Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
Dir. Sergio Martino
Alcoholic writer Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli, Bay of Blood) and his long-suffering wife Irina (Anita Strindberg, Lizard in a Woman's Skin) live an isolated, self-destructive existence in their crumbling villa. When Oliviero’s mistress is the first victim in a series of vicious murders, he becomes the prime suspect – and when his niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech, Strip Nude for Your Killer) suddenly arrives for a visit, things become increasingly complicated as a series of double-crossings and shifting character dynamics add to the air of stifling paranoia. Irina finds comfort in Floriana’s arms – and bed – and the two decide to bump off Oliviero, Diabolique-style. Throw in a few lesbian sex scenes, an ominous and seemingly ubiquitous black cat, lush gothic trimmings, several vicious murders, and you have a fantastically moody giallo that rates right up there with the best of ‘em.
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key – the absurdly extravagant title of which comes from a note written to the titular protagonist in Sergio Martino’s first giallo, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh - is a very loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s feverish tale of psychological turmoil and revenge, “The Black Cat.” While the film certainly explores themes from that story, it is really only in the third act that it obviously mines the source material. Elsewhere Martino is content to mount an increasingly suspenseful and character-driven murder mystery which successfully sets itself apart from other gialli by boasting unusual gothic influences and a morbid atmosphere, heavily pregnant with connotations of madness, decay, incest and shades of necrophilia.
Your Vice is predominantly character-driven and the various dynamics between the three protagonists are constantly shifting. The opening scene establishes the abusive relationship between Oliviero and Irina. In the middle of a party Oliviero proceeds to humiliate an already edgy Irina by forcing her to drink a cocktail made up of his guests’ unfinished drinks. When Floriana comes on the scene, the dynamic is shifted once she seduces and comforts Irina, trying to convince her to kill Oliviero. Later on we realise that Floriana is bedding him too and is playing the couple off against one another, hopping from one bed to the next. Ernesto Gastaldi’s screenplay works to build up suspicion and doubt around everyone. Also typical of Martino’s gialli, there are several murderers with different motives working in tandem which adds to the mystery and arguably convoluted plot – but hey, it keeps things ticking over nicely. One of the killers essentially holds no significance to the overall story aside from helping to up the body count, cast more suspicion on Oliviero and provide several moody and tautly mounted death scenes.
Incest and necrophilia supply the film with an odd subtext, which helps to flesh out the characters and add to their perverted traits. Heavy allusions to the incestuous relationship between Oliviero and his domineering mother pierce proceedings. When the party guests of the opening scene have left, Irina, decked out in Oliviero’s mother’s resplendent gown, quizzes Oliviero about his relationship with his mother and is subsequently raped by him. Floriana also uses the gown to seduce him, and in one of the standout set pieces, the maid Brenda also dons the gown after tip-toeing around the house one night when she hears what sounds like a cat wailing. She masturbates in front of a mirror while Oliviero spies on her, and she is soon terrified by strange noises and the raging storm outside. Panicking, she flees and is killed at the top of the stairs by an unseen assailant. Her mutilated corpse is walled up in the cellar by Oliviero, who believes that the police will suspect him of her murder. The strange mix of typical giallo imagery (black leather gloved hands wielding sharp implements) and gothic trappings (the gown, the thunderstorm) creates an overblown, heady moment.
The film retains a sparse look, with the sprawling feel of the vast and crumbling villa and the manner in which Martino’s camera prowls around it creating a sense of foreboding and unnamed menace. Bruno Nicolai’s haunting score also enhances the strangely gothic ambiance, as do the various scenes of a wide-eyed and nightgown clad Strindberg tiptoeing through the dark hallways – evoking imagery of bygone Italian gothic horrors by the likes of Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda. In typical Poe fashion, the villa in which the story unfolds is a manifestation of the psychological disintegration of its inhabitants. The film also abounds with nods to the likes of Hitchcock’s gothic melodrama Rebecca (1940) and Freda’s dark necrophilia romance The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock, especially in its use of the portrait of Oliviero’s dead mother which serves as a reminder of the past and all the dank secrets forever entombed within it. A creepy moment that would later be echoed in Kubrick’s The Shining, is also a sly throwback to the moment in so many past gothic horrors where a character hears a musical instrument (actually a typewriter in this instance) being played in the night, and upon investigating, finds no one there…In this instance, a chilling discovery is made.
The film is bolstered by strong performances. As the tormented Irina, Anita Strindberg is very convincing, and her seeming descent into madness is compelling, while Edwige Fenech plays against her usual giallo heroine type as the scheming, manipulative Floriana. Luigi Pistilli portrays Oliviero as a tortured artist, locked in an abusive relationship with his wife, whom he punishes for his own shortcomings. Sadly, Ivan Rassimov as a mysterious stalker is criminally underused, and really only shows up properly towards the end...
Martino’s gialli are vastly entertaining, stylish, atmospheric and slickly produced works. All of them were experimental in their own way and featured many memorable, stand out moments – odd that they are so often overlooked when it comes to Italian horror cinema. Your Vice is one of his most striking and a must for any giallo fan.
