The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

Development and writing

Although this was Sergio Martino's first giallo as a director, he had worked as a production manager on a pair of Caroll Baker vehicles, The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) and So Sweet... So Perverse (1969), which his brother Luciano produced and co-wrote with Ernesto Gastaldi.^[3] The film was announced as just La signora Ward.^[4][5] Budgeted at ITL 170 million,^[5] it was a 70/30 joint venture between Luciano Martino's Devon Film of Rome and Eduardo Manzanos Brochero's Copercines of Madrid, a regular of Italian co-productions.^[6]

It shares influences with the Baker movies, such as that of Gastaldi's favorite Les Diaboliques.^[7][8][9] The plot also draws inspiration from the Genaro Fenaroli case, a life insurance murder that became a media sensation in Italy.^[10] By the time Dario Argento's giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage became a hit, the screenplay was already finished, but a serial killer angle was added by Martino to exploit the former's formula.^[7][11][9] The film begins with a quote from Sigmund Freud's Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.^[8][12] One of Jean's cards to Julia reads "Your vice is like a room locked from the inside and only I have the key". A poster for Lucio Fulci's contemporary giallo A Lizard in a Woman's Skin features an Edgar A. Poe quote, which is widely accepted as fictional and reads similarly to Jean's message.^[13][14] Fulci has claimed to be the one who originated the phrase,^[15] although this remains uncorroborated.^[16]

Casting

This was Edwige Fenech's second giallo after a supporting role in Mario Bava's Five Dolls for an August Moon, as well as her second collaboration with the Martinos after the erotic drama Madame Bovary (1969), which Luciano had co-produced and for which Sergio had directed additional scenes.^[17][18][19] According to George Hilton, his friendship with Fenech predated her relationship with Luciano, and he had been relied upon by the smitten producer to make introductions, which was rewarded with a part in this film.^[20] The Uruguayan, with whom she would form an enduring on-screen couple, graduated from a supporting role in The Sweet Body of Deborah.^[21] Hilton also recommended his Argentinian friend Alberto de Mendoza to Luciano.^[22] This was the feature debut of Cristina Airoldi, who had a modest acting career but found greater acclaim as a producer.^[23]

Filming

Photography started on 24 August 1970 and lasted thirty-six days, of which ten were spent in Austria, eight in Spain and eighteen in Italy.^[5] Austria was inserted due to the distributor's belief that the Italian public was more likely to accept crime stories set abroad.^[1] The regions of Vienna, with a murder scene shot at Schönbrunn Palace Park, and Semmering were visited.^[24] Spanish filming took place in and around Sitges, Catalonia.^[24] The shoot was bookended by interiors, and some ancillary exteriors, in Rome.^[25] Interiors were a mix of locations^[24] and sets built at Elios Studios.^[26] The fictional Stephan Residence, where Julie Wardh lives, was a composite of the Haus des Buches (a Vienna library), for exteriors, and Casa Papanice in Rome, for its vivid interiors designed by noted architect Paolo Portoghesi.^[24][27] Although Spaniard Emilio Foriscot was credited to satisfy coproduction regulations, the actual cinematographer was Anton Giulio Borghesi, except for Austrian scenes which were entrusted to Giancarlo Ferrando and director of production Floriano Trenker.^[1] While the film was made with English-language export in mind, including alternate shots for written notes, it was primarily acted in Italian on set.^[28] By the end of production, it was referred to by its eventual title.^[25]

Pre-release

The letter "h" was added to the name "Ward" when an Italian woman named Mrs. Ward threatened legal action over the original title potentially damaging her good name, just before the film was released.^[7][18] In Spain, the character kept the patronym "Ward".^[29] Part of a sex scene between Hilton and Fenech was cut by censorship during the film's initial domestic run, but later reintegrated on ancillary media.^[11]

Domestic

In Italy, the film was distributed by Interfilm, which carried many Martino productions at the time. Some sources date the film's Rome opening on 15 January 1971,^[26] but this may have been an industry event, as the general-interest press puts it on 11 February.^[30] It grossed ITL 612 million during its domestic run.^[31] In Spain, it was released by Regia Arturo González and opened in Madrid on 12 June 1972.^[29] It drew 536,503 admissions for a gross Pta 15.2 million in the country.^[26][32]

United States

In the U.S., the film was distributed by Gemini Films and Maron Releasing. It opened in New York City on 6 August 1971 as Next!. The U.S. release was credited to MLR Films and Laurie International.^[26] For later dates, the film was retitled The Next Victim,^[33] although this was likely only a poster retitling.^[34]

