"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors.
Tim Lucas, author of the critical biography Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, calls Hatchet For the Honeymoon "Mario Bava's most personal horror movie" and states "Time has shown the film, (initially misunderstood and considered one of Bava's lesser works), to be startlingly prescient, pointing the way for Mary Harron's film of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho in particular."
If this movie influenced AMERICAN PSYCHO by even 1%, i have got to check it out.
Seven years after innovating the grisly Italian genre known as Giallo, Mario Bava returned to the form to create one of its deliriously frightening examples: HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON. Stephen Forsyth stars as John Harrington, the head of an affluent fashion house, who harbors an uncontrollable bloodlust for women in bridal veils. Only by murdering a succession of them, each in a grisly manner, can he delve deeper into his subconscious and bring to light the primal scene that spawned his very specific homicidal fetish.
whenever a movie has a serial killer main character, I'm always curious how the director wants us to feel about them. Rob Zombie tries to make them likeable, Lars von Trier shows you a bumbling narcissistic asshole, and William Lustig is simply showing you a MANIAC without trying to sway you one way or the other. This movie at first seems to make you sympathize with John Harrington, as his his wife is basically asking to be murdered. she's a constant nag and obvious future victim, and when she isn't around this movie treats John as a romantic leading man. the soundtrack itself seems to sympathizing with John with its endless variation of love themes, and when this movie tries to be frightening it simply isn't.
as a leading man in a romance John Harrington is perfect, but as a killer he is boooooooring. he has no depth whatsoever, and his motivation and kills themselves are almost entirely uninteresting. i really find myself not caring what motivates this Lex Luthor looking asshat, and the only real joy to be found here is the similarities to AMERICAN PSYCHO. Johns monologues' during self care, his uneventful chat with the police, his lasifere confessions that fall on deaf ears, his awareness of his own madness, his movie watching habits, even the directing feels like the blueprints for AMERICAN PSYCHO.
all said and done this movie isn't something i would watch again, but you have to respect it for being one of the earliest entries into one of my favorite genres.
to bad Pat Bateman never pops on a wedding veil to do his killing. He is long overdue for a good yassification.
5/10
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