Year: 1971
Country: Italy/Spain
Subgenre: Giallo/Euro Noir
Runtime: 81 minutes
Director: Sergio Martino
We are coming up on Noirvember, so I thought I would throw one of my favorite Euro Neos/Gialli into the recommendation list here. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, a joint Spanish/Italian production, was directed by one of my favorite giallo directors: Sergio Martino. Martino, who retired in 2012, gave us All Colors of the Dark (1972), Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have The Key (1972) & Torso (1973). Classic "black glove killer" gialli all. This was his first real masterpiece, in my humble opinion. He is a more understated film maker than is Dario Argento and a whole lot less stylish than Mario Bava; so he kind of gets lost in the mix. Mrs. Wardh almost never get classified as a neo noir, or even a Euro trash noir, but gialli don't come more noirish than this! The film stars French actress Edwige Fenech, whose exotic looks no doubt come from her Maltese and Italian parents; she has an air about her that is hard to pin down. Her character Julie Wardh is the wife of a Viennese husband who has no time for her, so she takes lovers. One of them is likely a razor wielding serial killer. For some reason, this film, through is garish color, has always reminded me of a number of actual films noir starring Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck. The films with Crawford especially come to mind whenever I give this one a watch. There are flashes of Mildred Pierce (1945) and The Damned Don't Cry (1950) in this film, along with a few of the rare 1950's films in color that are considered noirs (the very flawed A Kiss Before Dying from 1956 also comes to mind). Equally, there are bits in this here that hint at films to come like Suspiria from Argento in 1975. So it's kind of a odd "missing link" of a film with a real classic 1970's Italiano style mystery thrown in. Shot on locations in both Austria and Catalonia in Spain with cinematography by Emilio Foriscot (as director of photography) and Florian Trenker, it is beautifully photographed. It also sports a score by Nora Orlandi, the rare female film composer from the time (some of her music was used by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol. 2). So Spooktober may be coming to an end, here's to the beginning of Noirvember with a side of euro slasher horror.
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