Il rosso segno della follia

Plot synopsis:
On board a moving express train, an unseen man sneaks into a compartment room where a newlywed couple are. The man kills both of them with a meat cleaver, and looks upon the dead bride, still dressed in her white, blood-splattered bridal dress.The man is a certain John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth), a handsome, 30-year-old who in a voice-over narration, claims to suffer from Oedipus complex. As if that's not bad enough, John is also impotent, and feels compelled to murder young women wearing bridal gowns to remember details of a traumatic event that twisted his mind as a child. Harrington lives in a spacious villa outside Paris, France where he's the manager of a bridal dress factory which is managed by his older wife Mildred (Laura Betti). Despite the image he puts upon himself, Harrington relies on Mildred for emotional and financial support. On one particular morning, the ill-matched couple engaged in a verbal sparring match at the breakfast table. Harrington brings up talk of divorce. But Mildred will hear none of that. She tells him that he has made a disappointment of her life, so she plans to reciprocate by keeping him under her thumb. After walking away from the argument, Harrington retreats into his office, where he meets Helen Wood (Dagmar Lassander), who has come to apply for the job "vacated" by one of the models who has mysteriously disappeared. Harrington is impressed by her intelligence and beauty, so he hires her on the spot.Later that night, Harrington lures Alice Norton (Femi Benussi), one of the models at the salon, to his office and takes her to a secret room where he stores wedding dresses. As Alice is planning to leave the salon to be married, he offers her a choice to any of the dresses. She selects one and changes into it as per John's request, after which he hacks her to death with a meat cleaver. Harrington's method for disposing of the dead bodies of women he kills at his office is ingenious: he burns the bodies in the furnace of his greenhouse, using the ashes as a special kind of fertilizer.The next morning, Inspector Russell (Jesus Puente) arrives to question Harrington about Alice's disappearance for her fiancée reported that she never came home last night. Harrington replies that she left at the end of the day, and has not seen her since. With six models having disappeared from his bridal salon, Harrington naturally has become the prime suspect by the police. But with a lack of hard evidence, Inspector Russell leaves without arresting him, so Harrington is able to continue his killing spree with little difficulty.Over the next few days, Harrington falls in love with Helen after taking her out to dinner and having casual conversations with her, which makes him very confused. Harrington clearly has no desire to kill Helen, but his contemptuous wife, Mildred, is a constant irritation to him. After Mildred confronts Harrington and accuses him of being unfaithful after seeing him with coming home from a dinner outing with Helen, Harrington decides to retaliate by killing her. Though he does not understand why, Harrington needs to have a wedding dress in his immediate vicinity when he kills. Rather than talk Mildred into putting on the dress, he dons the veil himself, completing the transsexual illusion by wearing bright red lipstick. Harrington coldly sets up his wife for the act by pretending to reconcile with her, and promising to consummate their relationship. Despite Mildred putting up a fight, she gets hit with the cleaver, and falls dead.The act accomplished, Harrington initially buries his wife in the grounds of the greenhouse. But in a surprising twist and much to Harrington's consternation, he begins to see his wife in public. Actually, its EVERYONE who sees Mildred in public, very much alive. But its only Harrington who cannot see or hear her. He only catches glimpses of her in mirrors. Thinking that she is still alive, Harrington checks the grave in his greenhouse. The body is still there, of course. So, Harrington burns Mildred's remains in the furnace. Harrington takes the ashes and keeps them in a handbag for himself to remember her by.Mildred's ghost continues to haunt her husband, appearing only to other people, and not to himself. At a local Parisian nightclub, Harrington goes there alone (with the handbag containing Mildred's ashes), in which everyone, except him, sees Mildred sitting by his side like an adoring wife. It's only when Harrington is around Helen, Mildred never appears before her. When Harrington attempts to murder another woman, he is foiled from doing so. Harrington finally decides to murder Helen as a substitute. He knows that he is only one more killing away from discovering the truth behind his murderous dependencies. Harrington lures Helen that night to the same concealed room where he murdered Alice and a few other models. After convincing Helen to change