Also known as Perversion Story, this film represented a big turning point in Lucio Fulci's career, having previously worked almost exclusively in the Italian comedy genre ('Italian comedy', which was very much its own idiosyncratic beast, specifically being the genre).  It's a long way away from the gore-soaked horrors with which he'd come to be closely associated, but it's an important stepping stone nonetheless, as it showed that there were more strings to his bow than being able to film Franco Franchi pulling faces.

Doctor George Dumurrier, who runs a clinic in San Francisco, is trapped in a loveless marriage with asthmatic Susan. He escapes both his marriage and his clinic (in which, despite us being repeatedly told it's 'his life', we never really see him)  to have an affair with a friend, Jane. While away on a 'fundraising trip' (ie a shagfest with Jane), George's brother Henry tells him that Susan has died of an asthma attack. We discover that she had a secret life insurance policy worth $2 million, with George as sole beneficiary. Susan's sister, Marta, doesn't seem too happy with George, and Henry too seems to eye him with suspicion. George then receives an anonymous tip-off which results in him witnessing the striptease performance of Monica Weston, who is a dead ringer for Susan (albeit with different colour hair and eyes). Suspecting that there's more to Susan's death than meets the different-coloured eye, George and Jane seek to befriend Monica to find out more. The police, acting on a tip-off from the insurance agency, discover evidence in Monica's apartment which suggests she's been posing as Susan. Eventually she confesses all, and the murderer is caught. Or are they..?

There's a fail aul whack of Vertigo off this film, as you've probably gathered from the synopsis. There's also a healthy sprinkling of The Sweet Body of Deborah, and this is very much one of those late 60s rich-people-playing-psychological-games-in-exotic-locales gialli, rather than a Bava or Argento clone. Murders are few and far between, to say the least. What you do get, though, is an extremely liberal dose of sex and nudity, far more than was typical in a late 60s thriller, so that's something. 

Style-wise, the film exudes an air of competence rather than ostentation, only let down by occasionally shaky handheld work (and aerial shots which must have been shot by a defective camera, or else one operated by someone with a deathly fear of flying). There are some moments of arty style, not least in the sex scenes, which incorporate lush lighting and, on one occasion, some Camilla 2000-esque filming through a transparent mattress. These touches are needed, to be honest, as Fulci revels a bit too much in the new-found sexual permissiveness of the era, dragging the scenes on far too long.

The murder plot at the heart of the film is simultaneously brilliant and preposterous. Brilliant, in that the central conceit which underpins said plot is pretty ingenius; without giving too much away it's one of those plans which sees those characters doing the investigating thinking that they're making headway towards solving the case, whereas they're actually following a carefully laid-out path towards their own downfall. It's preposterous in that the evidence with which a court reaches a crucial verdict, which is later upheld by a state governor, is based on extremely flimsy and circumstantial evidence. The governor upholds the decision after granting a temporary stay of execution, despite almost all of the key witnesses for the prosecution having fled the country, which surely must give rise to some reasonable doubt. 

The murder plot, and film as a whole, hinges on the credulity of the appearance of Ms Weston, who looks exactly like Susan Dumurrier, and was apparently tied up in the circumstances surrounding Ms Dumurrier's death. (SPOILERS) Not everyone buys this, and to be fair George and Jane do harbour serious suspicions that Susan and Monica are the same person, but surely either they or the police could've easily gleaned conclusive proof as to who she really is? Granted, she spent a few months creating the persona of Monica, but couldn't the police have dug a little deeper? Or examined her to see if she was wearing contact lenses and a wig? (The fuzz seem to be already convinced of George's guilt, and swallow anything which supports this, despite there not really being a sense of him being a suspect until he's casually told that he may be facing the chair.) Also, if my wife stripped in front of me, wearing a wig and coloured lenses but speaking in her usual voice, I'd like to think I'd be pretty certain it was her. Simply put, George should've been certain that Susan and Monica were the same person from the off, and the police, and George's legal team, should've been able to prove the same without too much difficulty. That this doesn't happen is crucial for the film's execution, so to speak, but upon repeated viewings becomes hard to ignore. (SPOILERS END)

The film slows slightly once Monica shows up, initially to linger over her body for an extended striptease, but then to detail George and Jane's attempts to uncover the truth about her identity, and, as a consequence, Susan's death. Up to that point we've been witnessing George's life spiral out of control (borne with admirable stoicism by Jean Sorel, unsurprisingly), but there's not quite enough meat for the investigation to sink its teeth into, with very little actual progress made for a good half hour. Saying that, as stated above, on first viewing the mystery of Monica's provenance will probably be more than enough to sustain viewers.

