Film of the Day – Hatchet for the Honeymoon (Mario Bava, 1970)
Back when Days Are Numbers ran its giallo special, we rightfully acknowledged the great Mario Bava as the indisputable godfather of the Italian slasher-cum-murder mystery. Perhaps less correctly, however, we listed the horror/sci-fi/fantasy/sex comedy maestro’s contributions to the genre as numbering four; The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Blood and Black Lace, 5 Dolls for an August Moon, and Bloodbath. You see, even if only at a push, we could have had five Bava directed giallos on there, but at the time I had yet to see his 1970 effort Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Now that I have seen it, I’m still not really sure if it can be considered a fully-fledged giallo, but I am definitely 100% sure of its madcap and perverse brilliance. Therefore, it’s more than worthy of a full investigation as today’s Film of the Day.
Despite being a long-standing and committed fan of Mario Bava’s, I was never apparently in that much of a rush to get round to seeing Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Through what little I knew about the film, I had developed the vague idea that it was something of a light-hearted stopgap in Bava’s lengthy and varied body of work; possibly very entertaining, but probably best kept for a desperate, dreary afternoon (I had a similar lazy apprehension about Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite for a while, too). Luckily for me, a friend of mine got hold of a copy fairly recently, and enthusiastically lent it to me, heralding it’s deranged, engaging genius and smartly noting it’s occasionally striking resemblance to Dario Argento’s later Profondo Rosso. Much has been made of Bava’s enduring influence on the younger, more renowned director, but Argento seems to have been particularly taken with Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Profondo Rosso, Asia’s dad’s definitive masterpiece, owes much both thematically and stylistically to Bava’s film, but it’s a little bit too early to be getting into all that. Especially as you’ve yet to be properly introduced…
“My name is John Harrington. I’m 30 years old. I’m a paranoiac. Paranoiac. An enchanting word. So civilised, full of possibilities. The truth is I am completely mad. The realisation of which annoyed 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 centre. Nor, of course, my customers.” As far as opening lines go, the introductory narration of Hatchet for the Honeymoon just can’t be beaten. Bava gleefully deposits us straight into the unravelling mind of his central protagonist, and although I’m not convinced “paranoiac” is a real word, if it is (and it means, as I assume, “paranoid maniac”) then John Harrington most certainly is one. He’s not selling himself short, either, because he is, as he also freely admits, a dangerous murderer. He is a very particular murderer, too, as he only murders fashion models in bridal wear. As luck would have it his “fashion centre” specialises in swanky wedding dresses, so there is no shortage of pretty young things unwittingly lining up for the chop under the blade of Harrington’s cleaver (yes, cleaver. It’s not actually a hatchet!). You see, something mildly traumatic happened to John in his younger years; he just so happened to witness his own mother being butchered by a strange, meat cleaver-welding figure on her wedding night. In order to try and remember whodunit, he recreates the scene as many times as he can get away with, a perilous undertaking made all the riskier by the prying of his busy-body wife.
Ah, Mildred, the paranoiac’s wife. So heavily does she prey on John’s conscience that he saw fit to cram her into his introduction, too. And with good reason as, not only does she openly despise our “hero” (whom she accuses of being deficient in the erections department), but she also intensely scrutinises his private affairs, and may yet catch him slaughtering a model or two. Add to this the fact that she owns the fashion centre and controls the purse strings, undermining John’s fragile self-image as a fancy playboy, and you can see why Mr. Harrington believes his dearly beloved really has to go. Giving some lucky model the night off, John takes the cleaver to his own wife for yet another stab at retrieving the truth from his foogy subconscious, but in the aftermath of her murder his woes are piled higher than ever. Not only have the police finally begun to suspect him of some wrongdoing, with the ever growing list of missing models leaving the fashion centre somewhat shortstaffed, but Mildred refuses to let him be even after death! That’s right, Mrs Harrington returns to haunt her husband from beyond the grave, but in a brilliant Bava twist, she’s a ghost that everyone EXCEPT John can see. What a bloody mess this fashionista and self-confessed paranoiac has gotten himself into; can he evade the fuzz and his dead wife’s vengeful spirit in order to find out just who murdered his mum all those years ago? Insert thinly-”veiled” wedding pun here.