into a wedding dress, he sorrowfully tells Helen that he never wanted to hurt her, but he want's to "fit this last piece into place." He then strikes at Helen with the meat cleaver, but she successfully avoids the blow. But the initial surge of dealing the blow finally gives Harrington the information he needs.In a flashback, Harrington, as a young boy, adorned his mother. When his father died, he became the man of the house and looked after her. However, when his mother remarried, he became miserable. Spying on his mother and stepfather having sex, he became enraged and killed them both with a hatchet (shades of young Norman Bates and his mother from 'Psycho'). The sight of his mother drenched in blood and asking why he did this to her haunted him for years. Young Harrington apparently tricked the police into thinking a homicidal maniac killed his mother and stepfather, in which he also had subconsciously pushed the entire event out of his mind. Now that it has all come back to haunt him, he is reduced to tears.In another ironic twist, Helen runs from the grieving Harrington and lets Inspector Russell and a team of policemen into the hidden room where they place him under arrest. It turns out that Helen is a uncover policewoman who was hired by Russell to keep an eye on Harrington. Helen is shaken by her brush with death, but recovers enough quickly to help the police get the maniac.After confessing everything to Russell, Harrington is loaded into a police van, with two detectives escorting him, which drives away. As Harrington settles back in the police van on its way to jail, he finally realizes that now he knows everything, he is finally free. But then Mildred's ghost appears beside him in the van. But this time, it is only Harrington who can see or hear her. She tells him that now they will be together forever, "first in the insane asylum, and then in Hell for all eternity." Harrington goes berserk with terror, and has to be restrained by the two policemen with him. But Harrington calms down when he realizes that there is no way now for him to avoid his fate.

Tags: cruelty, murder, cult, horror, violence, psychedelic, romantic, suspenseful, sadist

Review:
However he may have other problems after the ghost of his vindictive wife starts to haunt him.Hatchet for the Honeymoon is one deliciously strange and darkly comical chiller from the great Mario Bava.
Star Stephen Forsyth does a wonderfully brooding performance and makes his psychotic character strangely likable (one wonders if Bret Easton Ellis saw this film before writing American Psycho).
Forsyth is perfectly matched by co-star Laura Betti, who does a fiendish performance as Forsyth's domineering wife.Hatchet for the Honeymoon is a real treat for fans of Bava and the giallo genre, or those that just enjoy odd-ball horror films.
In the late sixties Bava began reinventing the murder mystery formula he single-handedly created with films like THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE.
Stephen Forsyth gives a great wide-eyed psycho performance and Bava forsakes his usual stylishly colored lighting for dreamy surreal imagery during the murder scenes.
Hatchet handles about a more common horror theme (namely a serial killer and his motivations) but in the very first place it is another Bava-omnibus of stylish direction, wonderful music, beautiful scenery and a unique, tense atmosphere.
Like it's the most normal thing in the world, John confesses to the audience that he's a multiple murderer' A woman should only live till her wedding day', he says, `love once and then die'!
Hatchet for the Honeymoon isn't the director best film (that honor goes to Black Sunday, without a doubt) but it still is a perfect score of 10 out of 10 in my book.
There are clear elements of both Psycho and Peeping Tom in the story, and it also predates both the 1980 slasher film He Knows You're Alone, and the Bret Easton Ellis book (and later film) American Psycho.As usual with Mario Bava, the cinematography, production design and lighting are all beautiful to look at, and there are two great suspense set-pieces: the scene where the killer waltzes with his next victim to the eerie tune of a music box in a shadowy, elegant store-room full of creepy plastic mannequins in wedding dresses; and the scene where he talks to the suspicious cop while his dead wife's arm is hanging from the staircase and dripping blood onto the carpet.It's also a surprisingly funny film in many ways.
Special mention must go to Laura Betti's hilarious performance as Mildred, the evil wife from hell.All in all, "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" is an intriguing and often underrated addition to Mario Bava's formidable canon.
As a bridal design shop owner called John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth) kills various young brides-to-be (Femi Benussi) in an attempt to unlock a repressed childhood trauma that's causing him to commit murder .
