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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.

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.

A Murderous Affair is an early 90's Made-For-TV movie which depicts the true story involving Caroylin Warmus and her crime of passion.

We see man named Paul leaving his wife late at night to go out bowling. During his night out, his wife is shot to death by an unknown assailant. After we see that, Paul meets Carolyn at a bar to continue in an affair with her that he's been carrying on with for a while. The film eventually takes us into how the affair started and how Carolyn got herself integrated into Paul's family by having dinner with them for example. Police begin to gather evidence against her and that's when they put her on trial for the murder of Jeanne Solomon.

A Murderous Affair is such an early 90's made for TV movie. We get the sax solos and jazz numbers playing as background music, smoky bars/rooms, etc. Aside from that, it made Carolyn Warmus look like a needy self-absorbed woman desperate for men's attention. I don't know enough about the true story and what came out in court, but that is the direction this movie wanted to take us in. That she was a devious woman and Paul was an innocent man taken in by her charms and sexuality.

The acting was good enough. Virginia Madsen was a very sexual and sensual Carolyn Warmus, which seems to be a fit from what I read of the true story. Chris Sarandon was solid in a role that didn't have much to do. William H. Macy played the prosecutor and was good as well, but nothing to write home about. The character development is what lacked here. I wanted to learn more about Carolyn Warmus and her family life and background. We got very little of that which made me wonder why she was the way she was.

A Murderous Affair started well, but fell apart in the later half leading up to the trial. We got nothing in terms of character development and as to why Carolyn would commit such a crime other than she was jealous of Paul's wife. There was definitely more to uncover, but this depiction stuck to the basics and followed the trail of murder scene, police investigation, and trial.

5/10

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.