The climax is actually executed quite daringly, with few of the main characters getting any quality screen time over the final seven or eight minutes. There are a couple of big temporal leaps in the film; early on we jump from Susan's death to a month later, and towards the end we skip over an arrest and trial. We're then on the point of witnessing the gassing of a leading character, when we jump to a brand new chap with a microphone addressing the camera. He fills us in on the dramatic events which stopped the execution in its tracks, some of which we're shown, but much of which we're merely told. It very much keeps any catharsis at arm's length, but then again none of the characters are especially likeable-at least, they're not morally upstanding, and would possibly have been viewed with some suspicion and/or distaste by Fulci-so perhaps they don't deserve full redemption and a happy ending. Adding to the surreal nature of the ending is the fact that the reporter character, who gives us a heavily visually-orientated tour of San Quentin's gas chamber, turns out to be working for radio.

There are other slightly bizarre touches, as you'd expect in an Italian production. As stated, the criminal case which is brought against one of the leading characters in embarrassingly anaemic, and I was reminded of Dancer in the Dark in some ways, where a character is condemned to death in the most avoidable circumstances, simply because the film's narrative demands it. The corpse of Susan, which is being stored in a forensic lab, has decomposed an awful lot in the course of a month, suggesting that the lab doesn't have working refrigeration units. Further doubt as to the capabilities of the lab must be raised after they managed to initially miss the fact that Susan was poisoned. And, finally, in an amazing moment which is so throwaway it's easy to miss, Monica Weston, sitting on her bed in her smalls is asked an awkward question by George, who, as part of his investigation, has just completed a thorough inspection of her body. A knock on the door provides a timely interruption, saving Monica from having to answer the question. She's so relieved that she exclaims "Oh good, guests!" Well, you probably have to be there, watching it, but it's a very incongruous reaction, and should've been picked up on by George.

I haven't really passed much judgement on this film here. It is, simply put, great fun, especially on first viewing. The location work is brilliant, the sexuality is admirably envelope-pushing (and envelope-fingerprinting), the plot is brilliant (and shonky), and Fulci always seems in control. He'd go on to make more violent, and better, gialli, but if this film hadn't been as good as it is, the cinematic landscape of the 70s and 80s would have been all the poorer for it, as Fulci may well have returned to the Italian comedy wasteland. As long as you can swallow outrageous contrivances, and don't get annoyed when characters store medicine that can kill a spouse right beside medicine that can save said spouse's life, you'll find much to enjoy here. 

A rare example of a giallo which contains neither a whodunnit aspect nor a blackmail-related mystery to unravel, Hatchet for the Honeymoon can be seen as either Mario Bava showing his jaded attitude towards the filone, or his attempt to inject it with fresh life. 

After a slightly shonky opening sequence showing him murdering a newly-married couple on a train, we meet John Harrington, a fashion house owner who proudly declares himself in voiceover to be a 'paranoiac'. He believes women should live until their wedding night, "love once," and then be killed, and puts this belief into action whenever one of his coterie of models leaves to get married (the concept of married women working having obviously not penetrated late 1960s Paris). He's tortured by a faint vision of seeing his mother being murdered, with each kill he commits bringing him one step closer to having full access to the repressed memory, which will also reveal the guilty party. The police, naturally enough, suspect John of being guilty of the model murders, but can't gather enough proof. Meanwhile, his shrewish wife-who John seems to have married for her wealth-refuses repeated requests for a divorce, so the paranoiac murderer does what comes naturally to him. However, the news that ghosts don't exist had also not penetrated late 1960s Paris, and Mrs Harrington refuses to go quietly into the night...

This film is clearly intended to be light-hearted fun, with much of the second act following John's darkly comical, and increasingly desperate, attempts to dispense with his wife's remains, and thus get rid of her pesky ghost. More on the ghost in a bit. While there's neither a whodunnit nor blackmail aspect to the film, there is a minor mystery at the core of the plot: the identity of John's mother's killer. Given the paucity of potential suspects the film presents to us, though, there's no need to call in Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery; John Holmes would've had a fighting chance of solving it (as long as enough blood was reaching his brain at the time). The piece-by-piece reveal of the killer's identity may have been influenced by the Harmonica flashbacks in Once Upon a Time in the West, and can in turn can be seen in Dario Argento's later Opera.

