#The Cat o' Nine Tails

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Il gatto a nove code (1971) - Pressbook

AKA The Cat o' Nine Tails

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On April 18, 2015, The Cat o' Nine Tails was screened on TCM Underground.

Here's some new Dario Argento art!

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The Cat o' Nine Tails / Il gatto a nove code (1971)

Director: Dario Argento

Cinematographer: Erico Menczer

Starring Karl Malden, James Franciscus, Catherine Spaak

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

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[speedou]

The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971)

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[sloshed-cinema]

The Cat o’ Nine Tails [ Il gatto a nove code] (1971)

Turns out Theranos is only the latest in a storied lineage of crackpot biotech firms selling the moon but run by crazies.  The Terzi Institute are in deep on some highly questionable genetic testing, linking XYY Syndrome to an increased propensity for aggressive and even murderous behavior.  And yet even their scientists can’t seem to be immune to a causality loop: our perp carries out killings at least in part because he did his own research and now knows that’s what he has to do!  Then again, the fact that anyone puts any faith in a research institute which characterizes multiple of the human chromosome as stylized ‘Y’s at random is deeply suspect.  As with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Argento loves to infuse his films with a sort of pop-pathology, perhaps aiming to achieve a higher sense of realism but coming off all the more quaint in retrospect.  

Notable about this early giallo from Argento is just how completely it is suffused with a sort of humor or lightness.  Key to intrepid reporter Carlo Giardano’s investigation is the adorable, ineffable duo of Franco Arnò and Lori.  Though his sight was taken from him in an accident, Arnò remains fiercely independent, driven by his love for his niece Lori just as much as his zeal for solving puzzles of all sorts.  He doesn’t need the help of others, per se, though the film does lean into that trope of being robbed of one sense enhancing the others: Arnò is practically Daredevil at points.  The antics of Franco and Lori are adorable to the extent where I would happily watch a Hardy Boys style series of those two showing up and solving crimes.  He has a strong gut and general sense of what is around him paired with journalistic instinct, and she is hyper-observant, absorbing every detail of the world around her.  But humor inflects the rest of the film in unexpected and delightful ways.  A barber gets a chance to unload a tirade about how he would pull off a murder to the terrified journalist held captive in his chair.  Carlo meets up with former contact Gigi the Loser, who has allegedly left behind his life of crime but still has a ludicrously extensive lockpicking kit on hand.  Just in case.  The kills are brutal and at points shocking, a body ground beneath a train, corkscrewing about, but the movie isn’t meant to be taken deadly serious.

If his debut was a confident one from a style perspective, Dario Argento only further refines his craft in this effort.  The man has never met a spiral staircase he hasn’t wanted to lovingly point the camera up through its levels.  The identity of the killer becomes entangled with repeated extreme closeups of his eye, though the identity is obscured by a red filter which both renders the identity more ambiguous due to the lack of a proper iris color and plays up the idea of the killer’s blind rage.  It’s also a red herring.  Braun draws attention to the rare color of Carlo’s eyes.  Sure, it’s a pickup line, but in associating Braun with eyes, the audience are subliminally directed to condemn him as a suspect.  But Argento uses his camera to humorous effect as well.  Insert shots parallel Anna’s hand on the clutch with Carlo’s clutched hands as she speeds them around the city streets in the journalist’s car.  His feet press helplessly at the floor, pushing imaginary brake pedals as we all have done while at the mercy of that one friend who sucks at driving.  Every image in a film has intent, but Argento is the type of filmmaker who revels in drawing attention to that fact for any number of purposes.

Queerness is handled with an interestingly ambiguous approach in this film.  The topic was broached lightly in Bird with the Crystal Plumage in the coding of the eagerly helpful shop owner who was a little too handsy.  But here it forms an entire subplot.  Braun is gay and spends time at a gay bar, though the film is never lurid and leering in its shooting of that space.  Braun is gay, and reads it, but that is never his whole identity.  Carlo is remarkably accepting of these people, never handling them at arm’s length.  Speaking with his cop informant, they recognize the criminality of simply being who you are under Italian legal code, though never express interest in enforcing that law. Fight the real enemy: hack biotech researchers.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says ‘Terzi Institute’.

A POV shot begins.

Blind guys have heightened other senses!

BIG DRINK

Extreeeeeme eye closeup.

The killer claims a new victim.

[kaleidoru]

tell no tales

[ltwilliammowett]

"Let the cat out of the bag" and "No room to swing a cat"

We know these two terms today in a different context, but we'll come to that later. First of all, we are dealing with both terms in the area of punishments, whether at sea or on land, but definitely with a military background. However, it can be said that they have been used in nautical language since the 1600s. But what exactly is meant by it, well when it was said let the cat out of the bag it meant that someone would be flogged.

Now not every warship was a space wonder and had a lot of space available and since all of the crew had to attend this event, the space was even tighter, and the " kitty cat " (not a cat in the true sense of the word but the cat o nine tails - the whip) we are talking about here was very long in the 17th century (later much shorter) and in order to swing it reasonably you needed space to hit the person to be punished reasonably. Hence the expression when it was too narrow - there wasn't enough room for the cat.

This expression is also used today when there is simply not enough space and it is quite crowded around you. When you say let the cat out of the bag, this is a colloquial expression that means to reveal previously hidden facts.

[weirdlookindog]

Il gatto a nove code (1971)

AKA The Cat o' Nine Tails

[schlock-luster-video]

On August 9, 1971, The Cat o' Nine Tails debuted in France.

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[tompettyscontroversiallyyounggf]

every day i think about the creative decisions that went into having the bdsm cult guy bludgeon your Tav with a full on mace.

[weirdstrangeandawful]

TW: flogging

This came up in A Good Man's Heart but I think it deserves to be a prompt:

A lot of ships in the Royal Navy (and probably other navies too I've just done less research) would keep both left- and right-handed boatswain's mates on hand so that the cat-o'-nine-tails would leave criss-crossing marks on the sailors' backs which hurt more than marks in only one direction.

Carroll was that left-handed boatswain but had it trained out of him once it stopped being convenient.

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