The Cat o' Nine Tails

The Cat o' Nine Tails (Il gatto a nove code, 1971) is a Dario Argento giallo you can watch online on iFILM. A guard is strangled outside a locked genetics institute. The next day one of its researchers falls under a train. A blind crossword setter who overheard the wrong conversation is sure it was no accident.

Reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) teams up with Franco Arno (Karl Malden), a retired journalist who lost his sight but not his ear for trouble. Together they chase a string of clues, and every lead ends with another body. The institute is buried in research linking genes to violent behavior, and someone is methodically erasing anyone who brushed against that first killing, including Arno's young granddaughter.

This is the middle film of Argento's so-called Animal Trilogy, after The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Erico Menczer shoots the murders from the killer's own gloved point of view, Ennio Morricone scored it, and the title nods to the nine separate threads the heroes must untangle. Argento himself never loved it, but for fans of 1970s Italian thrillers it's a sharp, inventive mystery. Stream The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) online on iFILM.