Il Gatto a Nove Code

Remember when I said that I would try to get through Dario Argento's Cat O'Nine Tails?  You don't?  For the sake of this piece, let's say that you did, and for the record, I could not.  Was the movie terrible?  No, but it felt like an eternity to even try and get through the first 30 minutes.  I realize that many giallos are like this, but this movie felt like it was moving even slower than usual.

The plot of the movie is that a blind man (Karl Malden) with the assistance of his niece overhears a conversation between two men outside of a laboratory near his residence.  A few hours later, one of the guards gets killed and something important is missing from the lab.  The man finds out about this because his niece reads him the news.  Soon, the man and a snoopy journalist are on the case to determine who is behind the murders.  I say murders because like many giallos, anyone who holds key information for the main protagonists is usually killed off.

Along with Mother of Tears, I found this movie difficult to sit through, though the reasons for it are different from the most recent Argento piece.  Cat O'Nine Tails just happens to run slower than most movies feel, the production is fairly grainy, and the death scenes aren't quite spectacular (though to be fair, Argento didn't have many in the Animal trilogy, as this was part two of that).  Saying that, there is a murder mystery element that keeps the viewer in suspense until the end.