A Murderous Affair: The Carolyn Warmus Story (1992) Online

The case of Carolyn Warmus, a beautiful teacher who was accused of murdering the wife of her boyfriend, a co-worker, resulted in a three-year, two-trial case. In fact, Warmus maintains her innocence to this day, and there were some weaknesses in the prosecution's case. But none of this gets noticed. Virginia Madsen gives a respectable performance as Warmus, but the script is of the tabloid trash variety. The scene where she comes on to him is so ludicrous, it would embarrass a first-time screenwriter. I didn't watch the whole film, it was so dull. In fact, even though it was based on a real life case, it plays like fourth-rate crime fiction. All one can do after watching this is to wonder what really happened. Too bad.

As a longtime fan of Virginia Madsen, I have always felt that she could have done better than playing all of these 'femme-fatales' during that part of her career which includes this.

However, I have since learned that Virginia's influences in her acting were Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis, both masters of film noir.

Perhaps this finally explains this phase of her career, and therefore may deserve some sort of reassessment, so I may be back soon and do some editing here and other places on IMDb.

As for this film, she seems to have captured the essence of Carolyn Warmus, and since it is currently being rerun on the Lifetime Movie Network and may finally be on DVD in this country, others may now come to appreciate her work, now that her career seems to be back on track.

Director Martin Davidson has to be congratulated for being one of the few who has made Virginia Madsen look bad, and for presenting a story supposedly centred on a true life woman, with frustrating ambiguity and a general lack of skill.

Madsen plays Carolyn Warmus, a Greenville Springs New York school teacher who is accused of the murder of Betty Jean Solomon (Lenore Kasdorf), the wife of her lover and fellow school teacher Paul Solomon (Chris Sarandon).

The teleplay makes Paul the prime suspect until the narrative skips to Carolyn's stalking of him once he stops seeing her after Betty Jean is killed. Making Paul a womaniser is an interesting plot development, however writers Earl & Pamela Wallace and Davidson never add enough depth or characterisation to Carolyn to suggest that she is the murderer she goes on trial for being. Flashback memory is used clumsily in response to police interrogation of various people for the backstory, and the touches of Carolyn's relationship with her father in a pre-credit sequence and via his appearance at her 2nd trial are slight. This seeming unmotivated entrapment of Carolyn by the police is also highlighted by their insensitive ridicule of her during a search of her home. Paul is given a speech to Carolyn's defence attorney that no judge would ordinarily allow, and Betty Jean is shown to sleep whilst a war movie plays loudly on her television.

Matters aren't helped by Davidson's plodding direction, and cliched use of black & white, slow motion, tilted camera, lighting for flashbacks, and the overuse of saxophone to represent Carolyn's sexuality. Although he does use an interesting stylisation for Carolyn's hearing pleas and sentencing, otherwise Davidson paints her in the broadest possible strokes, where Madsen overplays being a femme fatale, and is particularly ridiculous in a montage of her being photographed. She only manages subtlety when looking at herself in the mirror on 2 occasions, where her sultriness is not forced, in a scene of anger and in some of her silent reactions at the trial. Davidson also strangely provides a lot of footage of Sarandon's bare and sweaty torso, though once works against an expectation, as the water splash from a pool where he sunbakes comes from a fat lady.

There are two versions of Carolyn Warmus' story - this one and another 1992 version starring Jenny Robertson and Joe Penny. So Carolyn doesn't beat out Amy Fisher, of whom it was said, "Jesus Christ didn't have that many movies made of his life."

This TV movie, starring Virginia Madsen and Chris Sarandon, is superior to the other, which isn't saying too awfully much. The cast is definitely better. Though I am a fan of Joe Penny's, I never considered Robertson much of an actress; however, in recent years, now that she is more in the leading lady stage of her career, she is much better. Both films portray Carolyn as a man magnet with a great body and loads of sex appeal. In both versions, much is made of her grand, electric entrance into the courtroom on the first day of her trial. This film has one thing the other lacked - the real-life character of Vincent Parco, the detective who sold Carolyn the murder weapon (with a silencer). For an important figure in the case, it's strange that he isn't a character in the Robertson-Penny movie. I actually have spoken with Vincent Parco, so I admit to finding this version more interesting.

Without going into enormous detail, Warmus is the woman suspected of killing her boyfriend's wife, Betty Jean Solomon. At first, her boyfriend is the chief suspect. Eventually the focus falls on Carolyn.

