Pierre David’s psycho-thrillers have become so numerous that they tend to slip into an easy formula and The Perfect Wife is no different – a stranger inveigles their way into a household seeking revenge and proceeds to tear apart the life of their intended target; there is a predictable range of victims along the way, including the person from the psycho avenger’s past, who get eliminated, with all but the target of the revenge being the last one to work out what is going on. Within this same basic formula David’s films have become increasingly better at what they do and as such The Perfect Wife proves a fair and reasonable outing.

Don E. Fauntleroy, better known as a cinematographer and often credited as Don E. FauntLeRoy, does a fair job, although doesn’t quite tune the suspense as tensely as some of David’s better films. There’s not quite enough tension generated in the scenes where Shannon Sturges is interrupted in the process of killing people. Although there’s a nasty scene with Sturges attacking Michele Greene in an SUV with a syringe, and Fauntleroy does mount a reasonable climax with Sturges trying to kill Perry King with carbon monoxide poisoning in his car, followed by a fadeout that becomes an ironic twist on the opening of the film. And there’s a fine jolt at the start where we go from Shannon Sturges having tried to switch off the monitor of accident victim Michele Greene at the hospital only to be interrupted, where Fauntleroy cuts to one year later where we now see Sturges married to Perry King, the same doctor who let her brother die. In the title role Shannon Sturges has a certain immaculately beautiful blonde blandness, which does lend to some quite effective moments, like seeing her whisper endearments, “Ssssh, let go, Mr Gleason. Ssssh,” while smothering Michael Fairman with a pillow.

Pierre David also has a habit of recruiting former tv stars to topline his films. The Perfect Wife features Perry King, the former star of Riptide (1984-6), one season of Melrose Place (1992-9) and various mid-1980s glossy soap opera mini-series. Perry King has also appeared in several Pierre David films, including A Clean Kill/Her Married Lover (1999), Stranger at the Door (2004) and The Perfect Neighbor. As with many of the stars that David recruits, Perry King also takes an Associate Producer role on The Perfect Wife. While all give decent performances, the show is fairly much stolen by a supporting appearance from Michele Greene, another former tv star best known as a regular on L.A. Law (1986-94), who quite fires the film up when she makes a surprise appearance at midpoint as a blackmailing tramp.