qmtv Decent Giallo and worth checking out. But slow, and very much like a soap opera. The story sucked.Decent Cinematography, Sets, Scenes, Acting, Music, but not great. Kills were OK, not very good.The story sucked. Most of the playing time was boring, best part was when Fenech was being beaten and she liked it. And I'm not a fan of the stories wrapping up with a convenient back story at the end that no one can guess. But I guess that's what most giallo movies throw in. I can deal with that. But I cannot deal with Soap Opera. If it had superior cinematography, sets, scenes, acting and music, then I can handle the soap opera more. But it's not the case here.I've just skimmed through 40 viewer reviews. Most of them give it a score of 7 to 10, saying it's a great movie. 2 or 3 can't stand it.I've recently watched a few other movies by this director: Your Vice is a Locked Room, 6 stars. All the colors of the dark, 8 stars. Case of the Scorpion's Tail, 7 stars. So, he can produce a professional movie.This movie is worth checking out. However, unfortunately, the rating is only a C, or 5 stars.

jadavix Sergio Martino's "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" is one of the better giallo offerings, basically because it is entertaining from beginning to end. There aren't too many memorable moments, however: after all this time all I could remember about it was the one scene where the women at the party are wearing paper dresses and begin to tear them off each other.Also, I couldn't forget the fantastic title, made weird by the extraneous "h" at the end of the last name. If I remember correctly, a real life Mrs Ward heard about the movie's production and complained, thinking it might sully her reputation, so instead of choosing another name for the character, they merely added a letter that wouldn't change the pronunciation. Aside from that, it's all pretty standard. There's a killer on the loose, and the ending packs in some double crosses that are kind of hard to swallow. There's no real suspense, and although the movie has the usual nudity and sex, no real eroticism.It's also not that violent. "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" may feature the single most unrealistic throat slashing I've seen in a movie. There's no attempt to simulate a wound, and there isn't even that much blood.The movie is about the always captivating Edwige Fenech as the stupidly named Mrs Wardh-with an "H", who had a weird sadomasochistic relationship with a guy who looks like Buffalo Bill from "Silence of the Lambs", but ditched him for safety and monotony from an older, much more boring man. She starts getting anonymous letters about her "strange vice", and there's a killer on the loose.As I said the typical giallo twists in the tail are a little hard to bear, the movie has little in the way of suspense, but it's always entertaining and Edwige Fenech is almost always worth watching in gialli.

Professicchio This film came to me as a real surprise: I have recently been rediscovering the film career of Edwige Fenech: she has been for me, and pretty much every other boy born and bred in Italy in the 70s/80s, the prime and foremost reason for early sexual awakening.I have earlier seen the later addition to the trilogy by Fenech/Martino: "Tutti I colori del buio" which, despite being equally stylish, I can at best describe as 'bonkers' in the script department, but that is often the case with giallo.This film positively surprised me, all the elements of the typical giallo are there: dreamy sequences, Freudian references, strong sexual overtones, a killer all dressed in black with leather gloves in close-up and so on, but for once all the plot twists and turns that the film takes as it verges towards its ending are far more than an entertaining mechanism, the whole comes up as a rather coherent story with a bleak, credible portrait of sordid human behaviour. The film also intelligently manages to turn the misogynistic tones that are often associated with giallo right onto its head, the violence also is much less morbid than, say, Dario Argento's work of the same period.And much of the merit goes naturally also to the splendid Edwige: she is perfection as the sensible and fragile Mrs. Wardh and not just physically as some might think, although it's impossible to take the eyes off her whenever she's on screen. Her performance manages to make her look more beautiful than ever if such thing is possible, one of giallo's truly greatest heroines. It's a shame that both her and Martino are remembered more for their sex comedies of a few years later than this gem, when both creative and money capital were rapidly running of Italian 'pulp' film producers.Technically speaking, a film like 'Profondo Rosso' is still far superior if this is what you're after, but on a 'humane' level this is in a totally different league. I recommend to watch this and 'Cani arrabbiati' by Bava of three years later, although this is not really a giallo: they both give a good idea of the cheerful feelings that were going around in Italy in the 70s.

Scarecrow-88 Mrs. Wardh(the fetching Edwige Fenech)has a vice..dangerous men. They excite her sexual desires and director Martino shows this as we peer into her fantasies as many are strangely violent. Julie had married stockbroker Neil(Alberto de Mendoza)to separate herself from Jean(Ivan Rassimov), who fulfilled her sexual needs and hungers. She wished to put that part of her on the backburner, but finds another replacement in the handsome George Corro(George Hilton)who is cock-sure of his abilities at wooing women and catches an eye for Julie.There is a killer of prostitutes in the area which has caused wide-spread paranoia. This is merely a detail until someone photographs Julie making love to George and demands a ransom. It's instantaneous that Jean, a sleaze photographer, is the likely suspect(the person demanding ransom disguised his voice)and Julie's friend Carol(Conchita Airoldi)convinces to replace her at the meeting spot. What Carol doesn't expect is to be killed and is by someone dressed up like the serial killer in the papers. In a car garage leading to Julie's apartment, the same man tries to attack her as she was preparing to take her usual elevator up to home. Scared out of her wits, Julie and husband Neil go over to Jean's place but find him dead in his bathtub. The film then shows someone trying to attack an airplane stewardess who is able to kill him.The details line up until we're not sure who is trying to kill Julie which provides the key mystery of the film.I think this film suffers from familiarity with so many different types of mysteries and melodramas and unfortunately doesn't set itself apart from countless clones dealing with the same subjects verbatim. The director has worked with most of this cast over and over so when we see who is actually trying to kill Mrs. Wardh there's not that shock and awe one might expect. Now, this could be because I've watched a few others gialli prior to this one, but this particular giallo really doesn't offer anything really new. It is still quite polished and suspenseful, however, and Martino seems more akin to show lurid sexual activity and the naked bodies of the female form. Fenech just lets herself go in the role and appears quite naked in many ways in the film..particularly the rough fantasy sequences with Ivan Rassimov's Jean.