Spooktober IV Review 15: 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)

Sergio Martino

"Is it true about you being a two-bit whore?"
"Well, they might be considered two bits well spent."

At one point during my viewing of the film last night (from now on, let's just call it Your Vice for brevity's sake), I texted Ryan and Zach to say that it had a "hold of me with its disgusting greasy Italian hands," and I only half meant this as a slight against the Italian people. I feel like we've dabbled deep enough into the fetid giallo pool to understand this filth-inherent film genre, at least on an intermediate level, but this one really pushed the boundaries of vileness in ways that I did not expect, but absolutely loved. It features rape, graphic domestic violence, emotional abuse, alcoholism, failure, animal abuse, murder, incest, adultery, and so many sweaty Italian closeups all in a tight 97 minute package. It's a whirlwind of smut!

Obviously I loved this movie and I'm going to recommend it to everyone, but let's take a step back for a minute. Before watching this, I was familiar with the giallo genre (as we remember from previous Spooktober's past, it's a primarily Italian genre of cheaply made and overly stylized films featuring lurid stories of crime and murder), but had never heard of either this ponderously titled film or its director. The greats of the genre have all been featured here before, including Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci, and each brings something different to their films: Argento's are bathed in garish light and thrumming with visceral energy, Bava's are filmed through reflection and glass to ponder the nature of reality, and Fulci's are splashed with gore. And now we have Martino.

When I still lived in Nashville, there was a glorious month in 2015 where the Belcourt Theatre hosted a Seijun Suzuki film festival, which introduced me to his history as a filmmaker. Unfortunately I only managed to catch Gate of Flesh and Branded to Kill, but that was enough to understand the unquestioned genius behind the camera. Suzuki never found the mainstream success of Japanese auteurs like Kurosawa and Kobayashi, and was hired because he could take dirty, trashy little scripts about whores living under a bridge in post-war Japan or a James Bond style assassin with a strange addiction and (efficiently) elevate them beyond their humble underpinnings. These two films are mostly stripped down, but they ooze style, subtle humor, and more than a little grime. He was the original Japanese giallo director!

I think it's also fair to assess Sergio Martino as the Italian Seijun Suzuki, because his career is littered with "I need to make this so I can afford my mortgage" style films, but I can't wait to poke around his filmography a little bit more (especially an 80's sci-fi adventure movie titled 2019: After the Fall of New York), because the talent here is undeniable and I love trash with vision. I'm not going to pretend Martino is on the same level as Argento, but one of them was stuck behind the 8-ball career-wise and had to work for a living, and god damn do I respect that blue collar style of filmmaking. 

Getting back to the film of the day, Your Vice is a loose adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story The Black Cat (which was also adapted by Lucio Fulci, but that sounds like a gory slasher more than anything). The Black Cat, like all Poe stories, is about murder, guilt, and something giving up the murderer as they are wracked with anxiety, but Martino takes the simple story and weaves it into a tale about a failed writer who has turned to the bottle and torturing his wife for solace. The writer, Oliviero, begins the film by lauding the history of his blessed mother, whose portrait hangs proudly in their rapidly decomposing mansion, and belittling his wife, Irina, calling her a whore in front of a group of his "friends." His treatment of women in general is abysmal, as he then singles out their maid, a poor immigrant woman from some former fascist Italian colony, sexually assaults her by groping her breasts, and then heaps on the racism. This poor maid is treated miserably by everyone in this film, even people who like her. She's easily the most sympathetic character in the whole film, and her only mistake was ever being around rich white people.

Oliviero, using the free time he has when he's not fantasizing sexually about his dead mother and abusing/raping his wife, also has a mistress who was a former student of his when he was still teaching at the local university. He makes noncommittal plans to meet her one night, but as the scheduled time for their tryst approaches, the poor girl is slashed to death by a mysterious assailant. Obviously the police suspect Oliviero, but like all giallo films, the initial suspect you're led to believe is the culprit is invariably not-guilty (although hardly innocent). In the midst of a police investigation into this homicide, the poor housemaid is also brutally murdered while trying on Oliviero's mother's flowing gown (the one from her portrait). Oliviero frantically denies committing these crimes, but Irina is not so sure, especially since her husband is so insistent that they hide the body and make up some story about her leaving their employ. It is in the course of this conspiracy plot that he A) rapes her, B) strangles her, and C) makes her clean the maid's blood out of his mother's gown. So far in this film, the only creature he's been even halfway kind to is is black cat named Satan.

