Ranking among Argento's best movies, The Cat O'Nine Tails is a compelling giallo with solid writing and two strong leading performances.

A fine James Franciscus is the conventional Argento protagonist; more interesting is the blind amateur sleuth played by a magnificent Karl Malden. A vamped-up Catherine Spaak, who was memorable as Gassman's daughter in Il Sorpasso, isn't quite as good as the femme fatale.

Neither as creepy as Profondo Rosso nor as stylish as Suspiria, The Cat O'Nine Tails distinguishes itself among Argento's thrillers for its writing, with more care put into dialogues and secondary characters, and an unusually complicated plot.

Argento, a huge Hitchcock fan, homages the British director with a sequence involving a poisoned glass of milk (Suspicion).

7/10

The former journalist Franco Arno (Karl Malden) is a retired blind man that likes crosswords and lives with his orphan niece Lori (Cinzia De Carolis) nearby the Terzi Institute. While walking with Lori on the street, he overhears a strange conversation of two men in a car parked in front of the institute and he asks Lori to watch their faces. In the same night, there is a break in the institute with an attempt of heist. On the next morning, the researcher Dr. Calabresi (Carlo Alighiero) dies in the train station and the police believe that it was an accident. However, Lori recognizes the picture of the scientist in the newspaper as one of the men in the car. Franco contacts the snoopy reporter Carlo Giordano (James Franciscus) and asks him to blow up the picture and examine the details. The photographer discovers that Dr. Calabresi was pushed off from the platform but he is also killed and the photograph vanishes. After their preliminary investigation, they find that the scientists are researching a revolutionary drug and a genetic experiment of XYY chromosomes associated to delinquency for the government and they conclude that there are nine leads to be followed: each of the five assistants of the institute (Dr. Calabresi; Dr. Esson; Dr. Mobelli; Dr. Casoni; and the gay Dr. Braun); the stepdaughter of Prof. Fulvio Terzi, Anna Terzi; the fiancée of Dr. Calabresi, Bianca Merusi; the missing photograph; and the robbery of the institute.

The suspenseful "Il Gatto a Nove Code" is the second film in the career of the director Dario Argento and despite the flaws, it is an entertaining conventional thriller. The association of Giordano with Arno is implausible; the unethical way that Giordano works, breaking in the residences is unacceptable for an experienced reporter; the one night stand of Giordano and Anna has no chemistry or eroticism; the car race of Anna is pointless; the edition of the accident of Dr. Calabresi is poor. But there are good moments, like the angles of camera in the stairways, or when Giordano brings two glasses of milk toward Anna. The deduction of Arno that Bianca has hiding the note in the watch in the necklace is unconvincing. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil) "O Gato de Nove Caudas" ("The Cat of Nine Tails")

Note: On 12 March 2016 I saw this film again.

An early suspense thriller from Dario Argento which lacks some of his later horrific overtones but still benefits from a good helping of style and an involving plot - the story was also written by Argento. Altogether, this is a complex, involving film with plenty of unusual characters with diverse relationships, some good acting, and some moments of extreme violence for which Argento later became known. A big plus in the film's favour is the casting of the charismatic James Franciscus in the lead role as an investigative reporter who's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. You could be forgiven for thinking that blond American Franciscus falls into the category of his contemporary wooden actors such as William Shatner and Doug McClure, but this is not the case. He lends a sophistication and skill to his character which is rarely seen in these horror films, and Argento gets nicely subtle performance out of him.

Franciscus is ably supported by an ageing Karl Malden, cast as a blind man. Malden enjoys himself a lot in a meaty role like this, making his snooping, quick-thinking busybody both comical and humane. The pair are supported by a pushy Catherine Spaak playing a mistress and plenty of other Euro-folk, including Rada Rassimov (Ivan's sister) and Horst Frank, familiar from his earlier role in 1967's potboiler, THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU. A jazzy score from Ennio Morricone never misses a beat, considerably adding to that whole '70s "cool" feel to the film, a make-believe world of exotic locations, wholesome folk and the occasional loose cannon.

Argento doesn't fail to add his own trademarks into the brew - including tracking shots (from the killer's point of view, this was before Black Christmas too) and some unflinchingly brutal murders. Indeed the giallo form is present and correct here, with a faceless killer (we only ever see their eye in extreme close-up) garrotting a number of unfortunates who were too slow to figure out what was coming. A photographer in the wrong place at the wrong time, an informant and even a couple of scientists fall prone to this powerful murderer, their deaths, while not explicit, still being realistic and hard-hitting. Near the beginning of the film, another man is pushed under the wheels of a train, Argento taking the opportunity to show us his mangled body bouncing and writhing as it is broken under the tons of steel pounding over it.

Plenty of action and suspenseful sequences build up the twists and turns in the plot, which lead to a predictable confrontation between Franciscus and the killer. This is a fast-paced, intriguing thriller with plenty going on to fill out the lengthy running time, and a must for fans of both mysteries and Italian crime cinema.