Films That Witness Madness

review

HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON

Warning!!! Plot spoilers ahead!!!

Mario Bava's 1970 giallo, HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, is a strange creature. It does not revolve around the revelation of a killer's identity in the way most gialli do. It offers up the answer to that question within the first five minutes of the film. Instead, the central mystery lies in the killer's motive. What drove John Harrington, a wealthy, good-looking fashion house owner, to murder five women? This shift of focus from "who" to "why" is an interesting concept but the execution here is completely wrong. Instead of really examining the mind of a psychopath, it wallows in basic Freudian nonsense. The film's plotting and narrative conventions are so heavy-handed and blatantly obvious that the final reveal should come as no surprise to anyone.

With it's heavy emphasis on a man suffering from a profoundly acute Oedipal complex, one would be forgiven for wanting to compare HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON with Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Both films deal with young men psychologically crippled by the memories of their dead mothers. In PSYCHO, we are never told explicitly how Ms. Bates met her fate though we feel - PSYCHO is many things but subtle it is not - that Norman was the culprit. Norman's desire for his mother and his disapproval of her getting re-married pushed him over the edge. Having murdered his mother, Norman preserved her body, keeping her alive through a split in his own personality. The reveal of Harrington as the murderer of his newly re-married mother matches closely with PSYCHO but Harrington has suppressed the memory so deep that he feels he can only recover the memory by re-enacting the event of his mother's death - namely, slaughtering women in designer wedding gowns. For both men, the act of sex is linked to guilt and violence. Both are impotent, helpless men driven to murder by the simple act of desiring a woman. Norman may be more aware of his motives than Harrington but both suffer from the exact same problem.

While Norman suffers his matricide in total isolation, Harrington has already taken a wife. Played with sadistic relish by Laura Betti, Harrington's wife Mildred becomes a main focus of the film's second half. It's here where Bava jumps the shark. Mildred is less of a wife to Harrington - it is implied that they have never made love - than a surrogate mother. She is possessive, refusing to grant Harrington a divorce, and exceedingly cruel. When Harrington finally dons a veil and lipstick and strikes her down with his meat clever - not quite the hatchet of the title - he believes he is done with her. But, like Norma Bates, Mildred isn't so easy to get rid of. She keeps reappearing by his side everywhere he goes. Harrington cannot see her but everyone else can. This plot development is absurdly silly. The film would have us believe that not only can everyone around Harrington see his dead wife but that she can also answer questions and order drinks. Whatever the point of this whole deal was, it completely sinks the second half of the film. It literally serves no purpose whatsoever except to confuse and ultimately destroy the narrative.

Not that there was much of anything going on to begin with. Plot was never really a point of interest for Bava, regardless of the genre. Bava was a filmmaker first and a storyteller second. The problem with HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON is that it is missing so many of Bava's trademark visuals that our attention is constantly being shifted back to the story at hand. And there simply isn't enough here to be interesting. HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON feels distinctly like a short film stretched out to feature length. It is tedious at times and downright boring at others - inexcusable for a giallo, unpardonable given the subject matter. While Bava gets some things right - namely the casting; it's hard to completely dismiss any film that stars both Femi Benussi and Dagmar Lassander - those memorable bits are buried beneath a mountain of useless narrative.

It's hard to recommend this film to anyone who is not a rabid Bava fan. It simply has no gravity to it. It is a basic potboiler and little more. Damned shame, really.

Not recommended.

DISCUSS THIS FILM IN THE FORUM! JUST CLICK HERE TO VISIT!