By TESS HENSEN

I feel I must preface this article by saying that I am not in any way an expert on the films of Mario Bava. In fact, I'm very much a newcomer. 100% of the articles I've written so far on the subject for HORROR-WOOD have been based on video releases, not DVD. Sometimes, depending on what company does the releasing of said videos, I have not viddied the pristine, uncut versions of these films. Therefore, some of the articles I've written on the Bava films may seem flawed in one way or another. Please bear in mind, in these cases, that I did not have the opportunity to view the film in its uncut form.

However, with the advent of DVD, and being that I have acquired a DVD player recently, perhaps some of the future articles I write on Bava's films will be much more comprehensive, and will feature all those little extra comments you Bava-philes will like. At this point you may be thinking: "Why is someone who is not a Bava-phile writing articles on his films?" The answer is this: I love Italian horror cinema.

Being the Argento fan that I am, I decided that I should viddy films from the man who was his mentor and teacher. But even within my love of Argento, there hides no Argento-phile. I am reminded by something a friend of mine said regarding music. He has stated that while he likes the musicality of a song - melody, instrumentation, etc., he does not particularly like or pay much attention to the lyrics.

I'm sort of that way with Italian cinema. While I love the look of the films, the music and all the brilliant visual tricks, I'm not particularly concerned with the plot or whether or not a filmmaker has dubbed the voices of it's actors. In short, I'm no Tim Lucas (the expert on Bava films from Video Watchdog). Now that I've vented (or ranted, depending on your view), it's time to tackle the next film in the Bava series of articles that I have had the honor of writing for the fabulous HORROR-WOOD: Hatchet For The Honeymoon, 1971 USA (a.k.a. Il Rosso Segno della follia (1969 Italy), Un Acceta per la luna di miele (1969 Italy), An Axe For The Honeymoon (1969 International), Blood Brides (1969 UK), Un Hacha para la luna de miel (1970 Spain), The Red Mark Of Madness (1969), The Red Sign Of Madness (1969).

John Harrington is a madman. He tells us as much in the first five minutes of this fine little thriller. His character, played with eerie sophistication by Canadian actor Steven Forsythe, leads a double life. He is compelled to kill would-be, and newlywed brides either before they get to the altar, or on their honeymoon night. With each kill, a little more is revealed to us as viewers about his motivation to commit such heinous crimes, and a little more is revealed to Harrington through surreal visions as to who murdered his own mother on her wedding night when he was just a child. In order for him to solve the elusive puzzle surrounding her death, he must kill again and again.

On the other hand, John Harrington is a normal, yet wealthy playboy type, who has inherited his mother's bridal design studio, and who, with the help of his rich but unloved wife Mildred, played with superb intelligence by Laura Betti (who also shows up in Bava's Bay Of Blood as a paranoid tarot card reader), has turned a failing business into a successful haute couture salon. It is from here, with the salon's virtual stable of freakishly beautiful models, that most of his victims are selected.

The film opens with the murder of a girl named Robin and her husband on their honeymoon night while traveling on a train to some unknown destination. As Harrington prepares to commit the crime, we see him confronting his child-self who is standing in the distance, watching. This becomes a recurring theme throughout the film--each time he murders, his child-self becomes sort of detached from him, so he is really operating on two different levels. In a campy twist, after he dispatches said bride and groom, he places a "do not disturb" sign on the door handle.

Aside from that scene, there is really not a lot of humor throughout the rest of the film, as it becomes a first-person study of a man and his madness. Flash forward to Harrington at his bathroom mirror, shaving. In the distance we can hear a haranguing female voice calling his name. Harrington looks directly at us in the mirror, and in a brilliant filmic twist, a first person narrative begins as he introduces himself to us and tells us in no uncertain terms that he is quite mad, and is in full, giddy realization of this fact.

One might notice a certain parallel with a more recent film that also explores the mind of a madman in the first person - American Psycho. In fact, the narrative is almost identical to that of the Christian Bale character, with the exception that Bale's self-realized speech comes at the end of his filmic vehicle instead of the beginning. Because Harrington tells us his bloody secret at the beginning, and because we know he is going to be the hatchet-wielding maniac, this film presents us with a different plot device than most Italian giallos. Instead of us trying to figure out who the murderer is, we are trying to figure out why he is motivated to be the murderer. Already, this is a much more intelligent and fascinating film than the often confusing Blood And Black Lace or the highly stylized and campy Bay Of Blood.

