There’s something undeniably seductive about the giallo film. It’s like cinematic absinthe — beautiful, strange, and liable to leave you bleeding out in a baroque hallway with a knife in your back and a pastel-tinted flashback playing over your final breath. Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is one of the most exquisite entries in this feverish Italian subgenre — a twisted tale of sex, deceit, trauma, and yes, a maniac in a trench coat wielding a straight razor like it’s part of a particularly aggressive shaving commercial.
And yet, beneath all the lurid lighting, gloved hands, and dramatic zooms, it’s a surprisingly well-oiled piece of pulp storytelling. It’s gorgeous. It’s deranged. It’s smarter than it has any right to be. And it’s got Edwige Fenech running for her life in outfits that defy physics.
What more do you want? Character development? Dialogue? Put down your cappuccino and accept the blood-soaked fabulousness.
Plot: The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Men? Inheritance.
We open in Vienna — not the cultural mecca of Mozart and Freud, but a sleazy Eurotrash murder capital where prostitutes drop like flies, and everyone has a tragic backstory and a designer coat. Enter Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech, her hair alone deserving second billing), a diplomat’s wife with a dark past and a few too many enemies. She’s returned to the city with her husband Neil (Alberto de Mendoza, giving the performance of a man who hasn’t smiled since 1954), only to be greeted with a bouquet and a cryptic note signed by her ex-boyfriend Jean (Ivan Rassimov), the very definition of “walking red flag.”
Jean, it turns out, is Julie’s former lover — their relationship a cocktail of BDSM, mind games, and flashbacks so sultry they should come with a warning label. Julie left him, allegedly for love but mostly for her own survival, and married Neil, who is so emotionally absent he may actually be an accountant disguised as a diplomat.
Julie soon meets George (George Hilton), the Australian cousin of her friend Carol, and immediately starts cheating on her husband — not because she’s evil, but because George has 1970s sideburns and a yacht. And also because Neil’s idea of romance is probably filing joint taxes.
Then the murders begin. Women are being slashed up by a razor-wielding lunatic (classic giallo), and Julie — because she is a woman in a giallo — starts receiving ominous messages, blackmail demands, and phone calls from beyond the grave. There are stalkings. There are shadowy figures in underground garages. There are close-ups of knives that would make Alfred Hitchcock blush.
But the killer isn’t the real villain. That would be capitalism. Or more precisely, two men scheming to murder women for money and inheritance policies. I won’t spoil the whole unraveling here, but rest assured: it involves faked deaths, double-crosses, a doctor with the patience of a saint, and a twist so convoluted it loops back around to brilliance.
Just know this: if you’re ever in Vienna and two men invite you for a ride in the countryside to “talk things over,” run.
Performances: Deadly Serious and Deliciously Camp
Edwige Fenech is the bleeding, terrified heart of this film, and she delivers the kind of performance that could inspire an entire dissertation in feminist film studies — or at least a heavy-breathing Tumblr fan account. She’s beautiful, haunted, sensual, and perpetually cornered by some male menace or another. Watching her unravel in silk nightgowns and slow-motion flashbacks is the kind of emotionally resonant trauma that can only be experienced with the volume turned up and the lights dimmed.
George Hilton plays George the way a golden retriever plays poker — confident, but transparently suspicious. He’s charming, handsome, and exactly the kind of man who smiles while plotting your death for the insurance money.
Ivan Rassimov as Jean is pure distilled sleaze. He leers like a man who eats raw eggs and stares at his reflection in the dark. If sideburns could kill, Julie would’ve been dead in the first ten minutes.
Alberto de Mendoza as Neil is so emotionally frigid I half-expected icicles to drip from his lapels. He looks like he’s been planning a murder since breakfast.
Style: Velvet, Fog, and Knives That Wink
Director Sergio Martino orchestrates this bloody ballet with the finesse of a man who understands that aesthetics are more important than coherence. And he’s right. The film is drenched in color — neon greens, sultry reds, bruised purples. Every shot looks like it could be a perfume ad directed by Satan. Close-ups of lips, shoes, gloves, mirrors — it’s all part of the fetishistic fabric of the giallo world, and Martino leans into it with operatic glee.
The violence is stylish but brutal, often arriving mid-seduction. The killer’s weapon of choice — the straight razor — is not just a murder device; it’s practically a co-star. You see it glint before every kill, like it’s been waiting all day to steal the scene.
The music by Nora Orlandi is a delicious contrast — sweet, haunting melodies over scenes of carnage. It’s like being murdered during a lullaby. And honestly, that’s the kind of artistic commitment I can respect.
Themes: Lust, Trauma, and Late-Stage Patriarchy
Yes, there are murders. Yes, there’s a love triangle. But The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is also about something darker: the way women are punished for their sexuality, for their independence, for their very existence. Julie is surrounded by men who want to control her, own her, kill her — sometimes all three. The horror isn’t just the killer in the shadows. It’s the men smiling across the dinner table.
But don’t worry — justice arrives in a flaming wreck of twisted metal and shattered egos. The patriarchy goes off a cliff, literally.
Final Verdict
The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is a seductive, savage, and endlessly stylish entry into the giallo canon. It has everything: erotic obsession, gloved killers, traumatized brunettes, conspiracy, flashbacks, Edwige Fenech in peril, Edwige Fenech triumphing, and men so vile they practically beg for poetic justice. It’s a horror-thriller soap opera in designer shoes, and it knows exactly what it’s doing.
★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars)
Come for the mystery, stay for the murder, and never trust a man with a mustache and a life insurance policy.
Edwige Fenech – Italy’s cult movie beauty queen – https://pochepictures.com/edwige-fenech-from-beauty-queen-to-cult-cinema-icon/
