Cat O' Nine Tails (1971)

Over the years, Cat O' Nine Tails has drawn not so much mixed as ambivalent reviews from critics and fans alike. The second major solo work by the "Italian Hitchcock", renowned director Dario Argento, it is generally regarded as weaker than his best films, such as Deep Red, Suspiria and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and Argento himself has said that it is his least favorite of his own films. On the other hand, Argento has also acknowledged that Cat O' Nine Tails is his most popular work, beating all his other films for video rentals and sales, and critics are more or less unanimous in the belief that it has the strongest acting of any Argento film, owing mainly to its Hollywood stars, Oscar winner Karl Malden and James Franciscus.

Cat O' Nine Tails features one of James Franciscus' best performances in his role as newspaperman Carlo Giordani, an anti-hero of the sort popular in the 1960s and 1970s - by turns cocky, nosy, manipulative, rude, fun-loving, lascivious, and at times cowardly to a comical degree - and yet the end result is a very likable guy. Numerous scenes - a car chase, a straight razor-wielding barber describing slasher murders while shaving Giordani, a suspenseful and yet humorous scene set in a mausoleum - give Franciscus a rare chance to show off his comedic acting abilities. But, when the chips are down, Giordani comes through with a great heroic effort to try to save a young innocent. Paradoxically, Giordani's macho posturing and brazen personality make his character's almost superhuman heroics at the end entirely  believable, as the flaws in an anti-hero's personality are supposed to do. Franciscus does a great job with this character, and even plays him very convincingly as an Italian, so much so that some writers blogging about the film online who are unfamiliar with Franciscus believe him to be Italian, even making comments about his being "one of those Northern Italians" to explain his blond hair and blue eyes.

Malden is excellent as Franco Arno, a former journalist who, now blind, makes a living writing crossword puzzles. It is Arno who, believing he has overheard a conversation somehow tied to a murder at a nearby pharmaceutical institute/corporation, enlists Giordani's help in trying to solve a more dangerous type of puzzle. Ironically, Franciscus' own next role immediately following Cat O' Nine Tails was playing a blind sleuth in Longstreet. To my knowledge, no one ever thought to ask him if he learned any important lessons about playing a blind man from Malden's performance as Arno. At any rate, Franciscus and Malden have great chemistry as the unlikely dynamic duo attempting to solve the grisly murders of the mysterious institute's employees.

French beauty Catherine Spaak plays Anna Terzi, adopted daughter of the institute's director, a suspect in the serial murders Giordani and Arno are investigating, and, naturally, Giordani's love interest.

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