The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971)

The middle entry in Dario Argento’s “animal trilogy”, Cat o’ Nine Tails follows a reporter by the name of Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) as he attempts to unravel an elaborate series of crimes, with the help of the blind retired journalist Franco Arno (Karl Walden). The leads in the case are numerous, “a cat of nine tails.” There is so much to unpack in this classic, and so much that has already been said over the years, that I don’t intend to try and cover everything here. Watch the movie.

The visuals in this work have held up well for being over 40 years old; I read that this was Argento’s least favorite of all his films, which surprised me given some of the more awful installments in his later years. I would stress that Cat o’ Nine Tails is rife with suspense throughout, without a dull moment coming to mind.

Argento weaves a complex chain of events and characters, with the viewer unable to determine what is connected for certain and what is mere coincidence until intended. Each character is given adequate time to flesh out and develop a presence, as well as their own level of suspicion to the viewer.

The movie does at times seem to try and do a bit of everything (car chases to romance to crime drama); I would argue it is well done, and did not detract from my experience.

As serious and dark, yet beautiful, as the set pieces are, the film does not take itself so seriously as to avoid any humor. Giordani and Arno bring an excellent chemistry, and deliver some excellent lines at times both serious and sarcastic.

While by no means the first to use POV camera angles, Argento is masterful with their timing and placement; the viewer is drawn into the scenes, adding to the incredible suspense and conveying great detail in each shot and location. The juxtaposition between the opening burglary, where we see via the culprit’s eyes as he kills a guard and breaks into the Terzi building with flashlight and pry-bar, and the later scene where Giordani tries in vain with flashlight and screwdriver to escape a possible death in the crypt, leaves the viewer to feel like an accomplice to both. It blurred for me the idea of right and wrong: Giordani had essentially broken into a crypt, albeit with good intentions, and then looked as though he might die for it. Argento is careful to not give away who is truly the villain until the very end.

The end shots as the cops and Giordani storm the Terzi building, coupled with the excellent score, do well in keeping the uncertainty and interest high, the viewer doesn’t know how this is going to end. I must say that I was thoroughly enthralled with the angles and lighting of the ensuing chase; the shadows from the men, the beautiful corrugated roof, and the score all flow wonderfully. There are also some excellent shots in the staircases.

The gore is not extraordinary in the murders that take place, but the effects have stood the test of time adequately. A death by train looks a bit dated, but is acceptable. The murders by strangulation feel violent and personal, and look as though the characters are truly drawing their last breaths. A fall down an elevator shaft is made all the more intense by the victim grasping in vain at the wires, slashing his hands as he falls to an inevitable doom.

There are some points in the plot that seem a bit farfetched, but in fairness, you enjoy a movie- and life- more if you have a bit of imagination and don’t nit-pick. It seems as though Arno may be psychic in the first quarter of the movie, appearing to get visions of things as they occur. Argento does do well in “showing the math”, as it were, when a character deduces something that might seem like a bit of a stretch. The viewer is kept in the loop with Arno and Giordani’s thought processes, rather than left to make heads or tails of what is going on. There is a great deal of foreshadowing along the way, with very few shots in the movie being without a purpose.

Perhaps one of the most awkward sex scenes in the history of cinema occurs in this film, between Giordani and the beautiful Anna Terzi (Catherine Spaak); their exchanges add an element of interest to the film nonetheless, and it is hard to pinpoint Anna’s true nature until almost the very end. It would also be unfair not to mention the absurd come-on Giordani uses on her, and her calculating response.

My obsession with the modern show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia results in my seeing connections between it and pretty much everything. Watching this movie was no different; I managed to come across three things that seemed like vague parallels. For one, after the awkward sex scene between Anna and Giordani, they plan to drink milk; this was McPoyle for me through and through. When Giordani meets with Dr. Braun, he does so in what is essentially a gay bar. Giordani starts to question Braun, who instead tells him, “You know, you have very beautiful eyes…” Giordani responds, “You really think so?” Braun follows up with, “Stupendous. Blue with a touch of red. Very rare.” Giordani’s response of, “Very rare? I hadn’t noticed” could suggest a bit of sarcasm, and perhaps he was just being patient so as to get the information he wanted from Braun, but it reminded me of episode one of It’s Always Sunny. Dennis gets hit on by a man while working the bar, and is for a second appalled, but then the man tells him his eyes are beautiful and “so blue.” Granted, this movie and It’s Always Sunny are vastly different, but Sunny is known for both covert and overt homages to other programs.

My third It’s Always Sunny reference came when Giordani was talking to Anna for the first time. The exchange itself, I found to be quite evocative of a bygone era, when women were often portrayed as children who needed to be “reined in by a man”. When Carlo goes to leave the Terzi’s home, he hears Anna laughing pointedly in the study, clearly summoning him. He is not fooled by her overly confident demeanor; when she informs him mock-haughtily that she doesn’t like his manner, he says “[he] doesn’t care if [she] doesn’t like his manner. [He’s] had complaints before; doesn’t seem to do any good.” He calls her out for posing like an aristocratic child, to show off her legs, “they’ve very nice legs; please to make their acquaintance.” I read that some of this coincides with the novel The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. I haven’t read said novel, so I cannot confirm, but I can say that I liked the scene in the movie. I want to say they overacted it, but they really didn’t. I might be alone in this, but I thought it was just the right amount of tension; it reminded me of the Dominique-Howard dynamic in The Fountainhead. The It’s Always Sunny similarity comes from the episode with Fatty Magoo/ Ingrid Nelson. At one point, Dennis breaks into her office to try and sell her something. She asks him to please stop, to which he responds that “those words have never worked on [him]”. It’s a stretch, but Giordani telling Anna that complaints on his character do no good reminded me of this.

Despite Argento writing this one off, I would argue it is one of his best; truly worth a watch for anyone that is drawn to suspense. The acting- dubbing aside- is not bad, and viewers are treated to a wealth of beautiful imagery and masterful use of plot devices.