The marriage between John and Mildred Harrington is a strained, loveless one, and he wants out. During a breakfast scene, the subject of divorce is broached between he and his wife, and she delivers the blow that she will never divorce him, and that she will always be by his side. She informs him that even though he inherited the salon from his dead mother, it would be nothing without her wealth. One wonders why she would want to stay married to a man who is obviously a philanderer (albeit a murderous one), when she has control of all the cash. I believe it is because she is a rather vindictive sort, who even though she gets no satisfaction in her marriage, derives a modicum of pleasure from emotionally torturing her husband at any chance she gets. And she does it so well. You get the feeling that anybody, man or woman, would be loathe to cross her.

A new model has come to the salon to replace Robin, the woman killed in the first scene who also worked there. Helen Wood, who is played by the extremely attractive Dagmar Lassander, (for a change, casting decided to select a real beauty for a Bava film, instead of those often horrifically stunning women like Daliah Lavi and Barbara Steele), is a smart, witty girl who immediately catches Harrington's eye. Their relationship develops nicely, and you get the feeling that perhaps he can carry on a normal romance for once without letting his darker nature get the best of him.

At one point, while in a bar together, she reveals to him teasingly that she could be the sister of Robin, come to investigate her disappearance. He coldly laughs it off, as does she, and their rapport deepens. At the end of their date, as he drops her off at her place, she encourages him to kiss her. He does, after warning her that he doesn't want to hurt her. Again, one is reminded of a scene in American Psycho when Bale's character has invited his secretary, played by the lovely Chloe Sevigny, out on a date. As they sit and talk in his lavish apartment, he delivers the exact same line.

In both instances you get the feeling that the girls misinterpret the meaning of the ominous line. They are thinking of being hurt in an emotional way - both madmen are talking about a much more, shall we say, permanent and physically harmful pain.

Mildred has been out of town visiting a sick relative, and when Harrington returns home that night after his date with Helen, he thinks she is still out of town. He turns on the TV, and in another twist that at first seems like a Bava in-joke or fan service, the movie that happens to be showing is Black Sabbath, in particular "The Wurdalak" vignette. He glances up at the second floor and notices that Mildred's bedroom door is open. Leaving the TV on, he ascends to the second floor, to find that indeed, Mildred has returned earlier than expected. Her verbal attack is scathing in it's ferocity as she informs him once again that she will never leave his side, nay, will not even let him have one night alone without her. He runs into the bathroom and splashes some cold water on his face, while having another surreal flashback about his mother's murder.

He returns to Mildred, and in a strange twist, tries to make things right with her, asking her where they went wrong, and reminding her that they were once happy - until their wedding night. He begins to make love to her, then stops. She begs him not to leave her in this state, and he promises he will return in a moment. He leaves, and in the next shot, we see the door to Mildred's room being opened. She is on the bed dotting some perfume on and preparing for a night of lovemaking with her husband, that has obviously been a long time coming. Harrington enters the room with a shiny hatchet laid out nicely on a silver platter replete with lace doily. He is sporting a wedding veil, which is of course immediately reminiscent of Hitchcock's Psycho, with it's cross-dressing momma's boy, and proceeds to hack his wife to bits.

During the murder, his wife crawls out to the second floor stair-well in her effort to get away from him. As he is about to deliver the fatal blow, the doorbell rings. He stashes the veil and hatchet, leaves his wife bleeding to death on the stairwell, and nonchalantly answers the door. It is the detective, played by Jesus Puente, who has been investigating the disappearances of the various models at his salon, and has come by to ask Harrington a few questions about the latest girl gone AWOL. The detective states that he heard screaming as they walked up, and in another brilliant plot device, Harrington laughs and states that he and the young man with him are easily influenced and must have very active imaginations. He then leads them to the TV room, where Black Sabbath is still playing. Screams of a woman come from the set, and Harrington asks them if these are the screams they heard. The detective gives a puzzled nod as Harrington easily, guiltlessly explains away his wife's death scream.

However, as the trio move back out into the foyer, blood from his wife's corpse starts to drip on the rug under their feet. Harrington sees this, and quickly escorts them to the door, where the detective makes it a point to notice that even though it is a very cold night, Harrington is sweating. It's the kind of tense, Hitchcockian scene that may even surpass the Master Of Suspense at his very best. And in a big-time fan service scene, "The Wurdalak" vignette is used as a clue for the detective later on, as he realizes the screams he heard as he was walking up to Harrington's house, could not be the screams heard in the movie, because he had watched the movie himself and realized there were no screams in that particular segment before the scene that Harrington pointed out to them! Smart writing, smart directing, smart film.