Harrington is facing further torment in the mutually unsatisfying marriage to Mildred (Laura Betti , originally the script didn't include the role , it was only after expressed interest in working with Bava that the director re-wrote the script so that Betti could have a suitable starring) who subsequently to return to haunt him as a ghost .
When Russel enters Carrington's home , the latter tells the screams heard are caused by the television set (the TV show that Harrington refers to in an attempt to fool Inspector is a clip from Mario Bava's own Black Sabbath (1963) - specifically the "Wurdalak" sequence featuring Boris Karloff) .
The Spanish villa that the majority of the film was shot at was formerly the touristic home of Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco .The movie well produced by Manuel Caño belongs to Italian Giallo genre , Bava (¨Planet of vampires¨, ¨House of exorcism¨) along with Riccardo Freda (¨Secret of Dr. Hitchcock¨ , ¨Il Vampiri¨) are the fundamental creators .
Still, his 1974 film "Lisa and the Devil" is what I consider his masterpiece; 1972's "Baron Blood" is a great old-fashioned Gothic classic; 1971's "Twitch of the Death Nerve" is mindless gory fun; "Shock" is a simple-yet-effective ghost story; and last but not least, there is "Hatchet for a Hooneymoon".
The film also has some of the most beautiful and lyrical scenes of Bava's entire career, both visually and in substance, such as John's 'danse macabre' in the room full of mannequins.
Some lovely point of view shots are also utilized by Bava.This film tells the story of John Harrington, who runs a fashion house specialising in bridal wear.
He is unhappily married to his overbearing wife Mildred and he is also insane.I would hesitate to call this a Giallo movie as the killer is revealed at the beginning of the film.
This confession also gives this film it's own unique edge over most giallo's; normally, we spend the film trying to work out who the killer is, but here Mario Bava not only lets us know who it is; but allows us to explore the murders with him; giving us the other side of the common mystery film.
John also has a wife; a callous lady, who says she'll "never leave him", and a lady whom he despises.As usual with Bava; the film is stunningly directed.
Music helps this film massively; it is striking and unforgettable and it establishes a foreboding mood, of which the film makes best use.The character of John Harrington, aside from being insane, is given a place in reality thanks to a brilliant performance by Stephen Forsyth.
Kill!", 1966), "La Frusta E Il Corpo" ("The Whip And The Body", 1963) or his magnificent anthology "I Tre Volti Della Paura" ("Black Sabbath", 1963), sublime Giallo-milestones like "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" and "Blood And Black Lace", his uncompromising and ingenious Crime-Thriller "Cani Arrabbiati" ("Rabid Dogs", 1974) or his proto-slasher "Reazione A Catena" ("A Bay Of Blood", 1971), just to name some of his films - Bava always outshines all the rest.
Yet this is not to say that the film doesn't bear many mysteries.John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth) is a successful and murderous Paris fashion shop owner, who becomes more and more overpowered by his own insanity.
While his malicious wife (brilliantly played by Laura Betti) refuses to agree to a divorce, John, whose fashion gallery specializes in wedding dresses, has the urge to murder young women before their wedding.
"Hatchet For The Honeymoon" is not even one of my favorite films by Mario Bava, and yet this is another stunning masterpiece that no lover of Horror and Cult-Cinema could possibly consider missing.
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.
In Hatchet For The Honeymoon, Mario Bava, father of the giallo, attempts to redefine the genre he practically created by radically altering the format: whereas most giallos try to keep the viewer guessing at the identity of the killer until the end, Hatchet immediately reveals its murderer to be wealthy businessman John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth), a self proclaimed madman who has a thing for butchering new brides with his oh-so-shiny cleaver; the trouble is, he has no idea what has caused this particular compulsion.The question Bava is posing to his audience is no longer 'WHO is committing the murders?', but rather 'WHY are they being committed?'.Clues come in the form of brief flashbacks, which are revealed to Harrington after each successive kill.
