The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1970)

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH Scream queen, Edwige Fenech, (ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS) stars in this violent masterpiece, the first giallo film directed by Sergio Martino (CASE OF THE SCORPION TAIL, TORSO). Fenech portrays Julie Wardh; a restless woman embroiled in a horrifying mystery that threatens to drive her to the brink of madness...or worse. Which of the men in her life is the vicious serial killer and will Julie become his next victim? Erotic, stylish and at times excessive, THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH remains one of the most celebrated and influential giallo of all time and has been high on the list of most wanted DVDs by collectors and passionate fans of the genre. Written by acclaimed screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (THE 10th VICTIM, TORSO), this intricate thriller also stars giallo regulars George Hilton (THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH, THE KILLER MUST STRIKE AGAIN), and Ivan Rassimov (Mario Bava's SHOCK, EATEN ALIVE). The haunting and mesmerizing sound track by Nora Orlandi (KILL BILL: VOL. 2,

DVDManiacs.net
Is a must-see for EuroCult enthusiasts. A superb giallo gets a superb release from NoShame.

BoxOffice.com
Collector Rating: WORTH FULL PRICE

DVDTalk.com
NoShame Films release of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is a must own.

why can't all dvd releases look this good?

why can't other companies release movies with this type of print quality?
this looks stunning like it was shot yesterday and not in 1970! They remastered the movie so it just shines without any blemishes. too often we get crappy prints from even newer movies than this. No shame films was the best around. please come back no shame! the other reviewers
did such a good job telling you about this movie you don't need me to do it. But I would say that sergio martino is one of the best directors to ever come out of Italy. This movie is just great in every aspect. Edwige Fenech is a fantastic actress, If she had been in american movies everyone would know her name, she is that good! You can't go wrong with this movie. It's worth owning because it is a great story with top notch acting from Edwige and George Hilton among others. If you love murder mysteries and giallos; then you will be surprised by the ending and have a great time watching this movie. Get it if you can. November 1, 2008

So Many Lovers, So Many Killers

"The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" is Sergio Martino's first giallo and certainly one of his finest, if not the best. Julie Ward (Edwige Fenech) has three men in her life: 1) her neglectful husband, Neil, (Alberto De Mendoza) (2) her perverted, ex-lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov), and 3) her best friend's wealthy cousin, George (George Hilton). Could one of them be the maniac killer who is slashing lovely throats throughout Vienna? And could one of them be trying to kill her or drive her insane?

Excellent performances are given by giallo regulars Fenech (Sergio Martino's "Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key"), Hilton (Sergio Martino's "The Case of the Black Scorpion"), Rassimov (Umberto Lenzi's "Spasmo"), and De Mendoza (Lucio Fulci's "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin"). "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" is on a par with any giallo directed by Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, or Umberto Lenzi. It reminds me much of Argento's "Tenebre." It also reminded me of a classic film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. I won't tell you which one because I don't want to give away the plot. Let it suffice to say that people aren't who they appear to be in "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh." This classic giallo has a great musical score from Nora Orlandi; it also has scheming, slimy characters, gruesome murders, numerous plot twists, red herrings, and an unforgettable, shocking finale that will make you think twice about trusting anyone who says they love you.

It's sad to see "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" go out of print. NoShame did an excellent job of restoring and presenting it on DVD. It has a great package of extras including interviews with Sergio Martino and Edwige Fenech, a theatrical trailer, and liner notes in a collectible booklet. I hope that Anchor Bay or Blue Underground will have the good sense to re-release this classic thriller. All fans of Italian gialli should have this one in their collection. After watching it, "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" will be hard to forget.
June 8, 2008

The Strange Film of Mr. Martino.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971)

An early film from the ultra-prolific Sergio Martino that's finally been given a really decent DVD treatment, The Strange vice of Mrs. Wardh is an interesting and beautifully shot, if predictable, giallo. If you're familiar with the conventions of the genre, you need read no further; this film does nothing to push them. If you like giallo, you'll like The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh. If you're not quite so familiar, read on.

Giallo is an Italian version of film noir; the good guys aren't good, the bad guys are ambiguously bad (at least, they are in relation to the good guys), the plots are trite, if fun. There must be plot twists galore. Where giallo differs from noir, as the title would suggest, is where noir tends to be dark and gloomy, giallo is glaringly bright; the lighting, the special effects, and especially the murders, are over the top.

