Some months back, I recorded a movie with an interesting premise not realising that it was one of those international co-productions that has actors from different countries who get dubbed into one language or another depending on which market the movie is being released in. That movie was Dario Argento's The Cat O'Nine Tails.
I didn't realize this movie was an Italian picture because TCM's synopsis listed the stars as Karl Malden and James Franciscus. They are of course the stars, although they're over in Italy for this one. Malden plays Franco "Cookie" Arno, a blind man who had worked as a reporter who now sets crossword puzzles and raises his niece Lori as his foster daughter. One night he and Lori go for a walk through their neighborhood in Rome, passing the Terzi medical institute which does some sort of genetics research in the era where DNA was still a relatively new thing. Somebody drives into the Institute, having assaulted the watchman at the gate, and goes into an office where he steals something.
One of the doctors claims to have a good idea as to who might have done it. The next day, a bunch of reporters are at the train station awaiting the arrival of a famous actress, when who should show up at the station but Calabresi, the doctor at the Institute who claims to know who was trying to steal something from the Institute. However, Calabresi gets pushed in front of the train! We viewers know it's murder, although the murderer was fairly clever to the point that the police think it's an accident.
Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) is a reporter who is writing a story about the break-in at the Institute. When Arno learns this, he goes to the newspaper to see Giordani, asking whether the photo of Calabresi's death has been cropped: Arno, having been a reporter, knows something is up. Sure enough, the photo has been cropped, and shows that Calabresi has been pushed and the death is not accidental. Not that it reveals who actually committed the murder. Worse, the photographer gets strangled to death in his dark-room! So now Giordani and Arno definitely know that there's a much bigger story on their hands.
Both of them being (or having been) journalists, they naturally want to investigate. There are a lot of people who could theoretically be suspects of course, if the case were one of professional envy. There's Dr. Terzi and his daughter Anna (Catherine Spaak) and several researchers. Meanwhile, Arno and his daughter go to see dead Dr. Calabresi's girlfriend, Bianca. She too gets murdered for her trouble. And someone tries to kill Anna along the way with Giordani and Arno also facing significant danger.
Eventually, the reporters learn of something known as XYY syndrome. The movie doesn't clearly explain it, but normal humans are born with 46 chromosomes, with the 23d pair determining women (XX) or men (XY). About one man in 1000, however, is actually born with 47 chromosomes, with the 23d pair being XYY. This doesn't have a significant enough effect to result in a diagnosis early in life. However, when the syndrome was first discovered, there was a belief that men born with XYY were disproportionately violent. SO there's a feeling at the institute that one of the men might have been born XYY and he'd be the killer.
The Cat o' Nine Tails is a movie with a good idea, but another one where for me the execution didn't quite work. I think in this case that's specifically down to the international nature of the production. It needed to be either a Hollywood movie, or else something entirely in Italian with everybody playing it straight and the movie being subtitled. The movie we get, however, feels slightly off in an artificial way. Some of that may also be due to the point-of-view shots Dario Argento used. Still, The Cat o' Nine Tails is an interesting misfire.
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