A Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)

Another sumptuous eye-candy thriller from Mario Bava. There’s so much happening in every frame that Bava keeps everything in sharp focus at all times, background and foreground. Murder weapons gleam like diamonds. Opulent homes are shot like they go on forever. Grass glistens, shadows crawl and faces glower. The story is nicely creepy, too. It’s about how death is not the end. For some of us, at least. A handsome 30-year-old modeling agency owner (Stephen Forsyth) desperately wants a divorce from his demonic older wife (Laura Betti), but she says no. She’s very happy being unhappy. That’s the least of his problems though, because he also happens to be a serial killer on the side. His targets are women who are either freshly married or who happen to be wearing bridal gowns. I’ve heard of weirder fetishes. Along the way, he finds the balls to kill his wife, but then a funny thing happens. She still doesn’t go away. She haunts him as a ghost, but only OTHER PEOPLE can see her. He can’t. But he always knows that she’s there. Sounds like a sorry fate to me. This is light on the gore compared to other Bava films, but his auteur’s eye is everywhere. Watch his surfaces glow and his doomed souls dance their way to Hell.