Product Details

• Actors: Stephen Forsyth, Dagmar Lassander, Laura Betti, Jesús Puente, Femi Benussi
• Directors: Mario Bava
• Writers: Mario Bava, Santiago Moncada
• Producers: Manuel Caño
• Format: Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Alpha Video
• VHS Release Date: April 16, 2002
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305827540
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #494,225 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth) is a successful, handsome, somewhat vain young man who runs a fashion studio. He's also, unfortunately, quite insane. Driven by an overpowering Oedipus complex and the recurring image of his dead wife, Harrington has a compulsion to kill women after dressing them in bridal gowns. With each murder, the root cause of his psychosis is a little closer to being fully revealed, until a long-repressed memory finally comes clear. As with many movies of the giallo genre, Bava's film is somewhat short on plot and long on style. The director's questions about a shifting surface of reality come up again and again; Harrington's obsession with fashion and his own primping can be taken as metaphors for that issue. The narrative is reeled off in a somewhat offhand manner, though, and Harrington, though tragic, is not a character with whom the audience can sympathize. The film's long suit, however, is style, and Bava's trademarks are present throughout: red- and blue-lit sets, zoom shots, gauzy flashbacks, inventive camera work and compositions. Bear with the movie's story pretensions and sluggish pace, and you'll find a giallo that, while it doesn't rank with the best of Mario Bava, still has interesting points to recommend it. --Jerry Renshaw

Movie Credits

Dagmar Lassander Femi Benussi Jesus Puente Laura Betti Silvia Lienas Stephen Forsyth Director: Mario Bava

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Middling Bava is still impressive, September 19, 2000

By 

Garry Messick (Boynton Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hatchet for the Honeymoon - 1969 (DVD)

A unique blend of giallo and ghost story/tale of madness, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is quite an entertaining trifle. The plotting is careless, what with the police inspector showing up at just the right moment at least three times too many, but Mario Bava's many visual and editing flourishes are so clever they're downright witty. I particularly like the way the psycho, John Herrington, literally puts his wife at a distance by looking at her through the wrong end of his binoculars while she harangues him. Also wonderful is a transition where the camera pans across a line of mannequin heads that seem to float against the black background of a darkened room. The camera stops at the final head, which we realize with a start is Herrington, and we hear a woman's voice speaking. There's a momentary sense of dizzying disorientation before the camera suddenly continues its pan and we see the woman speaking and realize that we're in a different scene now. There's also a bit worthy of Hitchcock at his best involving a single drop of blood poised to drop from a dead woman's hand that threatens to expose Herrington while he's being questioned by the police. The picture and sound quality of the DVD is not in the same league as other movies in the Bava Collection such as Black Sunday or Black Sabbath, but it's safe to assume that Image did the best they could with the best source material they could find. Overall, perhaps not among Bava's very best films, but still more than worthwhile for those who appreciate imaginative, well-crafted filmmaking.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great movie but very poor picture and terrible sound!, February 6, 2002

By 

Jim K. (Scottsdale, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hatchet for the Honeymoon - 1969 (DVD)

As always, my review is based on the QUALITY of the DVD.

I appreciate Image Entertainment giving us the opportunity to view "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" and another work of Mario Bava to observe. It is remarkable that we have this new entertainment medium and that we can enjoy these films from so long ago. But -- this DVD is the worst one that I own. The picture is lousy and the sound is awful. You get the 1.66:1 screen ratio, but that wouldn't be so bad if the picture was CLEAR. I'm not sure if this was released prematurely. Just take into consideration my review of picture + sound to make your decision if you really want to buy this. In addition, it comes in a snap-case although there are some notes within.

Volume is at an all-time low. I had to crank up my speaker and software volume to the maximum and still had trouble hearing the dialogue. You could not possibly eat potato chips and listen to this at the same time!

The movie itself is pretty good, perhaps worthy of three stars. Some good points: a nice, recurring love/fantasy theme music or melody. Perhaps the love theme is derived from the bridal costumes and weddings. Parts of the movie are quite haunting. There are no luscious beauties here at all found in other Bava films; the women are rather plain with the exception of what appears to be one beautiful, tall Black woman walking by (quick) and an extremely nice, long pair of legs close-up.

While the theme music is pleasant, there are nauseating guitar sequences during action shots. Horror buffs and people who crave gore will not find either in this movie. Own this only if you are serious about building a Mario Bava collection (I am).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars probably the best this movie will ever look, August 27, 2000

By 

Charles Read (Devon, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hatchet for the Honeymoon - 1969 (DVD)

Bava's intriguing and original twist on the Italian giallo (a genre he had pretty much invented with Evil Eye and Blood and Black Lace) with an empathic view towards the killer (who is never hidden like in other thrillers but revealled right at the start). However, this is not a harrowing portrait of perversity like Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer or even Psycho. Bava's colourful compositions and beautiful cinematography give the proceedings a decidedly playful appeal - and his surreal flashbacks whenever the killer strikes avoids the use of on-screen gore. His use of voice-overs in the opening is inspired, as our 'hero' ponders his madness, what drives him to kill, etc. All this is delivered with a suitible ironic european flavour that non-Bava fans may be rather baffled by.

It's a shame that 'Hatchet' didn't receive the sort of dvd treatment 'Black Sunday' or 'Lisa & the Devil' got from Image, but it's a solid addition to any collection of Bava's work or fans of early Italian horror. The image quality looks reasonable enough, but the sound quality is rather distracting, although perfectly audible. Of course there aren't any extras.