Some Great Releases from Arrow Video!

Oh, hell yes, I love how all these great movies are finally getting the proper Blu Ray/DVD treatment! I got some great news from MVD Entertainment Group a few days ago about one film in particular that I have been waiting to get my hands on - my favorite giallo film of all, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key!!! Not only that, the film is being released in conjunction with Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat, seeing as how both films are based on the Poe story The Black Cat. WANT WANT WANT!!!



Here's the press released from MVD with all the important info:

Edgar Allan Poe's Black Cats: Two Adaptations by Sergio Martino & Lucio Fulci

 

Edgar Allan Poe's celebrated story The Black Cat has provided the inspiration for numerous films over the years. But few adaptations are as stylish as those offered up by the twin Italian titans of terror, Sergio Martino and Lucio Fulci.

 

In Martino's classic giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, teacher Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli, A Bay of Blood) finds himself under suspicion for murder when one of his students - and mistress - is found brutally murdered. As more bodies start to pile up, the arrival of Oliviero's attractive niece (Edwige Fenech, Five Dolls for an August Moon, All the Colours of the Dark) brings with it complications of its own. 

 

In The Black Cat, from that "other" Godfather of Gore, Lucio Fulci (Zombie), Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, The Beyond) find himself summoned to a sleepy English village to investigate the recent murder of a young couple. With no obvious signs of entry at the murder scene, Gorley is forced to start considering the possibility that his suspect may not be human... 

 

Finally together on Blu-ray and in stunning new 2K restorations from the original camera negatives, fans can enjoy the double-dose of terror that is Edgar Allan Poe's Black Cats - Italian-style!

 

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
-Brand new 2K restorations of the films from the original camera negatives
-High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
-Original Italian and English soundtracks in mono audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
-Newly translated subtitles for the Italian soundtracks
-Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtracks
-Brand new interview with director Sergio Martino
-Dolls of Flesh and Blood: The Gialli of Sergio Martino - a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring -Sergio Martino's unique contributions to the giallo genre
-Stephen Thrower, author of Beyond Terror - The Films of Lucio Fulci, on The Black Cat
-Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin
-Limited Edition 80-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the films, Poe's original story and more, illustrated with archive stills and posters
-Much more to be announced!

 

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 13th

 

Pre-order at Amazon: http://amzn.to/1RMWmH0 

 

 

 

Movie Review: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

How strange that I should watch this movie in such close succession to watching Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat because both films claim to be based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Black Cat." Of course they changed the title a bit for today's film, obviously because Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is much more simplistic, easier-to-understand title. I seriously have no idea what that title means. How can somebody's vice be a locked room? Am I misunderstanding the definition of "vice"?

In a palatial but dilapidated villa, failed writer Oliviero Rouvigny lives with his wife Irina where he throws decadent parties every night with a local hippie commune. He drinks heavily and humiliates and abuses Irina whenever he can, and obsesses about his dead mother. When a local girl Oliviero had relations with is found murdered, he becomes the prime suspect, making him more paranoid and letting loose his sadism against his wife, who herself is falling deeper into depression and madness as well. There is also Oliviero's black cat, Satan, who used to belong to his mother and who Irina fears.

Sergio Martino was not before on my list of giallo directors to look out for, but after Your Vice, he definitely will be. This film is tightly shot and paced, with hardly any lulls in the story and almost every scene has importance to either the plot or the arc of the characters. There is murder, of course, and free-flowing and sometimes perverse sex, but that never detracts from the core story around Oliviero and Irina. Oliviero's niece Floriana comes into the story later, manipulating both of them to her own gains. Complex characters, a tight plot, and a murder mystery - the perfect recipe for a truly engaging and entertaining movie.

I'd be remiss not to comment on each of the three lead actors. Luigi Pistilli as Oliviero is almost terrifying in the emotionless way he carries out his various atrocities. He has such a calm demeanor throughout most of the movie that it is hard to watch him abuse his wife, molest his black maid Brenda in the middle of the party at the beginning, and, most of all, take up a sexual relationship with his own niece while he plots to murder his wife. Anita Strindberg's best asset as Irina is her face, full of sharp angles, a tight mouth, and wide, expressive eyes. You absolutely believe every emotion that she portrays with that face. Edwige Fenech (whom you might recognize as the art class teacher from Hostel: Part II) is the seductive and intriguing Floriana. Her role is an interesting one with the way she wedges herself in between Irina and Oliviero, actually having sex with both of them. We find out that the only reason she is there is to get her late aunt's expensive jewelry, but you can tell that she almost enjoys the sick things she chooses to do in order to possess them.

As a giallo film, I was expecting lots of lavish and beautiful death scenes. I was a tad disappointed in that regard, with only a few neck and chest slashings, but they were still filmed to look very pretty. Fausta's throat being cut was probably the most well done out of all of them, while the long gash from Brenda's chest to her stomach was too obviously a prosthetic. The bright red paint serving as blood, a giallo staple, is a great image and helps to overlook the fact that the other special effects are sometimes not up to par with the rest of the film. After Satan the cat kills some of Irina's beloved pet doves, she goes a little crazy and stabs out one of the animal's eyes. Subsequent scenes of Irina's obsession with the cat wanting revenge on her show a ghastly bloody hole where his eye used to be. It doesn't look all that real, but it's certainly memorable and gets the job done.

Poe's "The Black Cat" is a story about obsession, fixation, and paranoia, and cleverly crafted right up until the gleefully fitting end. Given the fact that in the story is was the husband who murdered his wife, and it was her cat that he was afraid of and tried to kill, I should have known right away that Irina was actually behind everything that happened. Bah, what's wrong with me? The film ends the same way that he story does - with Satan the cat revealing Oliviero's dead body behind the cellar wall - but it's hard to feel as satisfied about this conclusion because of the sympathy the audience probably has for Irina. Though she has planned and carried out several murders of innocents in order to get to her husband, she suffered under him, and there is no reason to have any sympathy for Oliviero. Eh, I guess justice was served on both sides.

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key was more than a welcome surprise. I never know what I'm going to get with some of these giallos, but several times I have been happy that I gave them a chance. This was a great find, and I hope that there are many others like it out there.