Your Vice Is A Locked Room and Only I Have The Key
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
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Main Details
- Released in 1972
- Color
- Running Time: 92 Min.
- Distributed by Lea Film
- Directed by Sergio Martino
- Written by Adriano Bolzoni, Ernesto Gastaldi, Luciano Martino & Sauro Scavolini
- Starring Edwige Fenech, Anita Strindberg, Luigi Pistilli, Ivan Rassimov, Franco Nebbia, Riccardo Salvino
- Produced by Luciano Martino
- Original Music by Bruno Nicolai
- Cinematography by Giancarlo Ferrando
- Film Editing by Attilio Vincioni
Also known as
- l tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave (Italy, original title)
Synopsis
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key uses many elements from Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat", and acknowledges this influence in the film's opening credits. It was Martino's fourth giallo film. The title of the film is a reference to his first one, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh, 1971), in which the killer leaves the phrase as a note to his victim. The victim in that film was played by Fenech. Oliviero Rouvigny (Pistilli), a failed writer and an alcoholic, lives in a crumbling mansion with his wife Irina (Strindberg), who is scared of Oliviero's cat, Satan, that used to belong to his late mother. To fight boredom, Oliviero organizes decadent parties for local hippies and humiliates and abuses Irina in front of the guests. After his mistress, a young student, is found murdered, Oliviero becomes the primary suspect. When he finds their maid dead on the premises, he decides to conceal it to avoid further suspicions. (Wikipedia)
Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale “The Black Cat”, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, from director Sergio Martino (Torso), weaves the key motifs from Poe’s gothic yarn into one of the most sensual films from the Golden era of giallo. Luigi Pistilli (Milano Calibro 9, A Bay of Blood) plays writer Oliviero, an abrasive drunk who amuses himself by holding drunken orgies at his grand country manor – much to the displeasure of his long-suffering wife (Anita Strindberg). But this decadence is soon rocked by a series of grisly murders, in which Oliviero finds himself implicated. Notable for giving screen starlet Edwige Fenech her first “bad girl” role, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, with its many unexpected twists and turns, is just as bewitching as its title would suggest. (Arrow Video)
