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 (AKA Gently Before She Dies and Excite Me, Your Vice) is a 1972 giallo and one of Sergio Martino’s most admired movies. It’s based on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story The Black Cat.

Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli) is a writer. He was a successful writer but after his mother’s death he gave in to booze and self-pity. Now he can’t even get published. He still has just enough money to maintain his villa although it seems that he pays the bills by selling the furniture.

He lives with his wife Irina (Anita Strindberg). The have a black maid named Brenda. Oliviero seems to be attracted to Brenda although this could just be a way of annoying his wife.

This is not exactly a marriage made in heaven. Oliviero brutalises and humiliates Irina. We assume he suffers from major feelings of inadequacy, probably both professional and sexual.

Their decadent lifestyle includes regularly playing host to a bunch of hippies.

Oliviero makes a date with his girlfriend Fausta. Their affair started ten years earlier when he was a schoolteacher and she was a schoolgirl.

There is of course a murder.

And another murder. At this stage it seems that this will be a typical giallo with a crazed killer stalking women. Then there’s a plot twist and the movie changes gears. It begins to focus on a romantic triangle involving Oliviero, Irina and Floriana (Edwige Fenech). Floriana has just arrived for an extended stay.

Floriana is some relation to Oliviero. She’s young, beautiful and sexy. She’s also highly sexed. Within a day or so of her arrival she’s slept with three of the characters in the movie.

It’s a complex romantic triangle. Floriana is sleeping with Irina as well as Oliviero.

It’s obvious that there’s the potential for trouble and we can guess that the trouble is likely to involve murder.

The original crazed killer plot-line isn’t totally forgotten.

There’s plenty of sexual jealousy and there’s bitterness and there’s craziness.

And there is a black cat. His name is Satan. And he has a part to play in this story.

While obviously lots of extra plot has been added the essential ingredients of Poe’s story are there.

The title of the movie comes from a line in an earlier Sergio Martino giallo, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh. It was a line that just had to be used as a movie title.

Edwige Fenech looks stunning and gives a fine performance as the dangerously seductive Floriana. Anita Strindberg as Irina and Luigi Pistilli as Oliviero are also very good.

Ernesto Gastaldi contributed to the screenplay so it’s no surprise that the plot works even if it’s not strikingly original.

This movie doesn’t have the glamour we usually associate with the giallo genre. It’s moody and it takes place in an enclosed world in which suspicions can quickly ripen into paranoia. I suppose you could call this movie a giallo-tinged gothic psychological thriller but it’s close enough to being a giallo to satisfy most fans.

Sergio Martino directs with a sure hand. Maybe there aren’t the spectacular visual set-pieces that you get in some giallos but overall it’s visually impressive. While most giallos have a self-consciously modern urban look this is more of a rural giallo with a time setting that is never precisely specified.

Arrow have released this movie on DVD and also on Blu-Ray. The DVD transfer is good and there are plenty of extras.

Edwige Fenech is definitely the movie’s single biggest asset. There’s an interesting decadent feel and it’s a bit more plot-driven than most giallos. There’s plenty of entertainment value here. Highly recommended.