In this one, Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech) is trapped in a loveless marriage to a diplomat. Her life is rather boring, so her friend Carol (Conchita Airoldi) maneuvers her into meeting George (George Hilton), a handsome cousin of Carol's. Soon the two are playing that game that often gets played before two people find themselves in an affair. The problem is that one of Julie's old boyfriends, the sadistic Jean (Ivan Rassimov), was at the same party where the two met, and is now hounding Wardh. But what does he want? To make matters more interesting, a serial killer is stalking the streets, and Julie begins to think Jean may be behind the murders.

After seeing the first thirty minutes (or less) of the movie, you'll probably be able to come up with the last thirty pretty quickly, but at least it's an attractive journey to the predictable ending; lots of relatively unclothed bodies photographed with great attention to detail, some inventive ways of killing folks off, and a surprisingly witty script. A fun way to kill ninety minutes. ***
March 10, 2008

La bellisima Signora Wardh

A number of years ago, I joined with some film buff co-workers to put together a list of the most beautiful women to have ever graced the cinema screen. While I no longer have the list, I can still remember some of those names - Sophia Loren, Gene Tierney, Julie Christie, Merle Oberon, Vivien Leigh, Lana Turner and so on. However, I have since realized that there is one name woefully absent that I didn't know of back then and had never even heard of until a few short weeks ago. The name? Edwige Fenech - and it was to see her that I chose to watch "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh."

Besides being new to Ms. Fenech, I was also new to the genre of giallo. I've enjoyed B-movies in the past - particularly the Hammer films from Britain - but I was unfamiliar with such Italian films, and I think "Mrs. Wardh" was a great introduction. A serial killer is going around slashing beautiful young women to death in Vienna, where Julie Wardh and her absentee husband have just arrived to live. Before long she's involved with her friend's cousin Goerge, and then the killer's after her. Is she a random victim or is the killer a former lover who's been threatening her?

Director Sergio Martino does a great job bringing together all of these elements into a suspenseful package, beautifully filming it on location in Vienna and in Spain. (One of the major scenes was filmed on the grounds of Schoenbrunn Palace.) Ernesto Gastaldi provided a script with some nice twists and turns, and Nora Orlandi's beautiful score with a wordless chorus is among the most beautiful and haunting that I've ever heard.

As for Edwige Fenech - well, what can I say that hasn't already been said? This woman is a knockout (and cute, too!). Not only should she be on that list I wrote about, but she should be toward the top of it! I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of her work. It's a shame that she never rose out of doing genre films so more of the world could get to know her. (On the other hand, if she did she'd probably have done fewer genre films with their "revealing" tendencies...LOL) I think she did a good job here, as did the rest of the cast, notably George Hilton as her new lover and Ivan Rassimov being especially creepy as the old one, Jean.

The image is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 ratio, enhanced for widescreen sets, and the picture looks great. Who'd have imagined that a foreign genre film from the 1970s could look this good? Italian and English soundtracks are provided - I chose the Italian to get the proper feel of the film, though a few times I had to go back as the subtitles went by too fast. (The other drawback was that I spent a lot of time reading the subtitles instead of looking at Edwige's face, so I think I'll have to watch it again in English!)

No Shame Films has also included a quite interesting documentary about the films, featuring Sergio Martino (director), Luciano Martino (producer), Ernesto Gastaldi (writer) plus George Hilton and Edwige Fenech. As some other writers have noted, Edwige still looks great and seems to enjoy talking about the old days. My other favorite here is Gastaldi, who is just having a ball during his interview. You look at these people now and they are all middle aged, but as Edwige notes, they were all basically kids when they made these films. There's also a clip of director Martino at the Venice Film Festival, the film's original trailer and a gallery of posters and stills. As with No Shame releases, an informative 8-page booklet is included.

In short, "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" is a solid thriller and (as far as I can tell) a very good introduction to the films of Edwige Fenech and Sergio Martino, as well as for gialli in general. I hope No Shame Films will continue to release them - I'm glad that they'll be releasing a couple of Edwige's Italian sex comedies next week. And please - how about somebody out there making good DVD releases of some of those German films Edwige made before moving to Italy??? November 8, 2006

Edwige! Edwige! Edwige!

