Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key (O.V. Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave)
Italy, 1972
Director: Sergio Martino
Script: Luciano Martino, Sauro Scavolini, Ernesto Gastaldi, Adriano Bolzoni (inspired by story of Edgar Allan Poe)
Cast: Edwige Fenech (Floriana), Anita Strindberg (Irene), Luigi Pistilli (Oliviero), Ivan Rassimov (Walter), Angela La Vorgna (Brenda), Franco Nebbia (Inspector), Daniela Giordano (Fausta)
Music: Bruno Nicolai
Story
The writer Oliviero Rouvigny, of aristocratic lineage, has not published a book for years. He has been without inspiration, abandoning himself to a spiral of alcohol, decadence and all sorts of vices. He is a failed, frustrated and deeply bitter man. Apparently he was very attached to his late mother, from whom he keeps an elegant dress… and a black cat called Satan. A large portrait of the woman in her dress, similar to Mary Stuart, presides over the main room of his luxurious mansion, located on the outskirts of a town in the Venice region.
In order to kill the boredom that consumes him, Oliviero makes parties in his villa to which he invites the hippys of a nearby campsite. He also dedicates himself to martyrize his long-suffering wife Irene.
Fausta, the employee of a bookstore, lover of Oliviero and former student of his, meets him one night. The next day, the young woman is found murdered, and the writer becomes the main suspect. The commissioner has him in his sights.
Brenda, the Rouvigny’s maid, tries on Oliviero’s mother’s dress one night. Shortly afterwards she too is murdered. When the bloody body is found, Oliviero is already in the dungeon. He thinks that immediately the suspicions would fall on him. Concerned, he asks Irene to help him make the body disappear.
In those delicate moments, the attractive and clever Floriana, the writer’s niece, arrives by surprise. She couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment…
Commentary
Although the film we are commenting today has no storyline related to “The strange vice of Mrs. Wardh”, it can be said that it retains the same style and also features Edwige Fenech (the director’s muse) in one of the main roles. The connection between both films, curiously enough, is in fact the interesting title of the feature film that we are dealing with: “Your vice is a closed room and only I have the key” is a sentence that one of the characters in the previous film says.
Here, Sergio Martino was vaguely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat” (since the cat “Satan” plays a key role in the whole plot development of the film, as well as the detail of the immurement and the loss of his eye), adding touches of intense marriage drama (also present in “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh”) and a very well achieved gothic atmosphere, to which Bruno Nicolai’s excellent soundtrack contributes. Ernesto Gastaldi, among others, wrote the script.
The structure of the film is different from that of the usual giallo. The identity of the killer (or at least that of one of them) is already revealed halfway through the film. The execution of the crimes, on the other hand, is very similar to that of the average giallo, with the murderer’s mysterious silhouette and black gloves being seen, as well as his weapon; a kind of curved sickle or dagger. We also have in mind, although in a tangential way, the fetish of the dolls (already seen, for example, in “I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale” / “Torso”, also by Martino and from 1973).
Towards its last stretch, the film acquires great suspense and interest, thanks to several unexpected events and turns of the script (which demolish what we took for granted about certain characters).
The detail of the crazy writer who repeatedly writes a threatening sentence on his typewriter in a compulsive way is very interesting. We can see then where Kubrick got the idea for that famous scene from his famous “The Shining” (1980). The Sergio Martino film we are discussing today not only predates the box-office hit starring Jack Nicholson, but also the Stephen King novel (published in 1977).
Edwige Fenech plays Floriana, Oliviero’s niece. The girl, raised in France, is an emancipated young woman, very libertine, cunning, calculating, unscrupulous and above all (as the title already indicates), vicious.
Her performance is very convincing. As are those of Luigi Pistilli in the skin of the decadent, tormented and sadistic writer-aristocrat, and of Anita Strindberg as his wife. Both are masterful in their respective roles.
As we saw in “I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale” (“Torso”), Martino opts for a setting in the surroundings of a village; where the villagers are portrayed in a more sympathetic way than usual (it is common in thriller and horror films to present the villagers as sullen and hurtful characters). For those who watch both films (this one and “Torso”) in Italian and are familiar with this language, you will notice that the villagers speak with a marked dialect (Venetian in this case).
“Il tuo vizio é una stanza chiusa e solo io ho la chiave”, besides being a great title is also undoubtedly a great film; that will not disappoint the lovers of giallo and Poe.
The detail of the Poe style macabre humor can also be seen in another memorable giallo: “Sette note in nero” (Lucio Fulci, 1977).
A good dose of mystery and suspense, seasoned with a gothic atmosphere and libertines touches. Highly recommended for viewing.
Get Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key HERE!
Get All the colors of murder: Guide to giallo cinema HERE!
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