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 John Harrington runs a "Paris fashion salon devoted to wedding apparel for women" with his wife. He also hates his wife and decides to get rid of her "by presiding over her murder while wearing a wedding veil himself!"
1969, 88 minutes, Widescreen DVD
A change of pace and perspective in the Italian slasher genre (they call
pretentiously call them giallos, but since they invented the format, I guess
they can call it whatever they want), Hatchet For The Honeymoon forgoes the
usual limp mystery about who the real killer is (these movies would never fool
anyone if they actually followed any real world logic) and instead chooses to
have the killer tell us his story.
This is a smart move because it means the
movie can concentrate on the most interesting character and be mercifully light
with the screen time of types like the nosy Italian cop, the nosy relatives of
the victims, and most of all the nosy women reporters that look a bit like men
(always at least one in these kinds of flicks - must be something in the
pasta). Instead of one of these morons trying to solve the big case, you've
the killer on a journey of self discovery.
You know, he needs to keep killing
off brides until he can fit the last piece of the puzzle into the puzzle that
has permeated his life: What happened to his mommy when he was a little? Who
killed her? Why? Um, you did. With a meat cleaver. Probably cause you
thought she was a slut or something. Maybe they told me why he killed her at
the end of the movie, maybe they didn't (I'm thinking she had just gotten
remarried and little Johnny forgot to speak up at the ceremony when the part
came about "does anyone have any violent objections to this unholy union?").
If you didn't see this one coming a mile away you probably need to cut back on
watching stuff like Pete's Dragon and Darby O'Gill And The Little People. 
I would think that the killer's (goes by the name of John Harrington)
perfectly feathered hair and saucer-sized sweat stains under his pits would
have given that away (one hyphenated word dude: antiperspirant). Since crazy
folks are always more entertaining to hang out with than the squares that are
tying to cramp their style and their sprees, you know you're in for a bit of a
ride when the first bit of dialogue involves John telling us that he's a whack
job and that he used to be a bit put out by that fact, but now doesn't mind it
so much. Ahh, would that we all had that level of comfort with who we really
were deep down inside.
John opens things up by taking a train ride with some newlyweds. At this point
I should advise you that I will be refraining from the usual and obviously lazy
gimmicks of calling them "the newlydeads!" or copping the idea on the back
of the DVD box ("Just Murdered!") along with "I do...I die!" and who could ever
imagine using "you may now kill the bride!" not because I'm better than that,
but because I'm so lazy I couldn't be bothered to work them into this review at
all (except for just listing them out above).
While the bride and the groom
are travelling together, John also has a few travelling companions. One is a
meat cleaver. In all the movies with meat cleavers that I've watched, I would
have to say that John's meat cleaver is definitely the shiniest. He does a
really nice job keeping it polished. The other companion he's riding the rails
with is a little boy. Now this little boy isn't the kind of passenger that
requires his own train ticket. See, this little boy is the kind of little boy
that only John can see. In fact, this little boy looks suspiciously like the
little boy that made African Buns (see Ebola Syndrome)
out of John's mommy (DIE SLUT! - was that out loud?) all those years ago.
Those newlyweds are making out (god, she is such a HUSSY!) and John walks on
into their cabin and plays the drums on their faces with his meat cleaver (I'm
betting he called it "Lucille" or something). Then he notices the little boy
staring at him and John looks at him as if to, "What? What did I do that was
so wrong?" In spite of his fairly judgmental nature (women should love once
then die) we instantly like this guy. He's a pleasant enough chap that runs
his own business, is pretty polite and looks like a cross between John Davidson
and David Hasslehoff, only with more acting ability that either and a meat
cleaver (How many times did you wish that Michael Knight would take a cleaver
to that uppity talking car? Or that Davidson would do the same to Cathy Lee
Crosby?). 
What is the kind of business that the busy mommy obsessed killer has time to do
in between sessions with Lucille? He sells bridal gowns! It's like my
guidance counselor always told me: get a job where you have easy access to
victims. But all is not peaches and cream for our young, hunky psycho.
Somehow he is married. Even though his hobby is killing chicks that get
married, his own bride has escaped his wrath. This is sort of surprising when
you see her and she's a hard faced nag that is constantly putting our hero
down, saying stuff like "I'll never give you divorce!" and "til death do us
part." She punctuates this with a sneer and at one point crushes a grape with
great glee. Hey Johnny, better watch your grapes!
As if all this weren't enough to tattoo "insert meat cleaver here" on her forehead, she also reminds Johnny that it is her money that is behind the success of his business and oh
by the way my dead first husband was much better in the sack then you bridal
gown boy! If you had Johnny's wife in your dead pool, go ahead and make your
reservations at Appleby's because you're going to have enough to buy one of
them fancy drinks with ice cream in it! Johnny lets us in on the fact that
he's killed several broads and buried a number of them in the hothouse out
back.
About this time, we get our first nosy copper hassling Johnny. They
engage in a little witty repartee that you see in these bogus cat and mouse
scenes in movies like this. You know, where the cop says something like, "this
guy who kills these women must be crazy and not know what he is doing and he
also probably is a big smelly jerk!" Then the killer says something like this:
"well, maybe he has his reasons for killing chicks and they might be really
good reasons, and I do not smell, it's just that my deodorant gave out in this
dang hothouse!" The cop leaves, promising to pop at irregular intervals
throughout the rest of the movie (usually after Johnny gets done axing
someone).
