THE CAT O' NINE TAILS

A blind puzzler (Karl Malden) and his beloved niece (Cinzia De Carolis) gradually find themselves involved in a mysterious chain of murders revolving around an institute for genetic and hereditary research and the secrets it hides. In addition to the police, a self-proclaimed journalist (James Franciscus) also begins investigating the case, aided by the remarkable insights of the disabled man, a puzzle enthusiast. Soon they will discover that every collaborator at the institute hides a dark side, from the simple laboratory technician to the director's daughter (Catherine Spaak). However, in the end, after adventures in the cemetery and attempts at poisoning, the killer will reveal his identity, not before leaving numerous victims behind... The creative path of the Italian director continues in the vein of more "classic" mystery, which began the previous year with the excellent "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage." It is indeed another story of murders, investigations, plot twists, and the final revelation of the culprit that forms the narrative construct of this second feature film by Dario Argento. "The Cat o' Nine Tails" is probably his least appreciated work among those of the 1970s (and perhaps even the 1980s), and this may be due to some weak points that, despite the director's talent, are not lacking. It might be the excessive length of the film (we are close to two hours), or the slowness and static nature of some overly dialogue-heavy sequences that are not very functional to the narrative development, or perhaps the overly saccharine affectionate moments between the puzzler and his niece (accompanied, as always, by the sweet melodies of Morricone). All of these could be plausible reasons why the film is not convincing. Plausible reasons, yes, but not sufficient to completely dismiss it. The scientific premise on which the plot is based (the possibility of determining a person's aggressive and criminal inclination through DNA analysis and the search for the XYY chromosome) is undoubtedly fascinating and ahead of its time (confirming the originality of the subject), considering the subsequent decades' tendency to fantasize about the desire for empirical crime prediction ("Minority Report"). Once again, the police are depicted as secondary characters, while the private citizen (writer with a girlfriend in the previous film, puzzler, and journalist here) becomes the driving force of the plot, ultimately resolving its extreme dramatic evolution, often through investigation and reasoning methods impossible for the authorities. Furthermore, the Argentinian exploration of one of the fundamental themes of his entire cinema continues: "sight" as a meaning of true or presumed knowledge and the "eye" as a signifier. The contrast between the blindness of the old puzzler (he is therefore a handicap, a characteristic of many Argentinian characters) and the detail of the killer's dilated pupil, inserted with skillful editing within some murder or voyeurism sequences, is indeed visually impactful. This is evidently an extreme antithesis at the conceptual level, perhaps a metaphor for a particular message: the puzzler, without the help of the girl and the journalist, would not have seen and would never have risked his life; on the contrary, the killer, by seeing, becoming aware of his genetic predisposition, fails in his attempt to deny this reality (replace the test results), and, despite himself, acts inevitably obeying his nature. Stylistically, two scenes are of interest: the first is the waiting scene at the station, where the killer looks around (panoramic shots in subjective perspective searching for the train) and gets rid of an inconvenient character by throwing him under a train; the second is the cemetery scene, where the journalist, almost in a dreamlike dimension suspended from the narrative time, is imprisoned in a tomb and freed by the blind puzzler, of whom the viewer no longer knows whether to trust or not. The film, entirely shot in Turin but edited in such a way that the city is not recognizable in the outdoor scenes, achieved more box office success than the debut film. Curiosity: The title is due to a similarity that the two protagonists place between the development of the investigation and the animal in question. In fact, at a certain point in the investigation, there are nine leads to follow, each of which, if true, could have solved the case on its own.