Can our hatchet wielding loony drag enough information from his subconscious to finally unravel the mystery; will inquisitive copper Inspector Russell (Jesús Puente) crack the case before many more brides go missing; or can you, the viewer, beat both of them to solving the puzzle.Unfortunately, no matter how innovative this approach may seem, Bava's little experiment is not a great success: with the identity of the killer known to the viewer from the outset, any opportunities to create suspense are few and far between: apart from one well orchestrated sequence, in which Harrington tries to shoo the nosey policeman from his home whilst blood from his murdered wife drips dangerously nearby, the film is practically tension free.
In a final bid to add a little life to all of the death, the director eventually changes tack and introduces a supernatural angle to the story that proves to be pretty entertaining, if only for its sheer incongruity: the ghost of Harrington's wife pops up to drive her hubby even crazier than before!If you are keen to acquaint yourself with Bava, or the giallo genre in general, Hatchet for The Honeymoon probably isn't the greatest place to start: although the director makes good use of shadows and colour, this is far from his most striking work; there is nothing to rival the glorious excesses of a Fulci or an Argento; the women are attractive, but fail to realise the importance of getting nekkid; and the death scenes are noticeably devoid of inventive gore..
"Hatchet for the Honeymoon" is the first film by Mario Bava I have seen, but I'm still undecided on it.
"Hatchet," however, ultimately becomes a much cleaner and more understandable narrative than "American Psycho" turned out to be.From start to finish, Bava's incredible visual style is omni-present in every single frame of film.
At the same time, Bava's impressive visuals easily overpower the narrative of his film.The story itself is fairly cut & dry for the first half of the film-- the main character is shown killing various women in an attempt to gain clarity to a mystery in his past (the murder of his mother).
Things get interesting, however, when the psychotic turns on his own wife-- but following her murder becomes haunted by her ghost and his weak grip on reality begins to loosen...Slow at times, the style of the film makes up for its lack of pacing.
All the while, he talks to the audience and admits that he's crazy and is having a dandy time.I am sure since this is a Mario Bava film that it's SUPPOSED to be a horror film, but I swear it felt like a comedy.
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..
The best scenes involve Forsyth and Mildred, his shrewish wife played by Laura Betti.Il rosso segno della follia (6/2/70) Mario Bava ~ Stephen Forsyth, Dagmar Lassander, Laura Betti, Jesus Puente.
A bridal design shop owner (Stephen Forsyth) kills various young brides-to-be in an attempt to unlock a repressed childhood trauma that's causing him to commit murder.Bava expert Tim Lucas calls this "Mario Bava's most personal horror movie" and states "Time has shown the film, initially misunderstood and considered one of Bava's lesser works, to be startlingly prescient, pointing the way for Mary Harron's film of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho in particular." I can definitely see the "American Psycho" connection -- that was a good call.Up to 1970, had we seen this before?
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.
John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth) is a real sick-o who hacks up brides-to-be with a "hatchet" (actually what we here in the U.S. would call a meat cleaver).
The victims (models who work for John's wedding dress company) are lured to a secret room full of mannequins.Stylish, bizarre touches, some humor, a few effective shocks and Bava's always creative and colorful direction make this rewarding viewing for horror fans OR people just interested in learning how to enliven a stale plot through audacious presentation.
HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (Mario Bava - Italy/Spain 1969)Every time John Harrington hacks up a bride on her wedding night with a meat cleaver, he is able to recall more details from his childhood about the mysterious death of his mother, whom he apparently adored.
The increasingly deluded madman imagines that Mildred is still torturing him and gives in to one more murderous deed in order to discover the true nature of his childhood experience.A creative reworking of Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) springs to mind, but in this case it's patently clear from the start who killed John Harrington's mother.
Harrington covers himself by showing the detective a scream-filled horror movie (Bava's own "Black Sabbath") which just happens to be playing on television.
Having cast the original giallo mold with Sei Donne Pour L'Asassino, the template for over one hundred more to follow, Maestro Bava hovers between serial sex murderer films and ghost stories with this stylish and lyrical ode to morbidity and necrophilia that begins as a killer-thriller and morphs almost seamlessly into a supernatural chiller.
