Hatchet for the Honeymoon

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.