| Poster artwork for Cat O'Nine Tails. [click photo for larger version] |
Perhaps the most significant stylistic break from the mystery/thriller tradition in The Cat O'Nine Tails, and a very crucial element in Argento’s own evolving style, is the refusal to reassure the audience that chaos can be mastered. Normally, the mystery thriller establishes a compact with its audience; Chaos breaks loose, but in the end it will be contained and everything will go back to normal. The mystery acts as a puzzle, and must be solvable in a logical manner. Reason triumphs. However, in The Cat O'Nine Tails, chaos erupts into the lives of the characters without reason or tidy resolution. The pieces of the mystery seem to lead to a grand conclusion, if only Arno and Giordani can latch on to the right lead, or tail. Each clue leads to a further puzzle, though. The case grows to an almost insoluble level of complexity. By the end of the film, the identity of the murderer is revealed, but the motive for murder, the resolution, remains unsatisfactory. It makes sense, but the clues for solving the mystery were misleading. The key to the murderer’s true function lies in the last minute taunting of Arno – the murderer is an agent of chaos. After telling the motive and realizing there is nowhere to go, the murderer tells Arno that Lori is dead, "I killed her." Devastated and enraged, Arno shoves the murderer, accidentally pushing him into an elevator shaft, where the murderer plunges to a grisly death. Offscreen, Lori’s voice, heavily reverbed, cries "Cookie!" The implication is that Lori survives and Arno unwittingly murders an individual in a fit of passion. Argento seems to support this interpretation of the ending (as indicated in the interview included with Anchor Bay Entertainment's DVD presentation of The Cat O'Nine Tails), but he’s been known to supply red herrings in interviews. However, as Maitland McDonaugh points out in her analysis of Argento’s films, Broken Mirros, Broken Minds, there is no visual evidence in the film that Lori, or Giordani for that matter, survives. The last time we see the two of them, the murderer hovers menacingly over both of them as the police arrive. The only resolution offered is the reverbed voice, which could be Lori calling from the distance. The voice could be the last thing the killer remembers as consciousness slips away, or it could be a past memory of Arno’s. The ambiguity of resolution leaves chaos unleashed, defying the expectations of the audience for a conclusive and tidy wrap up. Even if Lori and Giordani survive, their lives, along with Arno’s, have been left in shambles. Order cannot be restored. The puzzle pieces won’t fit neatly back into the box.
The DVD presentation of The Cat O'Nine Tails has some noteworthy extra features. The biographies, written by Mark Wickum, are informative and insightful. The notes give detailed highlights of the careers of Argento, story collaborator Dardano Sacchetti, James Franciscus, Karl Malden, and composer Ennio Morricone. Radio interviews with Franciscus and Malden provide more insight into their experiences working on the set. A documentary retrospective on The Cat O'Nine Tails, while brief, delivers more useful insight into the working methods of Argento, Sacchetti, and Morricone. The poster and stills gallery is worth mentioning for a German lobby card that shows Giordani recuperating after his rooftop stabbing – a still obviously taken from deleted footage, which further lends credence that Argento crafted the ending to be more ambiguous. The extras are rounded out by a collection of radio spots and television trailers.
Dario Argento would make one more film in the "animals trilogy," Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio), before moving on to Deep Red, which ushered in his supernatural/ultraviolent period. In light of its recent DVD release on Anchor Bay with restored footage, The Cat O'Nine Tails deserves to be reassessed and re-evaluated within Argento’s canon. It has long been maligned, or worse, ignored. From any Italian director of the time other than Argento (or Mario Bava or Lucio Fulci, for that matter), the film would have been hailed as a classic example of the "giallo" genre. Even though of a different order than Argento’s masterpieces, The Cat O'Nine Tails should be welcomed back to the fold.