Stephen Forsyth could have continued to make a lot of European films, he was better looking than most movie stars, but stopped because he did not like the roles being offered..
A handsome sociopath named John Harrington(Stephen Forsyth, perfectly cast), stuck in a bad marriage with a wife who holds her fortune over his head like a badge of honor, enjoys murdering females before they wed.
We ought to know who that boy is and the fact that this visual horror might've lent a hand in John's descent into killing.Bava's a master at creating lucid nightmares and images that haunt and remain with you.
Instead, the main character, John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth), reveals early on that he's a crazed killer.
Master Italian filmmaker Mario Bava once again directs with plenty of style, giving spice to an amusing plot that prefigures the slasher film "He Knows You're Alone" by a decade.The handsome Stephen Forsyth stars as John Harrington, the owner of a bridal shop.
(Bava fans will delight in seeing his earlier horror anthology "Black Sabbath" playing on TV during this sequence.) The music score by Sante Maria Romitelli is beautiful and haunting much of the time, yet gets appropriately discordant at certain points.A capable cast makes the most of the material, no matter how poorly they may be dubbed.
It's fairly easy to guess who the killer is in this giallo: He's the guy with the hatchet on the train who is AT THE SAME TIME having a flashback and a hallucination who then murders a new bride and her husband.
Just in case we're still not sure, he then narrates a long speech about how he's insane and likes killing and what not.Yep, as this is a Giallo directed by Mario Bava, we now get the story from the killer's point of view.
***SPOILERS*** Mario Bava slasher that took some five years to finally be released in the US has this very disturbed young man John Harrington, Stephen Forsyth, trying to find out the reasons behind his mother and step father's brutal murder when he was a young boy.
Now a young man John ruining a wedding dress shop in Italy is out to murder, with a hatchet or meat cleaver, young couples in order that it, the murders, would restore his memory of that tragic event!As we soon find out it's John's wife Mildred, Laura Betti, whom he's really out to knock off or hatched to death in that she's become a royal pain in his butt and keeps him from doing what he loves to do most, romance and murder beautiful brides, in getting in his s his way from doing it.
Mario Bava is here with Hatchet for the Honeymoon in an attempt to craft a story where the hero is the absolute worst person in the entire film.Meet John Harrington.
Here's where Bava twists the film from giallo into supernatural territory: she won't stay dead.While John can't see or hear his wife, everyone else can.
I love the scene where John uses Bava's Black Sunday, playing on the TV, as an excuse for the screams that come from his apartment.
Blood Brides starts on a high speed train late one night as a newly married woman still wearing wedding dress is brutally murdered by John Harrington (Stephen Forsythe), Harrington co-owns & runs a fashion house that specialises in designing & making bridal wear for weddings.
As Harrington slips further into madness & decides to murder his overbearing wife Mildred (Laura Betti) the police edge closer & soon Harrington finds himself haunted by his terrible crimes...Also known as An Axe for the Honeymoon (which is the original Italian titles literal translation) & maybe most widely Hatchet for the Honeymoon this Italian & Spanish co-production was photographed, written & directed by Mario Bava & is apparently considered a bit of a classic amongst his fans but I have to say Blood brides didn't do anything for me & I found it rather pointless.
The script starts off like a murder mystery as a meat cleaver wielding killer dispatches a blushing bride on a train but that soon gets dropped as the killers identity is revealed almost immediately at which point Blood Brides becomes a psychological thriller in the vein of American Psycho (2000) complete with ever increasingly bizarre voice overs from the killer & then ends up as a supernatural ghost story as maybe or maybe not the ghost of Harrington's dead wife pops up to torment him.
A seemingly run-of-the-mill story involving one John Harrington (a wedding-dress only transvestite designer who murders his own luscious models), Hatchet for the Honeymoon is, on close inspection, both the thesis and antithesis of Italian Horror.
John Harrington's psychology is in fact the main 'character' of the film.
Hatchet for the Honeymoon is Bava's tone poem – the film where he finally puts the script aside, consciously making the movie's atmosphere and theme the true main character.