Cat O'Nine Tails (1971)

Dario Argento's second film is a basic straight up murder-mystery that sort of came off to me as being, well, sort of bland. You get your typical series of murders, this time centering around an institute involved in genetic research. We get the curious reporter who finds himself getting a little to involved in the mystery, only this time our amateur sleuth teams up with a blind ex-reporter to track down the killer. The chemistry between the actors playing the duo was a highlight of the film, both worked off the other quite well. The rest of the characters were just boring and uninteresting, sorry to say. The murder scenes are fairly suspenseful and well filmed, as you would expect from Argento, just don't expect buckets and buckets of the red stuff because you won't see it here. My main gripe with this film is that I never really knew what the hell was going on with the plot. I mean, Argento's stuff always lacks in the logic department, which I typically don't mind, but for some reason it bugged me in this one. Usually you are given some possible clues as to whom the killer may or may not be, but not here. I have the feeling that the revealing of the killer's identity was supposed to be a surprise, but it just came off sort of flat. Oh well. I did enjoy the cemetery scene and the part where the reporter type gets locked in the crypt. Claustrophobic stuff always seems to get to me, and it worked in that scene. Also, watch for the scene at the end where the killer, falling down the elevator shaft, tries to hang on to the wire holding up the elevator. That actually made me squirm pretty good. If you've seen "Psycho 2" where Norman's hands try to grab the knife blade, you'll have something to compare it to. I honestly can't say that I liked or disliked this one. If you're a fan of Argento and you have yet to see this one, it's worth tracking down just to see how his filmmaking skills were progressing at the time. All others may find themselves confused, bored, and thanks to the excessive running time...falling asleep.