Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key

Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (1972)

Dir. Sergio Martino

Written by Adriano Bolzoni, Ernesto Gastaldi, Sauro Scavolini, loosely ripped off The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

Starring Anita Strindberg, Luigi Pistlili, Edwige Fenech

As you know, I usually stick to period-accurate posters here, but I love this Arrow Video blue-ray cover too much to hide it from you.

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (or, YVIALRAOIHTK, as it’s affectionately known around these parts) has one major thing going for it, and you already know what it is. The best title of any work of art, ever, of any medium, any genre, any era.* You agree on that, I agree on that, let’s move on. But what does it mean, you ask? Wrong question to ask of an Italian movie. The answer is just that it’s a line from THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WHARDH (aka BLADE OF THE RIPPER), a 1971 giallo from the same director, one Sergio Martino (TORSO, ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN). What does that have to do with anything? Again, wrong question. The answer is nothing. What’s the right question? Wrong question again. There is no right question. The right thing to do is not to ask questions, and just acknowledge that it’s Italy and go with it.

What you’ll be going with in YVISLRAOIHTK’s case is something of a chimera; part giallo, part Edgar Allan Poe adaptation (particularly of his 1843 short story The Black Cat), part Postman Always Rings Twice erotic noir, and part freewheeling softcore romp. While mixing violence, gothic horror, crime fiction and lurid sex is so common it might as well just be called “Italian cinema,” YVISLRAOIHTK stratifies those impulses apart from each other to a distressing degree, resulting in a rigidly segmented narrative structure that almost feels more like an anthology film than a cohesive story. It’s a bit of an awkward beast, and there are definitely parts which are pretty tedious and plodding, but I gotta admit: the big reveal, when it finally arrives, is surprisingly strong, boasting a cornucopia of pulpy noir twists welded gracelessly --but effectively-- to Poe’s misanthropic poetry of misery. And giallo mainstay Edwige Fenech (STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER**, PHANTOM OF DEATH) is constitutionally incapable of keeping her clothes on, so once she shows up you’re unlikely to be too bored.

Yeah, you see what I mean.

She doesn’t show up for a surprisingly long time, though, considering she gets top billing. The story is mainly concerned with Irina Rouvigny (Anita Strindberg, Fulci’s LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN), the miserable wife of Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, THE SEXORCIST [yes, that’s a real title, and it’s not even a porno***]) who, if I may be permitted to editorialize for just a moment, is a real piece of dogshit. He’s a abusive alcoholic writer obsessed with his dead mother, and spends most of his time holding debauched orgies where he humiliates his wife, racistly molesting his black maid (Angela La Vorgna, EMANUELLE AND JOANNA, a rogue non-Lara-Gemser EMANUELLE movie), nailing his former students, or just generally being a hateful fuckbag to everyone he encounters, with the sole exception of his beloved black cat, imaginatively named ‘Satan.’ When one of the many beautiful young women who are inexplicably having affairs with this irresistible catch of a man is murdered, he’s an obvious suspect, and becomes even more so after the maid is murdered and he gets Irina to help him cover it up.

So far so good for a standard giallo, but things take an unexpected twist near the start of the second act which pushes the plot in an entirely different direction-- especially once Oliviero’s sexually provocative French cousin Floriana (Fenech) shows up, and starts to systematically sleep with every established character and a few newly introduced ones, for reasons which are probably less than honorable. In fact, by comfortably the second half of the film, the most obvious elements of a giallo are entirely gone, replaced first a lengthy section of pretty much just different sex scenes, and subsequently with what turns out to be an agreeably nutso erotic noir with some wild twists, which even manages to generally hold together with some semblance of logic (I mean, compared to other sleazy noirs and giallos, not compared to reality. But still).

