Sunday, September 4, 2011

THE CAT O’ NINE TAILS (1971)


Once asked about being called the ‘Italian Hitchcock’, Dario Argento said, “Maybe I have inherited Hitchcock’s audience, but certainly not his themes. Between me and Hitchcock there are differences of morality and neurosis. Hitchcock is a puritan while I am an anarchist, even too anarchist for my own good.”

The film is one of the early Argento thriller before he made his much acclaimed ‘Suspiria’ or ‘Deep Red’ and though it’s not his best, the man never failed to entertain me! It begins with an old blind man accompanied by a small girl walking on road at night and hears some strange talk in the car. The following day the news of theft in laboratory makes him nosey to know the truth. He encounters a young journalist and as soon as both of their company gets the clue or lead, the murders keep happening around and there comes a moment when the danger starts looming on their face.

Argento kept the gripping pace and made us hooked to signature giallo, he maintained the tension and suspense throughout this whodunit but near to the climax, the film starts losing it’s hold and the unraveling of suspense seems so frivolous one amid all puzzling drama. Though its not as shocking Argento, I must say there are certain scenes which proved as macabre and neurotic as Edgar Allen Poe’s work, especially the cemetery scene where the reporter and blind man tried to get the clue from a woman’s grave.

Ratings-7/10

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