your vice

THE FLICK: The conventions of the giallo genre – for all its stalk, slash and kill pleasures – can become a bit tiresome, especially when one accounts for the Italian tendency to ride a good thing into the ground with sequels to remakes of American rip-offs three or four generations deep. So it’s no small surprise that Sergio Martino’s Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key turns out to be a thriller of distinction and class with all the perversions of the best Italian gialli – yet completely unlike anything that came before it. Incorporating a key element from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat, the film stages almost all its action within the confines of a neo-gothic estate in the Italian countryside, the residence of a has-been alcoholic author (Luigi Pistilli) and his wife (Anita Strindberg), whose marriage has deteriorated into a brutal stage play of Freudian issues and open physical hostility. Into this chaos comes a visiting relative (the lovely Edwige Fenech) who brings her own agenda and a good deal of sexual tension. Of course, no giallo is complete without a black-gloved killer, and director Sergio Martino incorporates one of those, too. But his real interest lies in the twisted relationships between the three main characters; a constant battle of wills that expertly ties-in to the set-piece murder scenes. The murders themselves – which feature the requisite amount of gore but take up very little screen time - only serve to fuel the fire. Much of the success of Your Vice...can be credited to the performances of Pistilli, Strindberg and Fenech, with the latter truly shining in her first role as a “bad girl.” Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (among others) provides them with fabulous raw material, shuffling emotions and motivations like some sort of sick shell game, in addition to the de rigueur nude scenes and stylized violence. From the opening credits Your Vice...promises to be something different. And it delivers. THE FEATURES: As always, No Shame Films includes another set of excellent liner notes with an invaluable essay from Richard Harlan Smith as well as talent bios and some great poster art. But a 25-minute featurette entitled Unveiling the Vice anchors the extras. This one is well organized and includes interviews with Fenech, Martino and Gastaldi. Martino seems enthused about the project, praising the film’s uniqueness compared to his other giallo entries. Fenech, looking almost a good as she did in ’72, name-drops Tarantino who noted this performance was a turning point in her career. All in all, it’s a nice compilation of comments that doesn’t overstay its welcome. The disc also includes trailers from other films in No Shame’s “Sergio Martino Collection” as well as a poster/still gallery.