YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972)

Directed by Sergio Martino, Starring: Luigi Pistilli, Edwige Fenech, Anita Strindberg. Horror, Italy, 1972, 96mins, Cert 18.

Out of the five giallos Sergio Martino directed in the early 1970’s, YOUR VICE... brings to the banquet table a ripe feast of art house sensibility infused with spicy soft-core sex, and topped off with occasional morsels of giallo violence.

Oliviero Rouvigny (Pistilli) resides in a crumbling country villa, spending most of the time hosting decadent parties for the local hippies, whilst publically humiliating his wife Irina (Strindberg) as his once flourishing literary career slips ever further away. After his mistress, a former student, is found brutally slain with a sickle, Oliviero becomes the number one suspect. Things get even worse for Oliviero when his maid is also brutally slain in his mansion. In order to avoid further suspicion he walls the body up in the cellar. The murders don’t stop there however, and Oliviero’s life gets even more complicated with the sudden arrival of his beautiful niece Floriana (Fenech) who wastes no time in bedding not only his wife, but also the local delivery man before turning her irresistible charms on Oliviero himself! Throughout all this, lurking reproachfully in the shadows is his beloved black cat Satan – despised by wife Irina – who seems to be licking its chops at the cage containing Irina’s precious white doves...

Indebted to ‘The Black Cat’ by Edgar Allen Poe, but also influenced by Clouzot’s 1955 psychological thriller LES DAIBOLIQUES, director Martino’s hybrid giallo, perhaps not as well known as TORSO, is nevertheless a fascinating thriller with a host of juicy elements thrown into the pot.

Whilst the murder set-pieces are efficient enough, they almost seem perfunctory to the film. It’s as if Martino is more interested in exposing the psychological underbelly of his characters rather than opening up flesh wounds. Not that isn’t an abundance of (female) flesh on display, most notably that of Anita Strindberg’s Irina and the mesmerizingly beautiful Edwige Fenech as the sexually-liberated Floriana who waltzes into the villa after half an hour and owns the film as she disrobes both physically and psychological, all those around her. Both actresses are given meaty roles beyond the usual giallo victim confines however, and both rise to the occasion with Strindberg’s transformation key to the plot, and Fenech, playing the sexual catalyst rather than the usual innocent prey with a deliciously infectious allure. 

There are some startlingly effective visual flourishes conjured up by Martino and his cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando, taking full advantage of the lush Italian countryside and crumbling villa to create some visually arresting compositions. Editor Attilio Vincioni seems to be having great fun punctuating the narrative with jump-cut close-ups of black cat Satan’s ever watchful gaze, and there’s a standout sequence involving a motorbike ride feverishly cut with glimpses of a glamorous roadside advertising hoarding. A lushly haunting harpsichord and string score by Bruno Nicolai stirs up proceedings with a melodic spoon without overly ladling the recipe.

The typically twisty narrative is laced with some richly ribald dialogue, for example, when Oliviero tries to break off a date with his gorgeous ex-student mistress Fausta, she reminds him that: “You started working on me over the desks at high school sir, and now you’ll pay the price!” And who can resist a film which serves up (literally): “Satan loves sheep’s eyes”.

Whilst the film’s title, (taken from a note passed to a character in Martino’s earlier giallo THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH) makes little sense to me in terms of the story – how about ‘Don’t Torment a Cat’? (ha ha) – it offers up a fascinating slice of early 70’s Italian cinema. YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM...which deserves to be reopened and re-evaluated, and thanks to Arrow’s splendid HD transfer, now it can be. 

****(out of 5*)

Paul Worts

(Originally published on the FrightFest website)