The first section --the standard giallo part-- is the worst, with one massively unlikable character, one passive victim, a good bit of cringy racism, and (SPOILER! what turns out to be a completely extraneous red herring killer -- the whole murder plot turns out to be completely unimportant and gets tidily resolved and forgotten about at right about the ⅓ point! END SPOILER). Once Floriana enters the picture, though, things pick up a bit as she brings a large dose of puckish chaos into the proceedings, while we’re left to guess at what game she’s playing. Fenech is certainly most known for being successfully naked, and she does not challenge that characterization here in any way, but I also note that she’s an unmistakably compelling screen presence, and her provocative, nebulous role is perfect for her to show off something other than her body. Her alert, calculating eyes and barely-submerged smirk bring some much-needed vivaciousness to a movie which up ‘til this point has trafficked only in one-dimensional downers.

In case you needed any more hints that this is pretty intense, the subtitles ensure even deaf viewers won't be left out of the crackling suspense:

Even so, I cannot tell a lie, it’s plotless softcore nonsense for a very long time before the other shoe drops, made much worse because the giallo-negating twist is dropped so early, leaving you to wonder “what exactly is this movie about, anyway?” for an uncomfortably long time. It gets there, but it would be better to get there a lot sooner. 96 minutes isn’t absurdly long for a giallo, but it can feel that way this time unless you’re significantly more absorbed in basic nudity than I am capable of being at this point in my life. Still, particularly in the beautiful Arrow Video blu-ray, the film looks nice, boasts a pristinely perfect giallo score by Bruno Nicolai (ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, EYEBALL, CALIGULA [!]), and features exactly that groovy mix of art and trash that you’d want in something like this. If it reserves most of its eccentricity for the final act, well, it’s an act worth waiting for, right down to the long-simmering reveal of in what possible way Poe could have influenced this freewheeling tale of amoral cousin-fucking. For a normal human being, it would probably be unbearable, but to the giallo faithful… well, you knew you were going to have to see it from the title alone, so the fact that it’s borderline watchable is just icing on the cake. My vice should be obvious by this point, and if YVIALRAOIHTK isn’t exactly holding the only key, it at least manages to force the lock effectively enough.

One final note of interest: Towards the end of the movie as things are spiraling out of hand, Irina walks into a room to discover the word “vendetta” typed over and over obsessively on a typewriter. I’ve never read King’s 1977 novel The Shining, but I just learned from what I can only assume is a meticulously well-researched and soundly-sourced online listical that the famous “all work and no play make jack a dull boy” scene from Kubrick’s movie version is not in the book. Which leaves only one possible explanation: Stanley Kubrick was a lifelong fanatic for YVIALRAOIHTK and basically made THE SHINING as a loving tribute to the beloved original. That’s a fact, kids, write it down. 

*It is also the namesake of my friend Dan P’s anual horror movie marathon, YOUR VICE IS A HORROR MOVIE MARATHON AND ONLY I HAVE THE NETFLIX QUEUE.

**Also producer for the 2004 MERCHANT OF VENICE starring Al Pacino?

***Although from what I can gather online, it is also, like most Italian films, not exactly not a porno. IMDB calls it straight horror though, so we’ll stick with that.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017 CHECKLIST!

The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree

TAGLINE	None apparent
TITLE ACCURACY	Absolutely meaningless, and I love it
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Very vaguely incorporates the one major plot point in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, but at least it admits this in the credits
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	No, unless you count THE SHINING
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Italy!
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Partial giallo, partial noir
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Edwidge Fenech, to some degree her co-stars as well, all of whom had more than a passing association with the giallo genre (though they also worked in Westerns and, uh, “erotic comedies” and stuff)
NUDITY?	Oh yeah
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Totes
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Cat attack, then attack on cat, then eventually counterattack by cat.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	There’s an implication that there may be something ghostly going on, but its not explicit
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Yes, Oliviero peeps at Floriana getting down with some dude in a filthy abandoned hayloft (did people not have beds or rooms back then?)
MORAL OF THE STORY	If you’re going to name your film YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, I’m going to like it pretty much no matter what.