Argento could claim that Opera references his own work in OUATITW-although just how much he contributed to that film's screenplay is debatable-but it's notable just how closely the flashback device at the centre of that film echoes this one. Aside from that, it's impossible to discuss Hatchet without mentioning The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which was unveiled after this film was shot, but before its release. 

It's likely that Bava considered himself 'done' with the giallo after Bood and Black Lace. He didn't return to the filone for several years, before churning out 5 Dolls for an August Moon, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, and Bay of Blood in short order around the turn of the decade.  Although vastly different in many ways, all three films share a light-hearted touch, with none being rooted in anything resembling reality (consider 5 Doll's 'serum' Macguffin, the ghost angle here, and the general outrageousness of Bay of Blood's plot). This was very much pushing against the trend for sleek and sexy urban-set thrillers, of the sort popularised by Argento. The plots of Bird and Hatchet both centre around childhood trauma, but for Bava it's just a hook on which to hang a load of black comedy; for Argento, although he does include comedic scenes and characters, it's more of a left hook to the gut.

Bava's movement towards black comedy in his later gialli can be seen as either an attempt to broaden the filone's horizons, or as a sign that he felt he'd taken it as far as he could. While not being the sort of spoof films (although an argument could be made for Bay of Blood on that front) which tended to characterise Italians being 'done' with a genre*, he does fall on his tried and trusted box of cinematic tricks to construct a fun, but safe, piece. His beloved curved glass, which distorted the image when held in front of the lens, is present and correct, as are occasional bursts of expressionist lighting, particularly in the lead up to Harrington's murder of his wife. There are also more dollies than usual for this stage of Bava's career, although they're of the fast and jerky variety, lacking the grace and steady menace of B&BL.

Apparently the wife character wasn't included in the original screemplay (as the opening credits would have you believe it's spelt), and was a late addition after Laura Betti expressed an interest in working with Bava. One imagines that the film as written was a darker character study, Psycho without any ambiguity as to the killer's identity (there are still several overt nods to Hitchcock's film in the finished product). The introduction of Betti to the mix seems to have led to the least gialloey thing about the film-the supernatural aspect. 

There are many gialli with 'ghosts', which turn out to be  staged hauntings in order to drive someone (some woman) mad. There are very few which do actually contain supernatural elements, because once you establish that the film takes place in a (let's face it) alternate reality, the stakes are lowered all round. After all, if there's an afterlife, death-the fear of which is at the core of the giallo-isn't as big a deal any more. It's clearly not a big deal here anyway, with only a couple of semi-set pieces, and the return of Betti's character as a ghost doesn't really damage things too much, unless you tire of the comedic shenanigans of Harrington trying to dispose of her ashes. It's clearly just a cherry on the top of a frothy, light film, not intended to be seriously analysed by film studies nerds.

Still. If it is possible to return as a ghost, why don't any of Harrington's other victims return to rat him out to the fuzz? And how can Betti's character  have so much control over who sees and hears her? It's madness. What is also is, probably, is Bava processing some complex feelings about his own wife, who by all accounts was extremely difficult to live with (and probably mentally ill). And, while we're shooting proverbial fish in a plot-holed barrel, are we seriously meant to believe that Dagmar Lassander's character, a new model who claims to be the sister of one of the 'disappeared', is working with the police? Her providing of Harrington with an alibi can be explained as being part of a bid to win his confidence, and to ultimately glean conclusive proof of his guilt, as opposed to further circumstantial evidence of his links to murders/attempted murders, but be prepared to swallow a pretty large slice of scepticism all the same. 

Still, this is a film designed to be consumed then forgotten, as with much popular entertainment in the mid-to-late twentieth century. The thing with Mario Bava is he was too good a director to make something entirely disposable, and there are plenty of classy moments here. The introduction of a younger version of Harrington, who increasingly shares the screen with his older, more paranoiac incarnation, leads to some haunting moments, with the child actor being especially skilled at giving a look full of wist (wistful, if you will). The fashion house setting, back from B&BL, lends a touch of opulence, and allows for some excellent mannequin action.  The score contains a lot of Stelvio Cipriani-esque guitar stings, and you even get some B&W footage of Boris Karloff from The Wurdulak. All in all, this film won't change your life, but it will make it slightly more bearable for 85 minutes.