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In quick succession, Nora experiences the death of the lady she is staying with, and while rushing out to find a doctor, is robbed and knocked unconscious, only to wake up and witness a murder. Maybe. Or maybe not. It is really of very, very little import whether or not this, or any of the events actually happen. As in "The Whip And The Body", Bava simply uses these plot contrivances as a means to propel the story into surreal territories where expressionistic camera work, lighting, music and performance can be employed in the far loftier pursuit of suspense and terror. Or, from time to time, comedy.
One comedic set piece finds our darling Nora racked with anxiety at the prospect of a killer coming into her house in the middle of the night. She takes a page from one of the many pulp novels she reads voraciously and decides to rig the entire apartment in thick string, in order to trip up any middle-of-the-night intruders. When the one friend she has comes creeping into the house in the middle of the night, he trips clumsily through the elaborate web, and the whole things plays like a scene out of some daffy Buster Keaton picture.
The movie earned great, heartfelt applause at the end when, Nora, digging into her purse (which was stolen in scene 3?!) finds the pack of marijuana cigarettes the stranger on the plane gave her. Her eyes go wide, and she remembers smoking one on the airplane, and wonders out loud, "Maybe none of this happened, maybe it was all a dream." Indeed. And then, for laughs, Bava has Nora toss the cigarette pack over a bridge, landing at the feet of a Cardinal, who promptly picks up the pack and tucks it away. There's a guy who's gonna get closer to God, real quick.
Now, I was not, at all, prepared for "Hatchet For The Honeymoon" (1970), the third and final film I was able to see. This ended up being my favorite by an enormously wide margin. The film opens with a murder on a train, some very, uh, interesting editing bringing us into this filmic world. Shortly after the train murder we are introduced to a man shaving. This is John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth), and taking a break from his shaving he pauses, looks into the mirror and informs the audience, "Make no mistake about it, I'm a psychopath. I am mad," or something along those lines. And the thing is, you believe it. The dude looks crazy. He is incredibly, unnaturally good-looking, but he definitely has madness in his eyes. I was reminded of Christian Bale in "American Psycho". This guy is who Bale's Patrick Bateman wanted to be.
Forsyth apparently only worked for six years, from 1964 to 1970, with "Hatchet For The Honeymoon" being his last picture. It makes sense, because I don't know what the hell else this guy could've done.
Anyway, "Hatchet For The Honeymoon" is a celebration of artifice. Like both "Whip" and "The Girl", "Hatchet" is supremely self-conscious. Yet with "Hatchet" Bava takes the whole affair to a whole other level. The film is jam-packed with expressive lighting, outrageous costumes, absurd zoom shots, dolly shots, high-angle shots, and extreme close ups. The performances are never anything less than operatic. The narrative is the stuff of high pulp fiction. Murders give way to séances and ghosts, steely detectives and conniving femmes fatales compete for the meanest snarl award. Each plot point takes the film higher and higher into the realm of surrealism, and Bava knowingly has a goodtime with the material.
It is the kind of picture that paved the way for Brian DePalma, Dario Argento, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. It is a movie about the pleasures of watching movies.
At the film's end, when Harrington is finally caught and is being hauled off to the hoosegow, he looks over at the ghost of his dead wife, Mildred, and declares, "It's too bad Mildred, it could have been so good. I think. But probably not, I guess." Exactly.
It would behoove anyone and everyone who has a love of cinema to track down the films of Mr. Bava. He is no less important than those directors (Hitchcock, Ford, Welles, et al) foisted upon us by such mainstream taste-makers as Roger Ebert and the American Film Institute.