat-up source, but I have a much lower tolerance for crackly, damaged audio. Unfortunately, Hatchet for the Honeymoon's uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 track has splice pops, crackles, and low hisses galore, with a high end that sometimes clips and muddles the peaks of the score. It's not unlistenable, but you'll definitely notice. There's probably not much that could've been done, honestly. On the plus side, the dubbed English dialogue is, if not always perfectly clean, at least understandable. I do love the music in the film; the score is ominous when required—hear those shrieking electric guitar stabs!—and the yé-yé-style dance song that plays when John goes to the nightclub is ace. Do note that there are no subtitles for those who might need or want them.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, offers up another fantastic commentary track, filled with insight about the film's production and the director's personal life.
• Trailers: Includes high definition trailers for Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Black Sunday, Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil, and The House of Exorcism.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It might not be Mario Bava's best film, but it's certainly not the worst, and damn if Hatchet for the Honeymoon isn't a killer title for a giallo. If you're new to the Italian director and his brand of lurid, knife-flashing horror, you'd probably best be served checking out a few of his more well- known films first. Longtime giallo fans, however, will certainly want to add Hatchet for the Honeymoon to their collections, especially considering how few films from the genre have come to Blu-ray thus far. Thankfully, Kino seems intent on remedying this. Their new high definition transfer of Hatchet is a solid upgrade from previous DVD additions, and the film's extremely informative audio track from Tim Lucas is a must-listen.