Tag Archives: The Cat o’Nine Tails (1971)

The Cat o’Nine Tails (1971) a (wildly) belated review

I’m fascinated with the similarities between old time murder mysteries and modern day horror films.  As “elegant” and relatively bloodless as the murder mysteries of author Agatha Christie were, if you push any one of her stories into a slightly more gorier mileiu, you have your modern horror feature.

I first realized this while watching the 1945 film version of Christie’s And Then There Were None.  In that movie, a group of disparate people are brought to an isolated island and, one by one, are killed off.  It occurred to me while watching that film that a more modern “take” of the story could highlight the messy deaths of the various characters over the tone and mystery of the story itself.

Director Dario Argento, best known for his “giallo” horror films, further proves my point with his second major work, The Cat o’Nine Tails.  The story goes like this: A blind man named Franco Arno (Karl Malden) and his adopted daughter live near a high tech research facility specializing in genetic mapping.  While walking back home one evening, the duo pass by a parked vehicle.  Inside, one of the scientists from that institute is talking to an unknown and shadowy individual.

Arno’s heightened sense of hearing picks up the fact that the scientist is trying to blackmail his mysterious companion.  That night the scientist is indeed killed, and Arno, with the help of reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus), set out to find the killer…even as the bodies start to pile up and the killer targets them.

By today’s standards, The Cat o’Nine Tails is a dated piece of work.  I saw the American dubbed version and it is my understanding the original Italian version is a better overall film.  Still, what I saw was engaging enough but never got my pulse racing.  The mystery is rather hard to follow as the various suspects are given only short screen time before, for the most part, they’re killed.  The story picks up a bit when the murderer puts Arno, Giordani, and Arno’s adoptive daughter in his crosshairs, but we’re talking about the later stages of the film by that point.

What is intriguing is that you see what I was talking about before, the evolution of the murder mystery towards horror in this work, in this film.  The story could easily have been an Agatha Christie type mystery involving all the standard Christie-type characters.  The old blind man is effectively a character like Christie’s Ms. Marple.  The dashing and handsome reporter is your typical mystery hero type…on the job and, when the time comes, more than willing to use his fists.  Oh, and he’s a hit with the ladies (in this movie’s case, lady) as well.  The suspects, too, form a typical Christie circle of well-to-do’s who on the surface appear elegant and well-spoken yet underneath lurk some very dark secrets.

The murders, compared to the movie version of And Then There Were None, are much more “in your face”.  There is more blood and gore, though again by today’s standards nothing terribly shocking.

In the end, if you’re in the mood for some cinematic archeology and would like to see a movie that bridges the gap between the older, more “polite” murder mysteries of yesteryear and the gorier, more “in your face” horror films of today, you might find The Cat o’Nine Tails an interesting curio.  This applies double for fans of the works of Dario Argento.  Otherwise and given the movie’s dated tone and pace, you may want to stay away.  The Cat o’Nine Tails might have been strong stuff back when it was released, but by today’s standards is a far more sedate experience.