A guard is brutally murdered in a secret institute engaged in biological and genetic research. Then follows a series of murders of various people, whose main “fault” was involvement in this first ridiculous death, sometimes just interest in it, some guesses and conversations.

4k movies reviews
Great movie. An interesting and intense thriller from a horror master. This is just his second job, but the film was shot just masterfully. First of all, it is the direction and visual presentation of the whole idea that amazes. After all, the concept of the strangler is not so interesting in essence, but it is presented simply amazingly.

Definitely one of Argento’s best works. Much superior to his first work about Crystal Ptise, many times better than Mother of Tears, Two Evil Glances, Wax mask. Overall better than works like Underworld, Shiver, Suspicion, Trauma, Phenomenon, and Blood Red.

This masterpiece is surpassed only by Argent’s ‘The Gambler’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, filmed with even more powerful suspense and tension.

The music in the film is excellent, and not just the Morricon title theme, but the tense high-pitched melodies and harsh musical passages during the film’s climaxes. I especially love old films for the intense creepy music, and there is quite a lot of it here.

The plot of the picture is a typical thriller. But given the year of release, it can be assumed that the picture just dictates what a real thriller should be. Unlike Djalo, the emphasis here is on the investigation of the murders, and not on their spectacle and horror. However, there is really a lot of scary in the film. It lacks a more plentiful supply of plans on behalf of the killer, as in ‘Trauma’, for example. It lacks the spectacle of murders, as in The Phantom of the Opera, but in The Cat the scene with the train is just great! The most spectacular and eerie moment in the film, the brightest and most spectacular. Perfectly filmed, wonderful script move, beautifully played.

The film amazes with the abundance of vivid fully disclosed characters and their characters. Despite the fact that most of the characters cause negative feelings, antipathy and censure, all of them are as vivid as possible and their characters are perfectly revealed in the narrative of the picture and in their actions.

Very interesting script twists, shocking elements make you think about the film, solve the puzzle. Not just guessing who the killer is, but solving crimes, looking for the reason. Which is still quite possible to guess if you correctly analyze the plot, but the killer – well, practically not.

Although the character of the killer impressed less than the others, but only at the expense of the actor. His physique somehow does not fit into all the scenes of fights and all the murders. In other words, this frail muddler looks pretty ridiculous. And even when he takes a knife and wants to kill a little tied girl – this is his weakness. To kill an innocent helpless bound child – only such a degenerate and bastard is capable of such things. Apparently the prototype of Guillermo Del Toro. The actor, on the whole, played well and the character is bright, but when there are fights with a journalist, it looks a little fake. Despite the fact that the journalist is also far from a jock, he could have done this jerk with one left, or at least knocked him out. Why didn’t you? Yes, just if it were, the ending would be silly. And so it turned out stretched and more spectacular.

There are a few drawbacks to the finale, of course, but apparently due to lack of budget or time (the film has a very long timing). In principle, it is clear – the story is over, but another 5 minutes was worth adding. A couple of philosophical phrases on the subject of the killer and his reasons, and how all detectives, the capture group and other participants in all this leave the roof of the building and leave with the words ‘finally it all ended’, as in the same ‘Trauma’ or ‘Phenomenon’ , For example. Somehow the very atmosphere of the end is missing. But, however, this does not affect so badly on the film, which runs for almost 2 hours.

By the way, despite the timing and antiquity of the film, there are no boring moments in it at all. The dialogues are very interesting, nice to listen to. In communication, a lot is revealed as well. A lot of scenes are just good by themselves in terms of direction or atmosphere. Or constant interesting plot twists, they simply do not give time to break away for some business. The film is immersive, and it really immerses. If ‘Shiver’, ‘Crystal Wings’, ‘Mother of Tears’ have rather boring scenes that you want to skip, then ‘Cat’ all its two hours shows a very interesting narration of the maniac’s story.

The denouement of the story is really striking and very symbolic, beautiful, interesting. Well, the very presence of a happy ending in the picture is also quite appropriate, as in most of Argento’s works.

For me personally, this film is in the honorable third place of all the works of Argento. More than he, I was fascinated only by ‘The Gambler’ and amazed by ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. The rest of the master’s works are clearly inferior to the ‘Nine-Tailed Cat’ both in suspense and in the abundance of bright characters. But they excel in music (Phenomenon, Tremors) or in visual terms (Blood-red, Trauma). It’s also a pity that Asia Argento is not in the picture, when she acts in her father’s films – she plays brilliantly. And when she gets to some Romero (fu-fu-fu) or in ‘Three Xs’ – her playing somehow no longer feels in full professionalism. She is good even in the works of Bava and Saovi, although she plays there only in childhood.

The downside of the movie is definitely the budget. More ‘flesh and blood’ would be welcome here. I would like a quality remake from Argento himself. He somehow was going to reshoot the first two parts of the ‘trilogy of three mothers’, but after the failure of ‘Mother of Tears’ apparently changed his mind. But it is from the ‘Nine-Tailed Cat’ that could now turn out to be just a gorgeous action-packed thriller.

Argento’s ‘Cat’ is, in my opinion, generally one of the best classic thrillers, you need to be equal to such films, and it is very good that they are equal. This is a classic. It is a masterpiece. This is a magnificent tense picture, full of eerie moments and suspense, looking in one breath.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (84.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1

Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital Mono
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Italian: Dolby Digital Mono

Subtitles
English, English SDH.