This is about when Oliviero's niece Floriana arrives for a visit. She is played by Edwige Fenech, and is maybe one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. When she appeared on the screen, my eyes actually flew out of my skull and wrapped around each other while I pounded my foot on the ground like a cartoon wolf. Oliviero feels the same way, despite the fact that he's her uncle. I couldn't really get a feel for their specific family tree, because she would refer to Oliviero's mother as "Aunt," but this could be an issue with the subtitle translation (there were a number of odd discrepancies). Regardless: they're related and it's gross.

Floriana immediately acts as a sympathetic ear to Irina, listening to her tale of woe and concerns of being married to a murderous lech. Her suggestions range from "GTFO" to "just shove him over a cliff and be done with it," both of which Irina rejects as possibilities. At this point, Floriana and Irina have passionate sex, because, hey, why not? In fact, Floriana flits through this movie enjoying sex the whole time. She fucks Irina, a nice motorcycle boy, and Oliviero in the course of her time in the film, but is not victimized in any way. She just loves to fuck, and who can blame her? She's not even ashamed of it, openly admitting to Irina that she and Oliviero had sex while the three of them are at a cliffside picnic. And to her credit, Irina is pretty chill about the whole adulterous incest thing.

The police inquiry is thrown for a loop after Oliviero's mistress' boss is bludgeoned to death by a whorehouse Madam shortly after he murders a local prostitute. I love how the prostitute's life is framed here: she has had a busy day, turns down a client out of sheer exhaustion, is supported fully by her Madam, clearly makes a good living, and is played as confident and just a little sassy. It's a very sex work positive portrayal, and reminded me distinctly of the brash and honest working girls in Suzuki's Gate of Flesh. Unfortunately she is murdered brutally, but such is the fate of the giallo whore.

The great twist of the film begins to take shape after Irina confronts Oliviero's cat Satan after he's eaten some of her beloved pet doves. She attempts to kill the feline with a pair of scissors, but only manages to poke out one of his eyes. This is witnessed by an old junk woman, who beats a horrified and hasty retreat from the scene. The rest of the film is haunted by the pained and mournful cries of the pitious cat, and this begins to drive Irina insane. Like all classic Poe stories, her guilt has to bear a physical manifestation of some sort. After discovering him in the house one night, she chases him with that same pair of scissors to finish the job, but comes across a passed out Oliviero at his typewriter. Seizing her opportunity, Irina stabs her abusive husband to death while he sleeps, and leans on Floriana to help her cover up the death by walling her up in the same crawlspace they hid their poor maid in.

I don't want to give up the climax of the film, but suffice it to say, the evil double-crosses do not stop, and Satan's role in the story is not yet complete (nor is the role of the old junk woman).

It's great that there's an easy-to-follow Poe mystery at the heart of the tale here, because it gives the story some structure. Even the best giallo films tend to wander a bit, so having a clear and coherent direction to head towards is a boon to the film. It also leaves ample opportunity for Martino to explore the elements that make up a sick and depraved marriage, and to play with his audience's sympathies to the point that by the end, the only person we ever truly respected was the maid.

Your Vice is the sweaty, vile, sex-crazed, violent murder fantasy that you've been looking for all month, and you absolutely need to watch it very soon. Potentially alone. In your boxers. To accentuate the experience, of course.

REVIEW: Me saying "mama mia" while gurgling on my own blood after being stabbed by my vindictive wife

HOW I WATCHED IT: Amazon Prime, paisanos!

BEVERAGE: Unibroue's La Fin du Monde. The end of the world, indeed.