The Cat O’Nine Tails - Dario Argento - 1971

★★★★ - No cats in this movie. I feel cheated. Still pretty good though.

Karl Malden is the big name in the movie. He plays a former newspaper man. The main character, portrayed by one James Franciscus (sort of a cross between Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster), is a reporter forced to play detective after people start dying horribly with the police doing nothing, per use in the genre.

My favorite procedural or spy movies are the ones where a journalist or some other dude is thrown into the shit. Obviously some romanticizing/daydreaming on my end. The one last job, old guy movie doesn’t hold a candle to that shit.

Malden is Mr. Magoo I’ve decided. He is literally a blind detective in this movie. Fun facts about this guy. He grew up in Gary, Indiana. He won an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire. He was married to his wife for 71 years. Also, he seems to have some weird shit going on with a little girl in the movie. Says some shit like, “I don’t have any relatives. She doesn’t have any parents. We need each other.” Um, gross.

Get a good death by train murder. A paparazzi photographer gets a photo of it. It’s chaos, obviously, in the paparazzi or somewhere like, “oh shit, the starlet!“ And then go take photos of her forgetting about the guy cut in half. But then the picture is on the front page. Murder as it’s happening is some Pulitzer shit.

There is great I’m comfortable barber saying. Reporter guy is getting a straight razor shave after he wrote the murderer could’ve been a barber. The barber then plays fast and loose with a weapon next to his jugular. But then he explains why it couldn’t have been a barber so everything’s good.