Sergio Martino's 1970 Giallo The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh (released in North America as Next!) is a fantastic blend of Hitchcockian suspense and exploitative sex and violence all wrapped up in one of the slickest looking cinemtographic packages of its time.

The film follows Mrs. Julie Wardh (the absolutely gorgeous Edwige Fenech of Martino's later Giallo, All The Colors Of The Dark), the wife of a prominent diplomat named Neil Wardh (Alberto De Mendoza of Lucio Fulci's A Lizard In A Woman's Skin) living with her husband in Austria. He spends much of his time at the office and as such, she gets quite lonely despite the fact that she does love him. Part of the reason that she married him though was because she needed a buffer from her possibly insane ex-boyfriend, Jean (Ivan Rassimov of Eaten Alive) with whom she shared a very unusual and rather sadomasochistic relationship.

One night at a party, Julie is introduced to a swinging socialite of a hipster named George (played by George Hilton, also of All The Colors Of The Dark as well as a zillion other Giallos and Spaghetti Westerns of the time). George falls for Julie right away and despite her best intentions at the start of their friendship, soon she begins to reciprocate his affection and the two begin an affair. Unfortunately for Julie, there's a sexually predatory maniac on the loose who really digs slicing and dicing up pretty young women just like herself and it looks like he's got his eyes on her. When her best friend Carol (Conchita Airoldi who would also work with Martino again a few years later with her turn in Torso) ends up dead from a chance encounter with his straight razor Julie really begins to panic and she'll have to play her cards right if she wants to stay alive. To make matters worse for our pour heroine, someone has seen her in bed with George and is now in the process of blackmailing her to ensure that her husband doesn't find out about her extracurricular activities.

The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh has all the prime elements that are associated with the Giallo genre – good looking (and often naked) women, a jazzy psychedelic score (provided by Nora Orlandi and resurrected in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill), bloody murder set pieces, and plenty of fancy Euro-trash looking sets and locations. Martino directs the film with enough psychedelic flair to capture all the character and charm of his performers but pays enough attention to where they're actually performing to give the movie a very nice, slick, polished look. The camera movements are (with the exception of a few trippy sequences) very fluid and overall, this movie just looks great. Great care was obviously taken in the lighting of the film, especially the first murder in the dark where we only see bits and pieces of the action, and the color scheme is at times almost surreal.

Aside from the exceptional look the film has, The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh also benefits greatly from an excellent cast of genre regulars. Ivan Rassimov is great as the perverted ex-boyfriend, chewing through the scenery with plenty of sleaze appeal. George Hilton is as charming and suave in this film as he ever was, working his moves on Julie like a seasoned professional. But the real star here is Edwige Fenech – she's a gorgeous looking woman with decent acting chops to boot and this makes her the perfect period Euro-Scream-Queen. Her eyes portray enough emotion that even in the scenes where she doesn't have a lot of dialogue you're still able to tell what her character is feeling.

Video:

The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh receives an exemplary 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that looks so good at times you'll have trouble believing that the film was made thirty five years ago. The film has been re-mastered from the original negative and it just looks great. Print damage is almost completely non-existent save for a speck or two noticeable in a few scenes. Aside from a hint of film grain in a few of the darker scenes, this transfer is pretty close to perfect. Edge enhancement isn't a problem and there are no issues with mpeg compression artifacts. The colors look very nice and quite bold and the flesh tones look very life like. The black levels stay strong and deep and don't get murky at all.