✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Italy, France, West Germany · 1971
1h 52m
Director Dario Argento
Starring James Franciscus, Karl Malden, Catherine Spaak, Pier Paolo Capponi
Genre Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Franco is a blind man, once a journalist, who now makes crossword puzzles for a living. Carlo is a reporter covering a break-in that soon escalates into a string of murders by the same perpetrator. The two team up to investigate the killings — and their connection to a pharmaceutical company's top-secret experiments…
The film's standout moments include a photographer's (Vittorio Congia) death in front of a moving train; a car chase the streets of Rome; a sequence involving poisoned milk (a clear tip of the black leather gloves to Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 Suspician); and a final rooftop battle between Giordani and the elusive killer. Morricone's music fits tightly into this sophomore suspenser by Italian giallo specialist Dario Argento.
Flimsy plot (as usual for Argento) but stunning set pieces and camera work.
Structurally and thematically, Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails is an improvement over The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, even if the film’s non-linear convolutions of plot may purposefully distract. Set against a backdrop of genetic research and espionage, Argento’s formal obsession with allusions to seeing and sightlessness is on fierce display.
After sixteen years of waiting, Philip Gröning was finally allowed inside a French monastery.
When the flies start to crawl, so will your flesh...