Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is a 1972 giallo film directed by Sergio Martino. The picture stars Edwige Fenech, Luigi Pistilli, and Anita Strindberg. The film uses many elements from Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story "The Black Cat" and acknowledges this influence in the film's opening credits. Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key was Martino's fourth giallo film. The title of the film is a reference to his first one, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh, 1971), in which the killer leaves the phrase as a note to his victim. The victim in that film was played by Fenech. The film has been released under several alternate titles, including Gently Before She Dies, Eye of the Black Cat and Excite Me!. Plot Oliviero Rouvigny, a failed writer and alcoholic, lives in a crumbling mansion with his wife Irina. Irina is scared of Oliviero's cat, Satan, which used to belong to Oliviero’s late mother Esther. The only other main resident is the maid, Brenda. To fight boredom, Oliviero organizes decadent parties for local hippies and humiliates and abuses Irina and Brenda in front of the guests. A key early plot-point is the elegant gown that belonged to Rouvigny's dead mother that he catches Irina wearing, which angers Rouvigny enough that he hits Irina, then rapes her. After his mistress Fausta, a young student and bookstore employee, is found dead, Oliviero becomes the primary suspect after being fingered by Fausta's boss Bartello. The author lies when questioned by police and tells them that he was fixing a flat tire on his car during the time Fausta was murdered and forces Irina to cover for him. Later, Irina investigates the supposed flat tire in the boot of her husbands car but he catches and beats her. During the night during a heavy thunder storm, Brenda puts on Esther's gown and is silently watched by Oliviero. Brenda senses someone else is in the house and attempts to flee to her room but is mortally wounded by an killer with a bill-hook. Irina finds the dying Brenda who collapses at her feet. Oliviero appears and coldly views the body and convinces Irina to help him conceal it to avoid further suspicion. Brenda's body is buried in the cellar, although Oliviero refuses to dispose of the blood-stained gown and tells Irina to wash it.