Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Hatchet for the Honeymoon is a 1970 film from Italy and Spain, directed by Mario Bava, running 93 minutes. reelscum files it under giallo.
- Year
- 1970 · 1970s films
- Runtime
- 93 min
- Director
- Mario Bava
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (37/100)
- Also known as
- An Axe for the Honeymoon · Blood Brides · The Red Sign of Madness · Hatchet for the Honeymoon · A Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Defined in the glossary: Giallo
A bridal-couture killer who narrates his own psychosis, and the best ghost gag Bava ever staged.
Bava gets bored of the whodunit early and hands the film to its murderer, who introduces himself in the first minute as a paranoiac and a killer and spends the rest of it narrating his own psychosis to camera. John Harrington runs a couture bridal house and butchers young brides in their gowns with a meat cleaver, convinced each killing brings back a fragment of a childhood trauma he cannot quite reach. Then he murders his wife, and Bava springs the best joke in his filmography: she comes back as a ghost visible to absolutely everyone except him. The plot logic is nonsense and the mannequins-and-veils design is gorgeous. Minor Bava, but Bava plainly enjoying himself, which counts for a lot.
Trailer
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The cycle in depth
- The giallo, 1963 to 1976
A line of yellow paperbacks, a killer in black gloves, and Mario Bava building the American slasher a decade before Hollywood cashed the cheque.
Filed alongside
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
Best title in the genre. Poe adaptation with Edwige Fenech and a black cat.
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times
A family curse, a killer in a red cloak, and a legend that kills every hundred years.
The Black Belly of the Tarantula
The killer paralyses you first so you feel it. A first-rank giallo nobody name-checks.
Short Night of Glass Dolls
Narrated by a paralysed man presumed dead. Unusual and very good.
Pieces
Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'
The Case of the Scorpion's Tail
Martino at his most efficient. Nobody wastes a frame.
The College Girl Murders
The point where the black-and-white krimi tips over into full-colour giallo delirium.
The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh
The Martino/Fenech formula, arriving fully formed. Cut and retitled Blade of the Ripper in the US.
The House with Laughing Windows
A rural giallo with no gloss and a deep, patient dread. Often voted the best one going.
StageFright
A killer in a giant owl mask, a locked theatre, and Soavi announcing himself.
The Case of the Bloody Iris
The Fenech giallo distilled to its purest form: models, murders, and no reason to solve any of it.
Who Saw Her Die?
A child is murdered in Venice. A grieving father hunts the killer through the fog.