Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key [1972]

"Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key"--that, lieblings, is a pickup line that might actually work, depending on the crowd you run with. I will not deny that my curiosity would be piqued--it hits just the right notes of confidence and kink blended with admirably poetic phrase-turning. Of course, since that phrase was attached to an eerily threatening floral arrangement in "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" and is also the title of a Sergio Martino-helmed giallo, that window of opportunity has closed, never to be opened again. Sorry, would-be wooers--it's back to the drawing board for you!

A tricky bit of business that could easily have been a hot mess of a movie, "Your Vice..." juggles a twisty plot, despicable characters, and heaps of sex to create a gleefully misanthropic film that seizes the viewer's attention and doesn't let up through the final frame. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," a grisly story of murder and fixation, "Your Vice..." giallo-fies the tale in a manner that's over-the-top enough to delight the most jaded fans of Italo-thrillers. OH--and the story actually makes sense, so PLUS TEN for that!

Frustrated author Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli) is living in his decaying familial mansion with his fragile wife Irina (Anita Stridberg). Obsessed with the memory of his dead mother, an actress known as much for her portrayals of Shakespearean villainesses as for her hearty sexual appetites, Oliviero tries to dull the pain of his writer's block by inviting the hippies that camp near his villa to drug-and-alcohol-fueled orgies. In addition to nurturing a dubious J&B habit (seriously--the shit is delivered by the case to his home), Oliviero is a misogynist and a racist* who emotionally and physically torments his wife and carries on a not-entirely-consensual relationship with his maid. Honestly, the only good thing I can say about Oliviero is that he has an affectionate relationship with his mother's plot point--erm, CAT, Satan. When women linked to Oliviero start turning up butchered, it's not a real leap o' logic to assume he's responsible, and the police do exactly that. The movie would have been interesting enough if it judt followed Irina, the terrified wife, trying to uncover the truth behind the murders. But, much like a Ginsu Knife spokesman, this film urges you to WAIT! Because there is, indeed, more--"more" in the form of Floriana, played by Edwige Fenech, a woman so beautiful that it's actually kind of boring to discuss how beautiful she is. Floriana is the sexually rapacious niece of Oliviero, and she wastes no time in hooking up with... well, with everyone except for the cat, really. Is Floriana just a free-spirited hippie, or are there other motives behind her seemingly indiscriminate liaisons?

*Everyone in this movie is a flaming racist, and I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there's some very uncomfortable dialogue in which the maid is repeatedly described as "dirty." While Oliviero's character clearly has power issues and his racism underscores this trait, I found it profoundly unnecessary to have each and every character utter some sort of racial slur. Sure, they're all assholes in one way or another, but they didn't need to share that particular assholic trait. That having been addressed, there are folks far more equipped than I am to discuss the issue of race in European genre cinema in more detail, and I encourage those authors to write those examinations.

"Your Vice..." is a mean-spirited stunner of a film. Much in the same way that the Price/Corman Poe adaptations are documents of the era in which they were made, this thriller views Poe's work through a lens unique to its time and place. By placing the tale in the context of the counterculture revolution, it allows the filmmaker to explore themes of shifting morality, social tension, free love, and... frankly, not-so-free love. The film is skillfully structured from the opening scene, which finds Oliviero and Irina in the thick of a hippie bacchanal. The once-pristine dining room is littered with bottles and the linens are pushed askew, and Irina is shrinking from her husband's ranting. The hippies are whispering about Oliviero's obsession with his mother, and thus the entire backstory is established and the viewer is smack in the middle of the mystery. It's a brilliant way of establishing the story without clunky exposition or visual cliches.

The mise en scene isn't the flashiest from this era, but as was the case with "What Have You Done to Solange?," the subdued color palate and style suit the story and add a different flavor to the film. The cinematography is less frenetic than it is in other Martino gialli, lacking the fisheye madness of "All the Colors of the Dark" or the psychedelica of "Strange Vice," but there is some elegant cross-fading in the lesbian scene shared by Floriana and Irina, and some occasional POV enhances the murder scenes. The costuming here is thoughtful, with Floriana's schoolgirl style, Oliviero's array of patterned sweaters, and Irina's pink wrap dresses providing visual cues that sketch each character accordingly--the flirty student, the troubled author, the delicate woman. The Rouvigny estate is authentically decayed, from the worm-eaten wood to what looks like traces of mold along the baseboards. Between this dilapidation and the intimations of incest between Mom and Son Rouvigny, perhaps there's a sly nod to Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" present, as well.

While this is a limited-cast giallo (as close as the Italians can bear to get to a Locked Room Mystery), there are some cameo characters who appear to add texture and weirdness. There's the madame and her ingenue whore who arrive at the train station where Oliviero and Irina wait for Floriana. En-hot-pantsed and bewigged, these outrageous women would not seem out of place in a John Waters film. In his too-brief appearance, Ivan Rassimov looks suitably sinister in a leather trench coat and a white wig that would look absurd on anyone less striking. Consider yourselves warned--you better be Dirk Bogarde hott to even attempt to pull off a white wig.

This is a Rorshach Test: Pussy joke or LOLcat?

A film with that wears its dubious morality on its sleeve, "Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key" is a tasty bit of giallo goodness. Kinky and cruel, it lives up to its purple prose title and will surely satisfy the appetites of Eurotrash fans.

Check out more grooviness from "Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key" in the Flickr gallery.