The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971)

The Cat o' Nine Tails is Dario Argento's second film as director, following The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and though Argento considered it an artistic failure, I think it's got a lot going for it. Not as expressively colorful as his mid-'70s to mid-'80s supernatural horror films or as gripping as Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails is nevertheless suspenseful, stylish, and weird, and has an excellent Ennio Morricone score. Early '70s Italian giallos with Morricone scores are a cinematic happy place for me, so I'm inclined to go easy on them, but there's a lot of cool stuff in this movie despite Argento's disappointment.

The international cast is led by two Americans, Karl Malden and James Franciscus (both playing Italians). Malden is Franco Arno, a blind ex-journalist who takes care of his orphaned niece Lori (future star of Cannibal Apocalypse Cinzia De Carolis). As Franco and Lori are walking back to their apartment one night, they pass two men in a car, and Franco overhears a conversation mentioning secrets and blackmail. He stops, pretending to tie his shoe, and instructs Lori to glance at the men and remember their faces. She can't see one of the men but gets a good look at the other one. Meanwhile, an institute conducting top-secret genetic research experiences a late-night burglary and one of the scientists is killed in a bizarre train "accident" a few hours later.

These events being possibly connected to the men in the car, the dormant journalist in Franco perks up and he decides to investigate, teaming up with a working journalist he bumps into on the street, Carlo Giordani (Franciscus). Meanwhile, bodies start piling up, with a killer targeting scientists working for the research institute and anyone else with inside information.

There are multiple suspects and lots of bizarre clues that don't seem to come together, and part of the pleasure of the film is in Argento's methodical unfolding of the mysteries. I also enjoyed the central mystery's interconnected world of secretive subcultures: top-secret research scientists, investigative journalists, homicide detectives, gay and bisexual men (Argento's films can sometimes be weirdly homophobic and anti-homophobic in the same movie depending on the scene), wealthy people, petty criminals.

Like many '70s giallos, we also get both incredible and incredibly gaudy architecture and design and a lot of wild '70s wallpaper and carpeting, perpetually horny macho Italian guys being dudes (there's a running gag of men pausing in mid-conversation to stare in slack-jawed wonder at Anna Terzi (Catherine Spaak) and her mindbogglingly over-the-top dresses), a truly bizarre sex scene involving a tearaway blouse and a couple glasses of milk (OK, this example is particular to this giallo only), a blend of leisurely paced scenes with graceful camera movements and frenetic hyper-edited montage, killer's POV shots, several spiral staircases, three or four knockout suspense set pieces, and some exciting rooftop chases.

I was also a fan of one of the detectives who exuberantly and excitedly shares his wife's recipes with journalists and his fellow detectives and is bitterly disappointed when they are too distracted to care ("I don't give a damn about your wife's ravioli!" and "Mustard gives me heartburn" are the responses; that ravioli sounded great, BTW, and I do give a damn about it).

Okay, The Cat o' Nine Tails isn't the wildest or most dynamic or most colorful Argento movie, but I liked its deliberate pace and structure, its building of atmosphere, the Morricone music, the graveyard scene, the look of the whole thing. Argento, in the '70s and '80s, was a gifted visual stylist, and this is a good-looking movie with a lot of character detail and flavor. I genuinely enjoyed it, even if the plot is possibly too coherent for '70s Italian horror and suspense.