The rest of the film progresses nicely, with Mildred coming back, in another interesting twist, as a ghost that at first Harrington can't see but others can. Mildred's self-fulfilling prophecy has come true - she will never leave his side - not even in death. He digs her corpse up (he has buried her in the hothouse, along with three other models), and burns her in the incinerator. He puts her ashes in a bag, and in a rather morbid turns starts carrying them around with him. He thinks that since he has burned her body, perhaps her ghost will cease to haunt him.

Not so. Her ghost follows him to a nightclub where he tries to pick up a young lady. The girl informs him that he has company (referring to Mildred's ghost, which of course she can see but he can't). He tries to get her to come home with him anyway, stating that they'd give his wife a scene she could carry back to hell with her. This statement results in an abrupt slap in the face, and a boot out of the bar. He takes the bag to a bridge and tosses it in a river, and in a scene reminiscent of yet another great horror film, The Changeling, he finds the bag sitting at the top of the second floor stairwell when he returns home.

The film ends with Harrington nearly getting caught at the home of the next victim he has selected. The detective already has the place staked out, and foils Harrington's attempt at murdering yet another bridal beauty. Harrington escapes, still without the detective knowing for sure that it was him. He returns home and finds Helen waiting for him. He asks her to leave, but she insists on staying. She starts trying to soothe him with kisses and soft words. He caves, and she dons a wedding dress he has asked her to model for him. They start dancing to the eerie music-box melody that always precedes his murders. He leaves her at one point, and brings back the hatchet, and as she becomes more frightened he wrestles with his feelings for her. He does indeed have feelings for her deeper than those he had for his wife, and is confused by the compulsion to harm this girl that he apparently has grown to love. Instead, he has another flashback--this time revealing who the murderer of his mother was on her wedding night - it was him!

As a child, he adored his mother and did not want her to re-marry, so he killed her. He reveals all to Helen, and after he does, she opens the door to the chamber to let in the detective and his posse, who have been waiting outside the door. Helen has been a plant all along, and was toying with Harrington's emotions to coerce a confession out of him. As he is loaded in the paddy-wagon, a policeman tosses in the bag with Mildred's ashes beside him. Suddenly, only he can see Mildred, while she has become invisible to all others. She laughingly states that she is indeed still here with him, and will be with him forever, in the asylum, in prison, and in hell. He screams and looks out the paddy-wagon window, only to see his child-self once again, sitting on his mother's grave. Roll credits.

I have now had the pleasurable experience of viddying two fine Bava films in a row. Not that all the others I've screened and written articles about haven't been good, but the last two have been, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the rest. I stated in my last article that The Whip And The Body had become my favorite Bava film. I now find it difficult to decide between that one and Hatchet For The Honeymoon. Both films offer us more substance in plot than visual style, both films feature tightly-woven stories with little boring down time, and both films present us with the stellar acting talents of it's cast.

I stated earlier that I am more interested in the visual style and music in Italian horror cinema than I am in plot- these two films may make me change my mind about that. The writing in this particular offering is intelligent and engaging, the cinematography is fairly unique for a Bava film--instead of hazy backlit colors, we get surreal, distorted imagery presented in bluescreen--and the actors are much more visually pleasing than some of the other Bava offerings.

You know Harrington is an axe-wielding sociopath, but at the same time you can't help but like him. He is a sympathetic character, and more often than not, we root for him to kill the rather wooden beauties that are his victims. You care about him and you want him to solve the mystery surrounding his mother's death, even if that means he has to kill to do it, and even if in the end, he was the culprit all along. And you care about Helen too. She is smart and witty, and not like the other flat and submissive women Harrington has murdered. All in all, there's quite a lot to like about this film, and not much to dislike.

OK, technical stuff for you Bava-philes: The uncut running time of this film in it's Italian release is 88 minutes. The Spanish version is 83 minutes (this is a Spanish-Italian co-production, by the way), and the English version is 87 minutes. It is the English video version I screened, and which is the source for this article, released by Fusion Video in 1987. I would be interested to know what scene(s) were deleted to pare down the English version from 88 to 87 minutes. Perhaps someone could enlighten me? The film carries a PG rating in all of its incarnations.

There you have it. If you're ever in the mood to kiss, er, kill the bride, might I suggest viddying this charming chiller for pointers. You'll not be disappointed.

Many thanks, Tess.  Once again, Mario Bava blazed the horror film trail for others to follow.  And what a typical macabre Bava touch--a sympathetic axe-murderer!

Article copyright © Tess Hensen

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