The Cat o' Nine Tails

The Cat o' Nine Tails is an Italian-German-French horror mystery thriller directed by Dario Argento. A blind former journalist, Franco Arnò, earns a living setting crossword puzzles and relies on his young niece for help. While out walking with her, he overhears a conversation between two men in a car outside a medical institute. That night, someone breaks into the institute and kills a guard. Franco begins looking into the matter on his own and is joined by Carlo Giordani, a newspaper reporter. Their investigation centres on genetic research carried out at the institute, and the killings multiply as they follow a series of clues.

Karl Malden plays Franco Arnò and James Franciscus plays Carlo Giordani, with Catherine Spaak, Pier Paolo Capponi, Horst Frank and Rada Rassimov among a credited cast of thirty-one. Argento wrote the screenplay with Bryan Edgar Wallace, and Salvatore Argento produced.

The film was released in 1971 and runs 112 minutes. It is the third of the seventeen features Argento has directed, following Four Flies on Grey Velvet and preceding Deep Red. Made for about one million dollars, it took a similar amount at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from 464 votes, while film critics' reviews average 6.4 from 21.