He's not wrong there's a car chase in the middle that has no bearing on the plot, and while it has a respectable body count, the deaths themselves are, for the most part, less elaborate and gory than they are in his other films. In a new interview with Argento on the Tails disc he mentions that Plumage was a huge hit in the US and thus he perhaps made this followup "too Americanized".
It's a shame that Arno disappears for a large chunk of the film while Carlo romances Anna (Catherine Spaak), but considering what usually happens to blind people in Italian horror movies (even Argento's own Suspiria) I guess it's in his best interest to sit on the sidelines for a while. But these guys aren't misogynistic or dickish Giordani even puts himself at risk to help rescue Arno's niece, and refrains from slapping around the woman he briefly suspects is the killer, another thing that puts him a notch (or seven) above the guy in Four Flies. Not for nothing, but Argento's heroes (in fact, the heroes in MOST of the Italian genre films, especially in this era) aren't usually the most upstanding folks in the world - Four Flies' protagonist cheats on his wife with her cousin, for example. In short time, the two become buddies as they solve the mystery together, and it's legit endearing to see them hanging out and cooking pasta while discussing the case. For starters, it gives us two heroes: Karl Malden's blind crossword puzzle designer Arno, and James Franciscus as Carlo Giordani, a reporter who meets Arno while investigating a break-in that may have been perpetrated by a man Arno overheard discussing it the night before. Tails, on the other hand, is the odd man out of the three, giving it more of its own identity - and in many ways it stands out across all of Argento's gialli, not just these three. It's got its moments, and an all-timer sequence where the villain is dispatched (and earns a spot in the freeze-frame to credits hall of fame in the process), but Plumage hits many of the same beats and in a more engaging way, far as I'm concerned. To me, Four Flies is the weakest of the three because it's too much like Crystal Plumage, albeit with a less interesting hero (he's kind of an asshole, really) and a mystery that's confusing even by giallo standards. Argento himself has said it's his least favorite of his movies (he said this a while ago, however - not only has his own opinion perhaps changed, but he said it before he made things like Dracula 3D), but I don't agree - I think it's as good as Plumage and better than Four Flies, in fact. Granted, it's a great transfer anyway, but seeing actual color in the film and not wondering what someone just said because half of their line was lost to print damage was so satisfying! It also gave me a chance to reassess the film on its own instead of in Plumage's shadow, coming away with the opinion that it works better if you not only have a cleared palate, but also if you don't put too much stock into the fact that it's a "Dario Argento Film", because you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Worse, the print for Tails was one of the most faded and beat up I've ever seen (a sentiment shared by many others in attendance, including some of the theater's staff), so that didn't help much either.īut that was my most recent memory of the film (which I had only seen once before anyway), so when I popped in Arrow's new Blu-ray release* of Tails I was kind of blown away for a bit.
The first two movies were The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italian title: L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo) and The Cat O' Nine Tails ( Il gatto a nove code), which make up the first 2/3s of his so-called "Animal Trilogy" (the third entry, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, was bypassed), and if you've seen them, you'd know neither film is exactly a roller coaster ride, and it does them no favors to watch them back to back as you'll end up being exasperated at their relatively low-key existence when compared to his later work.
#IL GATTO A NOVE CODE CARS MOVIE#
A while back, us Los Angeles movie fans were treated to an all night marathon of Dario Argento's movies, on 35mm and in chronological order (ending with Phenomena, so it was exclusively "glory days" selections).
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