A heady, inventive murder mystery from one of the most imaginative and ingenious film directors of all time, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is no stopgap, its right up there with Mario Bava’s best work. As I’ve already pointed out, however, I’m less certain of its giallo credentials. You see, can it really be a true giallo if we know that John is the killer from the very start? I suppose since we don’t know who the killer John himself is looking for is, and bearing in mind that this very website named the similarly structurally transparent The Killer Must Kill Again as a giallo, then Hatchet for the Honeymoon really is a giallo. So that’s settled then, hurrah! And, of course, it influenced the greatest giallo ever made, Profondo Rosso. Even the brief synopsis above should indicate the similarities between Dario Argento’s film and Hatchet…, with the murders in the two films being linked to a suppressed childhood trauma. Both films also boast a distinct mystical, paranormal edge that is largely lacking in the common or garden giallo. Argento even takes entire sequences from Hatchet for the Honeymoon, with a sinister shot of a lone, glaring eye in the darkness of a wardrobe, and a roaming shot of children’s toys underscored by a creepy lullaby, both reconstructed faithfully in Profondo Rosso. Meanwhile, Bava’s bizarre, entrancing lighting techniques and masterful use of mise en scene inform all of Argento’s films, of course. I’m not saying that Dario is lazily copying Mario (when it comes to the crunch I just about prefer Argento), but it should be of interest to any Profondo Rosso fan to see just how much that lauded and infamous film draws from the comparatively overlooked Hatchet for the Honeymoon.
One area in which the two directors often noticeably differ is humour. Argento’s films for the most part veer between hysterical and morbid in tone, although the warm interplay between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in Profondo Rosso does add some light relief to a notoriously brutal and intense film. Bava, on the other hand, was as partial to a wry visual gag as the legendarily mischievous Alfred Hitchcock. Hatchet for the Honeymoon is perhaps his funniest film, and it is often noted for its humour, a fact which partly led me to initially perceive it as being something of a frothy throwaway. There is nothing throwaway about the use of humour here, however, and indeed the laughs peppered throughout serve mainly to add to the film’s twisted sense of suspense. Like Hitchcock, and all horror/thriller directors worth their salt, Bava really knows how to get the desired response out of his audience. The film’s opening provides a prime example of his rambunctious charm when, after staging the first brutal murder aboard a sleeper train carriage, he cuts abruptly to footage of a model train. “Oh, lordy!” we the viewers think, “These bloody zero-budget, euro horrors. They couldn’t even afford a shot of a real train!” Then, however, a hand suddenly descends, scooping up the train in question. Why it’s John Harrington, playing with his model train set! Very clever, Mario! He even slips in a cheeky, inventive nod to one of his earlier masterworks later on. Alerted by a victim’s scream, the ever-watchful police burst into Harrington’s mansion hoping to catch him blood-red handed. However, a calm and collected Harrington, having had time to stow away the body, casually explains to his would-be arresters that the scream they heard had merely emanated from a horror film he was watching on television. He pops on the TV, and as luck would have it, Mario Bava’s very own Black Sabbath is showing!
Again, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is not Mario Bava’s best film (that’s probably one of Blood and Black Lace, Diabolik, or Bloodbath), and Dario Argento’s indebted Profondo Rosso is certainly superior. It is, however, not far off Bava’s very best work, and is a film that I would heartily recommend to all eager and eagle-eyed Profondo Rosso fans (with it’s vainglorious narrator and central protagonist rapidly and bloodily losing his grip on reality, it also bears a certain resemblance to Mary Harron’s film of American Psycho). It can also be heartily enjoyed in its own right as a masterful and manic murder mystery. And now that we’ve decided that it is one, it also ranks among the very finest giallos ever made. Buon apetito!
Below please observe the dizzyingly brilliant trailer for Hatchet for the Honeymoon, a tantalising glimpse into the mind of a paranoiac, complete with an unbelievably funky soundtrack.
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