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YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY

A WOMAN'S ABUSIVE HUSBAND MIGHT JUST BE A MURDERER



★☆☆☆☆ (Kill It with Fire)

Director: Sergio Martino

1972



Just an F.YI. Trigger warning. Every trigger including some you've never heard of before.


A laid-back party at Oliviero’s bourgeois mansion takes a turn when he starts abusing his wife in front of all the ambivalent partygoers. No one intervenes until one bored hippie starts to sing, inspiring a buxom girl to stand on the table and do a striptease. Everyone joins the chorus as the wife suffers, and while this scenario could describe just about every Sergio Martino film, today it’s all about Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. Throughout this movie, you get to see Oliviero cheat on his wife, beat her, r*pe her in a bunny pen, and threaten to kill her. The psychology of the husband isn’t difficult to unravel—he’s a washed-up writer with an Oedipus complex who is taking his insecurities and frustrations out on his wife’s face. But there’s a cartoonish quality to Oliviero; his anger is so blown out of proportion, it’s as if the writers based him on the Tasmanian Devil. You’ll have no idea why his wife stays or why women flock to him or why none of his sycophants have abandoned him à la the end of Godfather III.


Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key seems to believe the interesting twist will make it more palatable, but there’s little to redeem it outside of Martino’s slick visuals and cinematography. The serial killer mystery touted in the marketing materials is neatly wrapped up halfway through the film—leaving us with no plot—so if you want to continue to watch a man use his wife as his personal punching bag for the next hour, that’s your prerogative. You’ve been warned.




Irina’s days at the grand estate revolve around her being tortured by Oliviero and bullied by his cat, but despite expressing loathing for her husband, she won’t leave and won’t explain why. After a sudden rash of murders occur in town, she’s suspicious of Obvious Suspect # 1, and when one of the bodies ends up in their home, Irina and Oliviero are forced to share a secret. Not that this softens him in any way. You would think a man who is at the mercy of his wife wouldn’t incite her, but he can’t stop his rage. I waited on pins and needles to see if the movie had the guts to punish him for his bad behavior because I got the feeling ladies man Oliviero is a hero to the writers and director—a sickening thought. I’ll make my point: The police don’t care about his violent actions, but want to arrest Irina because she might have hurt a cat.


When beautiful Floriana (Edwige Fenech) inexplicably visits her Uncle Oliviero—who she hasn’t seen in years—her vivacious attitude keeps him from flying off the handle for an hour or two. Normally, Fenech would be cast as the simpering victim, so it’s nice to see her play a woman who is devilish and calculating, who uses her sexuality for fun or manipulation. Unlike her other roles, Floriana is a woman in control, but this is a Martino film so she can’t escape degradation by way of bedding her much older uncle like “Dueling Banjos” is playing under a full moon in Alabama. Is incest a thing in Italy? I ask because it’s so breezily added and no one blinks twice, not even the wife who starts her own love affair with the girl.


The ridiculously few killings in Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key are a MacGuffin for a sleazy, sexploitation film. One might argue that my rating is unfair because giallo is supposed to be all about soap opera theatrics and gratuitous sex, but I want to point out there are different types of lovemaking in horror:


Teen Sex – The love scenes you see in just about any scary movie aimed at (older) teens serve to express a loss of innocence.


Get You Horny Sex – A cousin of porn, this graphic sex has no other purpose than to turn you on.


Doomed Sex – Anyone who has sex usually bites the dust, so this is the deepest cut.


Sergio Martino Sex – “Remember the good old days when men could r*pe their way across the Italian countryside?”




The big reveal at the end isn’t worth the bumpy ride—it only gives us another character to despise. Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is a film strictly for Martino fans and viewers who can stomach the worst aspects of giallo when they’re magnified and glorified. Sexploitation in the genre is nothing new, but there has to be a comprehensible story, no plot holes (wait, there were jewels all this time?), and at least one person to care about. I hate the way I feel after watching most of his movies, so I’m not sure why I keep coming back for more, believing something will change. I suppose I have something in common with Irina after all.






GENRES: Diverse Characters, Giallo, LGBTQ+, Serial Killer


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