Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)

This film is known as The Red Mark of Madness, Blood Brides and An Axe for the Honeymoon - it's a pretty good movie that will leave you guessing about a few things in the end. After watching the film, I read a handful of reviews and discussions on the film and there are a couple of takes on what actually happened - both of which I was thinking of when I was watching it. Two ideas on the ghost: 1) The ghost of the dead wife was real. She really did appear to others and later on him.2) The ghost of the dead wife was all in his mind - including others seeing and speaking of the (dead) wife. In other words, he imagined others taking about seeing her, he imagined the coffee being poured for his dead wife and he imagined the wife's sherry on the table. All was in his mind. The murders must have been real and not imagined by John. Overall a good thriller I enjoyed watching. 8.5/10

Laughably bad giallo film from Mario Bava. Full of pretensions and attempts at being something more artistically memorable than it is. Insipid performances, especially from Stephen Forsyth. It's a movie that aspires to be spooky, creepy, frightening -- but all it really achieves is to be unintentionally funny. It has some nice Bava visual touches here and there, as one might expect. But these touches don't overcome a silly plot, terrible music score, and guffaw-inducing narration. Completely lacking in the suspense and psychological terror it attempts to achieve. Obviously avid fans of the director will admire this a lot more. I happen to like a good many Bava films, despite their flaws. But this sort of stuff is too cheesy for my tastes.

John Harrington runs a model agency specialising in bride gowns. He likes model railways and occasionally dressing up as a bride. The latter means he's in killer mode doing what he must do or, as he puts it, 'continue to wield the cleaver' until his 'issues' are resolved. The title suggests a similarity to Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers but in reality the films are far apart. Kastle's film is gritty, almost documentary-like and contains the massive presence of Shirley Stoler, while Bava opts for a style flamboyant even by giallo standards and has a handsome cast to match.The spirit of Psycho looms large, though Bava's lightness of touch offsets the potentially gruesome subject matter - there's a very funny scene in a kitsch disco (with terrific music) where the cleaver wielder is thrown out for suggesting a threesome involving one of the dancers and his dead wife. It's true to say that it's style over substance, but that's the point

John (Stephen Forsyth) is trapped in a marriage he cannot escape because his wife (Laura Betti) controls the money. he has a secret that no one suspects - he is a serial killer.He kills women on their honeymoon and some that are leaving him to get married. He is trying to finds some answers. he is completely crazy, of course.Inspector Russell (Jesús Puente), who seems to be channeling Columbo, is trying to find out what happened to several women who are missing. He shows just as John has killed his wife, who continues to haunt him even after she is buried.He eventually discovers the secret he has repressed in this suspenseful film that forgoes nudity and gore for suspenseful terror and madness.