Contemporary

Segnalazioni cinematografiche, a Catholic film magazine, summed up the movie as "an artificial and incongruous thriller, full of tropes and tasteless effects."^[35] A staff review for L'Unità dismissed the story as "a pretext to show buttocks and breasts" and noted that "[t]his Strange Vice does not belong to Mrs. Wardh (obvious victim of the husband who wants to cash in on insurance money) but to some directors (in this case Sergio Martino), whose mental vice is considering the audience like a mass of idiots".^[36] R.B. of El Adelantado de Segovia found the Spanish title just as hyperbolic, yet representative of a tale "too cluttered, too far-fetched, too clumsy in its execution—full of dead air, staging flaws, etc.—and too boring, so that it only starts to work and become somewhat interesting in the last ten minutes. It's not worth making these kinds of co-productions, really."^[37] A.M.T. of La Vanguardia española granted that "poor Mrs. Ward is by no means that perverse" and that the film had "moments where it difficult for the viewer to grasp what's going on. However, it is filled with shocks, some of them chilling, much to the delight of those members of the audience who favor scary and violent films." As such, they concluded that it "quietly fulfills its artistic aspirations."^[38]

Robert L. Jerome of American magazine Cinefantastique deemed that the combination of Caroll Baker-style giallo and American influences resulted in a "largely unoriginal stew", lamenting that "the scripters attempt to pile twist upon twist in order to keep a few jumps ahead of the audience, which has anticipated the ending from reel one. The cast, left to the mercy of dubbing, looks more attractive than it sounds".^[39] Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News wrote that the Italian producers "made a gosh-awful mess in trying to make an American murder mystery type of film. She added that "[t]he plot wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so obvious. Europeans speaking for the American characters they portray are unintentionally funny. Edwige Fenech is a very beautiful actress, playing a very stupid woman. The cameraman gives so many closeups of her he retards suspense to the point of boredom."^[40]

Retrospective

Donald Guarisco of AllMovie assessed that "Sergio Martino's first entry into Italy's giallo genre delivers everything this style of thriller requires and then some", calling it "a skillful example of how the giallo can be a head-spinning experience in style over substance."^[41] Adrian Smith of Cinema Retro praised "an entertaining thriller which continues to enthrall and fascinate fans". He found the plot "an interesting blend of Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) and Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955), with more red herrings and plot twists than an M. Night Shyamalan film." However, he conceded that Fenech was frequently seen "running around looking scared or confused, seemingly to pad out the running time".^[42]

Special screenings

The film was shown during the 61st Venice Festival in 2004, as part of a selection of Italian genre films curated by Quentin Tarantino and Joe Dante.^[49][50] It also received a screening at the 2001 Sitges Festival.^[51]

Home media

GVR Realvision of Italy^[52][26] and Major Video of Spain brought the film to domestic videocassette.^[53][54] A U.S. tape arrived in 1984 through Regal Video, as Blade of the Ripper.^[55][56] That edition suffered from a very poor video transfer and new, digitally composited credits, but retained most of the violence.^[57][34] Video Gems reissued it in 1985 as The Next Victim.^[58] That version boasted higher visual fidelity but excised much of the graphic content.^[34]

In 2005, the film was reissued by Alan Young Home Video of Italy, based on a recent digital master used for the Venice Festival screening.^[50] This was billed as its DVD premiere.^[59] A U.S. edition arrived the same year from NoShame Films.^[26] In 2017, U.K. label Shameless Screen Entertainment released what was billed as its Blu-ray premiere.^[42] Later that year, Cecchi Gori Entertainment launched a crowd funding campaign for an Italian special edition Blu-ray in collaboration with genre magazine Nocturno, but it was not successful.^[60] U.S. distributor Severin Films brought its own Blu-ray to market in 2020.^[28]

Photonovels

The film was adapted into photonovels in the 4 October 1971 issue of Italian magazine Cinesex attualità, and in the November 1977 edition of the French magazine CinEscandale.^[26][61] The latter was translated into English and reprinted by distributor Severin in 2020, to coincide with their Blu-ray reissue of the film.^[62]

Conference

In 2015, an international academic conference entitled "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and the Giallo" was hosted around the film in Rome. It was organized by the Austrian Historical Institute, Sheffield Hallam University and the Cineteca Nazionale.^[63][64][65]

Related works

Fenech went on to do three more gialli for producer-turned-husband Luciano Martino in 1971–72: All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Bloody Iris and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, whose title was derived from a scene in this movie, although it is not a sequel. All of these were written or co-written by Gastaldi. Two were directed by Sergio Martino and featured Ivan Rassimov as another threatening figure. Two of them co-starred George Hilton. Hilton also starred in the Martinos' The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971), a similar insurance story filmed right after this one, but from which Fenech was absent.^[66]

Unofficial remakes

An unlicensed remake was made in Turkey in 1972 as Aşka Susayanlar: Seks ve Cinayet (lit. 'Thirsty for Love: Sex and Murder'), as part of a trend of appropriation of Italian material by the local film industry.^[67] Another Turkish version, Çırpınış (lit. 'Spasms'), was released in 1980 and takes a more pornographic tone.^[7][68] The 1995 giallo, The Strange Story of Olga O., which was co-written by Gastaldi, also revisits some elements of this film.^[7][69] The ice cube trick makes a reappearance in another giallo produced by the Martinos in 1994, La ragazza di Cortina.^[16]