Anyone who used to follow my movie reviews knows how much I love a good giallo. Mario Bava and Dario Argento are the ultimate masters of this intriguing film genre that dominated the Italian box office back in the 1970s, but plenty of other directors stepped up to the plate and took a swing at these unique thrillers too. Before moving on to a review of Sergio Martino's "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh," let's look at the defining elements of a giallo thriller. "Giallo" means "yellow" in Italian, and the term comes from the color of the cover of certain cheap pulp paperback mysteries that were popular in Italy several decades ago. The defining elements of a giallo (plural: gialli) film include but are not limited to: a crazed black-gloved killer, lots of bloody killings carried out in unusual ways, a convoluted plot loaded down with red herrings so as to confuse the viewer about the identity of the murderer, and lots of very beautiful Eurobabes. Sometimes we also see flashbacks within the film that hold clues about the motivation of the killer. We almost always see inept police officers bumbling around trying to solve the case. I could list more elements, but you get the general idea.

In Martino's "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh," the story kicks off when a black-gloved lunatic offs a lady of the night with a straight razor. Soon thereafter we meet the luscious Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech--simply typing her name sends me into paroxysms of joy). She's the new wife of a wealthy businessman, Neil (Alberto De Mendoza), whose job keeps him away from their home in Vienna for extended periods of time. It's probably just as well that the much older Neil isn't around that much since Julie's hiding some extremely sordid secrets from her past. You wouldn't think it by looking at the elegant Mrs. Wardh, but she used to mix it up quite a bit with an abusive lover named Jean (Ivan Rassimov). They had a sadistic relationship, snippets of which we see in very stylish flashbacks throughout the film, which often involved broken glass and blood. Fun. Sure enough, Jean pops up in Vienna and starts stalking his former lover. He doesn't do much, mostly just glares at her from a distance and generally exudes a menacing enough air that we believe he might be the killer seen in the opening sequence. His appearance is sufficient to make Julie Wardh very nervous.

Julie starts receiving flowers with weird messages, probably from Jean, around the time she meets the handsome George Corot (George Hilton) at a party hosted by her bubbly friend Carol Brandt (Conchita Airoldi). She soon enough embarks on a passionate affair with George, and then receives a strange phone call from a man who has obviously witnessed her indiscretions. The guy on the phone threatens blackmail, warning Julie that he wants a considerable sum of money to keep his mouth shut or else he'll tell her husband what wifey has been up to while he's away on business. Julie doesn't know what to do, so Carol steps up and offers to deliver the money to the blackmailer. Too bad for her; she dies at the hands of the abovementioned black-gloved killer during the drop. The murder weapon is a straight razor, leading us to believe it's the same psychotic cleansing Vienna's neighborhoods of streetwalkers. Soon the killer homes in on Julie directly, nearly killing her in a parking garage. Julie flees to Spain with the helpful George to escape the madness, but the madness follows her to a harrowing conclusion where the red herrings fall away to reveal the truth behind the killings.

The best element in "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" is undoubtedly Edwige Fenech. She's the most stunning Eurobabe to ever grace an Italian sleaze flick. Heck, she's one of the most beautiful women to ever appear on celluloid. She's dazzling, and every time she appears onscreen is a wonderful blessing. That she's not reluctant at all to shuck her clothes for the camera is even better. Edwige made a bunch of gialli back in the day, so many in fact that she's often referred to as the Queen of the Giallo, and "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" ranks as one of her most notable efforts. I spent so much time gazing at the lovely Edwige that I almost ignored the rest of the picture. Martino's movie is an excellent entry in the giallo canon. The killings are brutal and bloody, the suspense reaches masterful heights, and the haunting musical score (not composed by Ennio Morricone, surprisingly!) stays with you for days after the movie ends. The conclusion ranks as one of the best I've ever seen in a giallo, and that's saying something in a genre populated with masterpieces like "Don't Torture a Duckling" and "Deep Red".

Sergio Martino is quickly turning into one of my favorite Italian directors. He made dozens of films back stretching back to the 1960s, everything from spaghetti westerns to gialli to mob actioners. NoShame Films treats him with the respect he deserves with their DVD edition of the film. The supplements are awesome: a trailer for the film, a poster and still gallery, footage of Sergio Martino at the Venice Film Festival, and a thirty minute documentary called "Dark Fears Behind the Door". The last extra includes interviews with Martino, Hilton, producer Luciano Martino, writer Ernesto Gastaldi, and Edwige Fenech! It's great to see Edwige now, fondly recalling her career back in the 1970s. And she's still absolutely stunning in her late fifties. I'm giving this movie and disc five solid stars, and I hope the release of this movie on disc means the rest of Sergio Martino's films will arrive on DVD very soon.
September 16, 2006

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