I thought Madsen was great showing how unstable and obsessive Carolyn was, trashing a room and stalking Carlin and his wife in Puerto Rico (in flashback). Chris Sarandon, as Michael Carlin, the guilt-ridden, overwrought, cheating husband, is very good.

Peter Haskell, another favorite of mine, plays Carolyn's father in flashback. He's uncredited. Ned Eisenberg, another favorite and a good actor is the detective assigned to the case.

So for me, the dice are loaded in favor of this version. Both are routine, and as we know, the beautiful and talented Madsen has gone on to much better.

This film was made in the early 90's and it seems that was a time (before reality TV glutted the market) and when subject matter was scarce, so audiences were treated with "ripped from the headlines" type Lifetime movies. Some were okay, some not. A few (though not many) were memorable.

This falls into the forgettable category. Virginia Madsen is worth watching, although the little "get-up" costumes she wears are blatantly obvious and one-dimensional. Surely the director must know of other ways to portray a flirtatious and narcissistic woman other than the little tennis dress and obsession with stuffed animals - silly.

Chris Sarandon is in a thankless role, Lenore Kasdorf as the executed wife. Basically the story does not reveal Warmus' motives, (other than the flat notion that she was jealous). A tired idea, unless the audience is shown WHY she is the way she is; perhaps it was based in childhood?. There is a brief clip of Warmus' childhood, but no depth, no inference. We do not care about the characters.

By the time we get to the courtroom scene, we have lost interest. William H. Macy as prosecutor does nothing to redeem the film. This film with the material, could have been interesting. First we need to care about the characters. Many films may not be masterpieces but if we CARE about the outcome, the story becomes worthwhile. Not so in this case.

Actually, I don't live near it, but I live in the same exact state, N.Y. I saw this movie on Lifetime and taped it. I like Virginia Madsen and thought she did a great job performing as Carolyn Warmus. Carolyn Warmus, was a spoiled, self-centered, rotten person who did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, thought whatever she wanted, said whatever she wanted and thought of no one except herself. I think she should have been sentenced to death for her crime. She is obviously someone who needs to grow up and accept no for an answer. I saw the other movie about her too, The Dangers of Love: The Carolyn Warmus Story, and Fatal Attraction. I also read the book Crimes of Passion which has her featured in it and Fatal Attraction Murder: The Case of Carolyn Warmus.

I am a great fan of USA TV films and notably courtroom dramas. Saw this one a couple of years ago on DVD in the UK and on paper the plot sounded interesting so I went ahead and bought it. Do not know whether it is fictional or based on some true life court case. Whatever the outcome, the name Caroline Warmus is totally unknown here in Europe. I was very disappointed by this film. There is a murder and two possible suspects. Either the dead woman's husband or his lover. There is no evidence to support either one more than the other. The acting in the film is atrocious, be it the main actors or even worse, those playing the roles of the police. The dialogues just did not ring true and you felt that the director was just doing this to earn a few extra dollars. The only redeeming quality is the sexiness of the actress Madsen who plays Warmus. Both of the other actors ( man and assasinated wife ) are most unattractive and man's dialogue totally unconvincing. Who is this actor ?? I have played the film three times, hoping to like it more on successive viewings but my opinion remains unchanged. At the end of the film we learn that Warmus was condemned for the murder but I could not find a single shred of evidence justifying this. I thought that tangible proof was needed to condemn someone, but in this case it seems to have been done on intuition or flair - which in my opinion is pushing it !Anyway, all this is too much and too perverted for my natural logic and whilst I appreciate that others like me may find Warmus sexy and attractive, the film itself is actually a total waste of time.

I disliked this 1992 melodrama for its writing, direction and performances by almost everyone in the cast. I'm not a Virginia Madsen fan, what else has she done, and this movie is an example of her work. First of all she should stop trying to be a Sharon Stone imitation, for Stone certainly has more appeal in the looks department. And she should learn to act, other than gyrating and posturing all over the place. Her entrance in the tennis outfit had to be a joke, right? Then we have an equally bad performance from Chris Sarandon, who plays a better vampire, as a weakling of a husband who doesn't seem to have any guts at all. He whines and cries throughout the film. I had wished the dame had knocked him off instead, he was that annoying. Two redeeming factors however remain in the film. William H. Macy, who I usually don't like, does well as the prosecuting attorney and Herb Mitchell, as the Judge at the trial, was excellent. I cheered when he told the dame to shut up and sit down in court. This is a bad bad movie and a waste of time, believe me.