Johnny's wife tells him that she's going out of town to visit her sick aunt or
sister or someone (riiiight) and that she'll be back in a week. Johnny uses
the opportunity to go out with some chick that works for him and when he
finally comes home expecting to be able to watch Victoria's Secret lingerie
commercials and the racier parts of WWF Smackdown while hatchetface is gone, he
sees that his wife is sitting there in bed waiting for him. She's got this
nasty smirk on her face and says that she came home early and where the fudge
have you been? Um, maybe with a woman that isn't looking to bust my grapes?
Johnny doesn't seem too thrilled to have her home but he does kind of give her
a little affection, hugging her and crap like that (she don't deserve it
Johnny!), but just as we think that Johnny's gone completely off the deep end,
he whips out his meat cleaver and chops her but good. But like the emotional
vampire she is, she refuses to die and he has to follow her out into the
hallway and chop her some more. Finally, she goes down for the count and
Johnny has go to downstairs to answer the door. It's the nosy cop and the nosy
fiancee of some broad that Johnny used to grow his Triffids out in the
hothouse.
They shake him down for awhile and he and the audience kind of hold
their breath and hope that these two don't notice the dead body upstairs (her
arm is hanging through the banister) and the blood that is dripping from above
onto the carpet. Bava gets a good shot in off Johnny noticing the reflection
of his wife's body in the coffee table they're all standing around. They don't
notice and the cop leaves, but not before telling Johnny that it is a very cold
night, but that Johnny seems to be sweating. Yeah, he knows about that little
problem! Why do you have to keep shoving his handicap in his face?
With his wife finally dead, Johnny can go about the business of being a full fledged psycho.
This involves him cremating his wife's remains and hauling them around in a
nice leather valise. He manages to get himself thrown out of a bar when he
hits on a woman there with his briefcase and refers to it as his wife. Hey
pal, if you're going to pretend that piece of luggage is your old lady, you
gots to pay the three dollar cover. Johnny then imagines that everyone is
talking to his wife and that they can all see her but him (how's that for being
messed up?). He chucks the bag into the river, but the bag shows back up and
you can see that this movie is now turning into something I would have called Psycho For A Samsonite. 
In the meantime, another nosy relative has shown up. Is Johnny the only guy in
Europe that could have done this? This time it is a nosy sister. She asks
Johnny what happened to her sister and he tells her that he killed her and
buried her in his hothouse. It's funny because it's true! Later she alibis
him up with the fuzz they roll around to his house because some bride just
about got whacked. Once again, the cop comments on this guy's excessive
sweatiness. Okay, I think its time to replace fear with fact. The condition
is known as hyperhidrosis and is sometimes merely a secondary condition to a
more serious situation, like menopause, obesity, or severe psychological
disorder. Doctors recommend that you treat the underlying cause of the
sweating first. So lay off Johnny and offer him some help, for crying out
loud!
Once the cops leave, Johnny shows this woman to his super secret bridal
gown bat cave. This is where he goes and makes out with the mannequins that
he's dressed up in bridal gear. I guess if you bring a girl in there and she
doesn't run away calling you a pre-vert or something, you got it made. The
hang out there for awhile and Johnny tries to whack her with the cleaver, but
she blocks it with her arm. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone block a
crazy guy with an sharp instrument in any of these movies before this. Then
Johnny has his flashback about killing his mommy, the cops bust in and they
haul him away. For good measure, they toss in his briefcase and Johnny starts
seeing his wife who tells him that she'll be with him in the nut hut and then
in hell. Ouch! That'll crush a guy's grapes and make him break out into a
cold sweat!
An interesting departure from the regular Italian chop'em up. It
isn't really graphic, but Mario manages to build tension with Johnny constantly
playing with shiny cleaver and in particular when he is stalking his wife down
the hall and whacking her. The whole mother as whore and son who has to kill
her over and over again motif is of course overdone in the movies, but is
nonetheless effective since all our mothers are trampy skanks that should be
killed (I mean, I'm not alone in that am I? Hell-oooo!).
Following the killer as he goes through his daily routine (kill skank, hate wife, kill skank, kill skank wife I hate) allows the viewer to better connect with him and while not
rooting for him (except for killing his wife) you are able to put all the
killings into some kind of context, so that the movie doesn't just degenerate
into a body count movie. Mario makes good use of changes in music as well as
shooting everything from Johnny's subjective reality to illustrate the mess
mental illness makes of people's perceptions. Johnny believes that killing all
these people will allow him some piece, but instead it plunges him into a new
hell - a hell where he has to live with the fact that it was he that killed his
mother. For this unredeemable act, he sentences himself to the worst kind of
punishment possible - an eternity with the woman that he hates the most (his
wife). Deep down he loved his mother, so for killing the best woman in his
life, he will forever be with the worst. Mario succeeds in twisting the genre
around, taking us inside the twisted brain of Johnny, asking us not to unravel
the crime, but to watch an unraveled man rage against his mental imbalance
until he has spent his fury and is confined to the rubber room you can never
escape - your mind.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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