Review: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Frustrated author (Luigi Pistilli) spends most of his time hosting booze-soaked orgies at his family estate, and being a general abusive arsehole to his wife (Anita Strindberg). The black cat roaming the estate doesn’t treat wifey very kindly, either. Complications arise with a couple of murders taking place on castle grounds, and the sudden arrival of Pistilli’s niece (Edwige Fenech). The latter will spark an arousal in both Strindberg and Pistilli.

 

As much as I love Italian horror, the more I delve into giallo the more I think I might not be on board with this side of the Italian horror aisle. This 1972 Sergio Martino (“Slave of the Cannibal God”, “Torso” – a decent giallo) film is one of the big misses. It’s well-acted but I don’t understand its popularity at all, it’s boring and filled with people I didn’t remotely care about. It’s not even very stylish, which isn’t something I often say about this subgenre. I didn’t pick the killer, but I also didn’t care enough to try very hard either. As the for the killing, there’s not enough of it, and what we get is either pretty dull or in one case pretty silly, straight out of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

 

Luigi Pistilli and Anita Stridberg are rock solid and well-cast, but top-billed Edwige Fenech doesn’t show up until after 30 minutes and it’s a problem. This thing is slow, that 30 could’ve easily been done in 15. The black cat seemingly had more screen time than our lead actress in this very loose re-telling of Poe’s “The Black Cat”. The cat is frankly extraneous, the only role it serves is to make people scream when they happen upon it. Things perk up a bit with the charismatic Fenech (who is in good form) on scene, but it’s hard to care about any of these awful people let alone the very obvious filler like motorbike racing scenes. Meanwhile, Fenech and Stridberg have the worst love scene in a film that doesn’t involve Sharon Stone and Sly Stallone squishing sinew in the shower. It arrives out of nowhere and is shot with lots of faces and hands. It’s all cuddling with no simulated fornicating. Horribly done, it ends too soon, and isn’t the slightest bit erotic or sensual. The boring motorbike footage was captured better and that sucked too.

 

An agonising time-waster with some hot women, three good performances, and a terrible title. There’s not enough killing and nothing and no one to care about in between. Maybe giallo’s just not for me or maybe the supposed ‘good’ ones are overrated. ‘Freely adapted’ from the Poe story, the screenplay is by Ernesto Gastaldi (Bava’s dark and twisted “The Whip and the Body”), Adriano Bolzoni (“A Fistful of Dollars”), and Sauro Scavolini (“Any Gun Can Play”).

 

Rating: D+

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