After setting Italian Giallo cinema ablaze with his stunningly stylish debut, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento had something of an impossible task when it came to following a movie that blended head scratching, whodunit happenings with vicious murders that were every bit as beautiful as they were fiendishly sadistic. His response was his “Animal Trilogy”; a trio of unconnected movies whose only link was a misleading title of an animal stuck in the middle of a typically flamboyant title.
Located inbetween The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (not a real bird, merely an ornate sculpture) and Four Flies On Grey Velvet (no actual insects, but a vital clue only looks like the titular bugs) was The Cat o’ Nine Tails which, fittingly, not only failed to contain a cat but also had nothing to do with the flailed weapon, either. Hey, don’t look at me, is the movie doesn’t have a ludicrously flowery title, is it even a Giallo?
A mysterious figure breaks into the Terzi Medical Institute only to bizarrely steal nothing, however, this strange occurrence is enough to set in motion a string of events that lead to assault, kidnapping and even multiple counts of homicide after one of the doctors at the Institute figures put who it was. Instead of merely reporting them to the police, Dr. Calabresi instead does the dutiful, Giallo act of trying to blackmail them but instead is pushed in front of a train for his troubles. Oh well, case closed, right? Uh, not quite, as blind, ex-reporter Franco Arnò (an out of place looking Karl Malden) has managed to partially put together some of the facts by sheer coincidence and he helps actual reporter Carlo Giordani to prove that Calabresi’s death wasn’t a freak accident thanks to a cropped photo taken at the scene. This kicks off a frenzied race, because while Franco and Carlo struggle to provide evidence to narrow down their list of suspects, the killer attempts to make the trail go cold by murdering anyone who can link them to the initial crime (I would have thought that would just create more evidence, but never mind…). Our heroes require the original negative of the accident printed, the killer throttles the photographer and takes the negatives; they suspect Calabresi’s girlfriend might have vital evidence on her person, the killer garottes her too – and so on.
Switching tactics to examining the nine leads they have to follow (the cat o’ nine tails of the title), Carlo and Franco targets five of the scientists working at the Institute, but it’s the daughter of one of them that gives them a possible motive. It seems that the good people at Terzi Medical has discovered something they call the XYY Syndrome which suggest that people carrying this particular chromosome are prone to criminal tendencies. Is this the information they need to crack the case – it must be, because it spurs the killer on to target them directly; them and Franco’s young niece.
The Cat o’ Nine Tails is frequently coupled together with Argento’s third film, Four Flies On Grey Velvet as an example of a lesser example of the director’s earlier works and, if we’re being fair, it’s something of a factual statement. It’s not like The Cat o’ Nine Tails is a bad film, but much like the third entry in his Animal Trilogy, it suffers from the fact that Argento hadn’t really found his voice yet. All the familiar aspects are there; far fetched motive (a crime chromosome?), a randomly gay character, a main character thrown into this situation by chance and a killer who is as inventive as they are desperate – but the problem is that both films feel a little “safe” when compared to the majesty of Bird With The Crystal or the flawless victory of the seminal Deep Red. It’s like he’s trying to make normal mystery thrillers with the occasional splurge of his visual panache, instead of the unrestrained, art house, explosions of his other movies that often skip realism for the sake of jaw dropping set pieces.
Still, restrained moments of classic Dario do still rise to the surface where the man dubbed the Italian Hitchcock has chance to shine. There’s the occasional burst of rousing production design, of course; the way that the blind Franco fills out a crossword looks wildly and unnecessarily complex and a possible lead has some impressively grotesque, yellow wallpaper that looks like someone’s hurled margarine at her living room wall.
Elsewhere, Argento’s patented elaborate kill scenes are incredibly muted when compared to the like of Suspiria, Opera or Phenomena, but there’s still a couple of nastily drawn out strangulations (the second one in particular has the victim’s mouth foaming like a bloody latte), a guy’s face has a brutal meeting with a train buffer and, best of all, the someone meets a heinous end after taking a tumble down a lift shaft and we get a close up of their bloodied hands as they desperately claw at the cable all the way down.
The rest of the film makes its murder mystery trappings take the form of a lightly eccentric, yet gleefully complicated thriller that surrounds James Franciscus’ bed hopping journalist with random side characters who often feel like they’ve wandered in from a completely different movie. Take Gigi the Loser, Carlo’s impressively jawed, safe cracking friend who, after being introduced as he wins an insult competition, seemingly has taken a wrong turn from the goofy, comedy caper movie he’s supposed to be in and instead has found himself in far darker territory. Elsewhere we find Carlo himself finding that he’s drawn to more nerve wracking aituations than just a mad killer as his run-in with a disgruntled barber and the questionable driving skills of a femme fatal prove to be equally harrowing in a humorous sort of way. They’re the main examples, but there’s also enough constant one liners and colourful remarks coming from the background characters and various passers by to fill a GTA game and while it certainly gives the movie an interesting tone, Argento balanced quirky, observational humour and gut-wrenching murder far better in Deep Red.
So what we have is a serviceable and interesting Giallo entry by a master of the genre who was winding up a pitch that would knock his career clean out of the park. To Argento completists, it’s an important stepping stone to greater things, but to those yet to be beguiled by the director’s more crazier projects, you may be left wondering what the fuss is all about after whipping it on.
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