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. Turns out that John (as his dead mother keeps shouting in his head) is a psycho killer who has to kill brides in order to gradually reveal some sort of flashback involving his mother's death. Every time he kills, he gets a little more, but the police are closing in fast and there's that other problem.That other problem being his wife, who hates him, loves the afterlife, and has a real bad tendency to hang around at all times, whether alive or dead. This leans the film in a really dark black comedy angle, as no matter what the playboy lifestyle loving John does, everyone sees his wife with him except him! This also leads to more scary aspects as it's not clear whether John is just mental or his wife really did come back from the dead. These scares would be further used in Bava's Shock, which is a genuinely creepy film.Bava is also his own cameraman in this one, so we get loads of out-of- focus transition shots, loads of shots of people's reflections talking, and lots and lots of primary colours used to great effect. The music is suitably off-kilter as well, jumping between atonal madness to lounge jazz greatness.The only downside for me would be that, just like many Gialli, the pacing isn't exactly set to 'racing'. That, and the sudden realization that Dagmar Lassander looks like the actor who plays Pennywise The Clown in the upcoming IT remake.I've just checked again and she really does.

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? A psychotic killer who comes across as normal rather than a loony nut who has escaped an asylum? This is no slasher (in some ways it is a ghost story)... it is also not necessarily a serial killer film. But in its own way, it was Ted Bundy before there was a Ted Bundy.

John Harrington runs a model agency specialising in bride gowns. He likes model railways and occasionally dressing up as a bride. The latter means he's in killer mode doing what he must do or, as he puts it, 'continue to wield the cleaver' until his 'issues' are resolved. The title suggests a similarity to Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers but in reality the films are far apart. 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. It's true to say that it's style over substance, but that's the point

Mario Bava was quite possible the best filmmaker for doing something quick and cheap. Sometimes to great effect(Kill Baby Kill, Rabid Dogs) & bad(Dr. Goldfoot & the Girl Bombs). Fotunately, there are a lot more good than bad. This one however, is probably his greatest achievement, maybe not his greatest movie though. It gets better each time you watch it. Where the 1st time was maybe a 6 now its a 9. There is just so much attention to detail in it. It Plays out more like a black comedy than an actual slasher film. The story is predictable, about a psychopath who must keep on killing brides to find out who killed his own mother, but the story is not really that important what is is Bava's use of a camera. Its all over the place here. Great stuff.