Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (Sergio Martino, 1972) Review

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In the year following his masterpiece giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), Director Sergio Martino returned to the genre with this sordid tale of the Italian aristocracy gone wrong.

“Of course, you'd much rather be drinking from my skull.” Kick-starting under the oil-painted gaze of the recently deceased matriarch of the Rouvigny family, Martino introduces us to the excesses of the Italian aristocracy, housed within a crumbling and hollow mansion. As free-loving guests from a nearby commune enjoy the free booze, and a grope of slave/servant Brenda, the bitter marriage of Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli, The Good The Bad & The Ugly) and Irina (Anita Strindberg, Who Saw Her Die) is laid bare to all without a care in Oliviero's mind.

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The Case of the Bloody Iris (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1971) DVD Review...

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With The Case of the Bloody Iris, fans of gialli will experience one of the era's best examples, particularly as it shares much of the same talent as another prime representative of the lurid murder mystery movement – The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971). Both films star Edwige (Strip Nude For Your Killer, Phantom of Death) Fenech and George (My Dear Killer, All The Colours of the Dark) Hilton, while boasting superb scripts from Ernesto (Torso, Almost Human) Gastaldi, and crystalline editing by Eugenio (Oasis of Fear, The Good The Bad and The Ugly) Alabiso. Suffice to say, if you were a fan of landmark giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, you will be treated to a similarly luxuriant banquet of sumptuous visuals, sinister chills, and otherworldly beauty...

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The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971) DVD Review

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One of Sergio (The Mountain of the Cannibal God, Torso) Martino's earliest films, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh exhibits a confident grasp of tension-building and exploitable elements, which would be seen just as strongly in his later work (such as the equally superb Torso aka Carnal Violence). This prime example of the greatest the giallo genre has to offer, partly inspired by Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), follows Julie Wardh (screen siren Edwige Fenech, Strip Nude For Your Killer), the wife of an American diplomat who has been left stifled and unfulfilled by her marriage, and resorts to fantasising about her fiery relationship with the sexually aggressive Jean (Ivan Rassimov, Eaten Alive), who she once again comes face-to-face with when she arrives in beautiful Vienna.

Similar to Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh kicks off with a first half that is fuelled by frequent sex and violence, with a second half that focuses on the psychological torture of the female protagonist. Ninety seconds into the film and you've already been confronted by bare flesh and a slashing straight razor – the tool of choice for the so-called 'Sex Fiend' killer who is on the loose. During this first half, there's more bared arses and breasts than you can shake a stick at (Martino deliberately shot much of this content so the conservative Italian film censors would have something to edit out – content which has returned for this DVD release, the first-ever in the UK) – and then by ten minutes in we've had four nude scenes.

 

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