The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)
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Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
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Moody. More Gothic than other giallo films I’m familiar with. Watched this on Amazon Prime and even with my basic Italian there were some oddly wrong translations. Good image but a little dark at times. You never know when that’s the director’s choice.
The scene is a decaying mansion populated by a decaying middle-aged writer, long out of inspiration. He, and his suffering wife, are constantly being contrasted by young vibrancy. The young hippies he hosts for a debauched party in the opening scene. The young maid he “imposes” himself on. The young grocery delivery boy. Fenech, the youthful niece who, with either libertine or menacing intentions, seduces both aunt and uncle.
Compared to Fenech’s other roles, her role as the Floriana has her as the strong one here with Anita Stringdberg the character on the edge of sanity. She is psychologically tortured and physically abused, sometimes brutally, by her husband. His deceased mother still controls Oliviero and whose absent presence taunts Irina, along with the ever present cat she left behind, Satan.
The murders, required by any giallo, are in a way resolved halfway through the film and play a role as almost simply decoration to the destructive relationship of Oliviero and Irina. But for the remaining half, they echo in the trio’s maliced schemes towards each other.
And the end, much like that of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh where this film got its title, has So. Many. Twists.