Severin Films exposes THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH with their Blu-ray of Sergio Martino's trendsetting giallo.

The return from Washington D.C. to Vienna of diplomat Neil Wardh (Alberto De Mendoza, HORROR EXPRESS) and his wife Julie (Edwige Fenech, PHANTOM OF DEATH) coincides with the killing spree of a razor-wielding sex fiend. Left alone by her busy husband to wile the days away shopping and the nights at parties, Julie is disturbed by the reappearance in her life of ex-lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov, SPASMO) with whom she had a sadomasochistic relationship that enabled her own blood fetish with beatings and slashings with broken glass. Although she rebuffs his advances, Jean continues to pursue her. She finds comfort in the arms (and bed) of Australian playboy George (George Hilton, MY DEAR KILLER), the long-lost distant cousin of her best friend Carol (Christina Airoldi, TORSO) whose "specialty is courting women in the presence of their husbands." When Julie receives a call from someone trying to blackmail her by threatening to tell Neil about her dalliances with George, Carol goes to meet the blackmailer in her place and turns up as the next victim of the slasher. Julie accuses Jean of being the killer but he has a seemingly watertight alibi. When the killer makes another attempt on Julie's life, George whisks her off to Spain, but the attempts on her life continue and she starts to distrust all of the men in her life.

The first and most popular giallo helmed by Sergio Martino, THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH was mounted in the wake of the critical and financial success of Dario Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Martino had previously served as production manager on two earlier gialli produced by his brother Luciano and starring Caroll Baker: Romolo Guerrieri's THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH (also with Hilton) and SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE. While the film features a black-gloved, razor-wielding killer and a body count, WARDH was more of an attempt to continue the thriller formula with less expensive but appealing stars; as such, it's handling of the Argento giallo aspects like the killing sequences and police procedural scenes is given somewhat short shrift in favor of the "chamber giallo" aspects of the aforementioned films as scripted here by regular collaborator Ernesto Gastaldi (LIBIDO) with a greater interest in the love triangle and gaslighting while pushing the investigating police commissioner (Carlo Alighiero, THE CAT O'NINE TAILS) and Julie's concerned doctor (Manuel Gil, THE ROBBERS) given little to do until the climax. In spite of this, the plot twists work for the most part and the preoccupation with melodrama allows for more nudity and sex than one would see in an Argento film of the period, as well as more picturesque backdrops for the jet-setting characters. Martino, credited cinematographer Emilio Foriscot (FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR), and regular operator and future DP Giancarlo Ferrando (IRONMASTER) stage Julie's flashbacks and paranoid, sadomasochistic nightmares inventively with stark lighting, shifting focus, whip pans, and slow motion with the accompaniment of the un-Morricone-esque yowling scoring of Nora Orlandi (DOUBLE FACE), a vocalist who had contributed some Edda dell'Orso-like accompaniment to the Stelvio Cipriani's scores for DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS and THE DEVIL WITH SEVEN FACES.

Released theatrically by Maron Films as NEXT! in a version shorn of pretty much all of the nudity and gore, this was the version that ended up on VHS by Video Gems in a panned-and-scanned and squeezed print while the uncut English version turned up as BLADE OF THE RIPPER on such labels as Saturn Productions and Regal Video in a squeezed, cropped, and grainy, grotty transfer without credits. Gray market mail order label European Trash Cinema created a composite of the English audio and a semi-letterboxed Italian sell-through tape in the 1990s but NoShame came to the rescue in 2005 with a DVD featuring a PAL-converted anamorphic transfer of an HD master created from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative with English and Italian audio tracks, English subtitles, and extras. In 2010, MYA reissued the same transfer as BLADE OF THE RIPPER minus the extras and no subtitles for brief bits where the English reverted to Italian. Shameless followed with a UK DVD featuring the same master (without NTSC conversion artifacts) and some of its own extras.

Shameless was first to the gate with a Blu-ray release derived from a 1080p scan that looked okay for the most part although somewhat paler than NoShame transfer. filmArt in Germany used the same master for their English-friendly edition as well. Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 transfer from a 4K scan of the original 4-perf interpositive (rather than the 2-perf negative) looks quite different in some ways than others. The grading seems at first to be based on the NoShame master in some shots but not others, looking a tad warmer than the Shameless; however, there also appears to be some degradation in the interpositive in the form of a light yellow cast which makes the pale Fenech and fare Airoldi and Rassimov seem a little jaundiced whereas they just looked a bit more fleshy pink in the NoShame compared to the Shameless. The image also seems softer than the other master, which may be an effect of the original optical conversion from 2-perf to 4-perf along with the slight cropping along all four edges of the frame. It is more than watchable in the brighter scenes but darker scenes look a little flatter and the softness is more apparent. One wonders if Severin was either not able to access the 2-perf negative again or if they went with the interpositive because it had all of the color timing changes baked in. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono English and Italian tracks fare better overall apart from some sibilance issues with Fenech's dialogue on the English track, and there are English subtitles for the Italian track and SDH subtitles for the English. While Shameless translated the Freud quote on a black screen that interrupted the opening action, Severin has animated the text on a freeze frame like the Italian version.

Shameless and filmArt both ported NoShame's "Dark Fears Behind the Door" 2005 documentary with Martino, his producer brother Luciano Martino, actors Fenech and Hilton, and screenwriter Gastaldi while featuring different newer Martino interviews. Shameless also included a video essay on Fenech and a subtitled fact track. Severin has produced a new audio commentary by Kat Ellinger of Diabolique Magazine, the Daughters of Darkness podcast, and author of the book "All The Colors Of Sergio Martino." She discusses the earlier Luciano Martino gialli helmed by Umberto Lenzi (A QUIET PLACE TO KILL, SO SWEET SO PERVERSE) and Romolo Guerrieri (THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH) and notes that the film was not an imitation of Dario Argento's BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE although the success of that film did inspire changes from Gastaldi's other LES DIABOLIQUES-inspired thrillers with the Sergio Martino's addition of the sex killer. She also notes that Martino's gialli are more sexually perverse than those of Argento, and distinguishes Fenech's heroine from those of the aforementioned Carroll Baker gialli in her sexual fetishes and sadomasochism which harks back all the way to the Luciano Martino-produced/Gastaldi-scripted THE WHIP AND THE BODY directed by Mario Bava. She highlights Martino's artistry in the film and his other gialli and suggests that the director is not discussed in the light as Argento because he is a journeyman rather than an auteur. Ellinger also notes that Martino was stung by critical responses to his work back then but feels that current reassessment might be going too far in the other direction.