As a hardcore mystery buff, I recently had the great fortune to watch two not-so-recent films that I hadn't seen in awhile. Let's be honest, the pickings of whodunits available on streaming services and in local movie houses have been mighty slim in recent years, consisting largely of Kenneth Branagh's pretty-but-vapid forays into overtrod Christie territory, Britwit non-coms such as See How They Run, and adaptations of bestselling wallows that are more soap opera than actual mystery. But, whatever. As a fan of the genre, I'm thankful for what I can get (excepting, of course, those tiresome and dreadfully overrated Rian Johnson collabs with Daniel Craig). 

And so it was with a happy heart that I rediscovered Costa Gavras' all-but-forgotten 1965 film debut Compartiment Tueurs (English title: The Sleeping Car Murders), and Dario Argento's Cat O'Nine Tails, a once-despised Eurodud that has received a limited reappraisal in the ensuing 50+ years since its original release. 

Costa Gavras, of course, skyrocketed to international fame with his 1969 multi-award-winning Z, followed by such hits as State of Siege, Missing, and Hanna K. Even so, The Sleeping Car Murders remains, for me, his most pleasurable movie. Devoid of the political context that characterized much of his later work, The Sleeping Car Murders is a whodunit that breezes confidently along on its own sense of audacity. Based on a well-received French novel by Sebastien Japrisot, the movie stays true to its source material without overthinking (or overreacting to) the larger themes presented by the script. 

The Sleeping Car Murders may start out like a standard Agatha Christie mystery but the train here is no Orient Express and you certainly won't find any lords and ladies leaping for their furs, cocktails laced with strychnine, or bejeweled daggers cloaked in Balenciaga. After boarding an overnight train to Paris, six strangers find themselves bunking together in one of the sleeping compartments. Upon reaching their destination the next morning, five of these people disembark and go on their merry ways. Unbeknownst to her fellow travelers (well, most of them, anyway), the sixth occupant has been strangled during the night while the rest of them slept. That's some pretty heavy zzzzzzz's, but whatever. 

As is the case with virtually every European thriller made during this time period, the local constabulary have the investigative skills of a can of salmon. Yves Montand is the chief inspector tasked with solving the case, but, sadly, even he can't find his ass with both hands. While the cops are busy chasing their tails, the dead woman's bunkmates suddenly start piling up in the morgue. Realizing that the killer is intent on removing everyone who shared the sleeping compartment on that fateful night, Chief Inspector Montand dispatches his studly young assistant and crew to round up the surviving suspects/potential victims who, being a bit on the shady side, are not eager to chat with law enforcement. This includes an aging, out-of-work actress, her ex-lover, and various vagabonds and con-artists.

Meanwhile, the same realization has occurred to two other strangers from the train--a sexy young secretary and a handsome stowaway with secrets--who decide to do a bit of sleuthing on their own after spending a hot night betwixt the sheets in her Paris apartment. Can they unmask the killer before s/he comes for them next? 

In addition to Yves Montand, the first-rate cast features Simone Signoret (his real-life wife), Catherine Allegret (their real-life daughter), Michel Piccoli, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Charles Denner and Jacques Perrin, all delivering excellent performances. Jean Tournier's crisp, black-and-white photography reveals a wintry Paris, bleaker than we normally imagine, while the sets have a run-down quality that effectively reflects the desperate inner lives of the film's characters. 

Despite the killer's motive being a bit of a stretch (as is the case in most murder mysteries), The Sleeping Car Murders is an exciting and well-executed entertainment that doesn't tax the brain or the patience too strenuously. It's also quite progressive for its time: in addition to the secretary sharing her bed with a virtual stranger, there's an explicitly homosexual subplot that doesn't use the characters' sexual orientation as an excuse for their bad behavior. If you want to check out the trailer, click here, and if you decide you'd like to watch the movie it's here. 

One last note on The Sleeping Car Murders: it is a French movie and it's subtitled. I understand that some people refuse to watch movies with subtitles. If you are one of those people then this probably isn't the movie for you. I won't judge if you don't like subtitles. Well, maybe a little. 

Which brings me to The Cat O'Nine Tails, an Italian film co-starring Karl Malden and James Franciscus. The Cat O'Nine Tails came out in 1971, a year or two after Dario Argento's directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which went on to become an international hit, as well as a bona fide classic of the influential (if disreputable) Italian genre known as giallo. This rather fearsome genre took elements of classic mystery, horror and film noir, and sensationalized the formulas by adding hefty doses of sadism, gore and gratuitous (usually female) nudity. Popular throughout the mid-to-late 60's and 1970's, giallo films were notorious for their murky plot lines, frequently exploitative treatment of women, and bad endings (particularly for the female characters), abrupt endings (leaving unknown the fates of certain characters) and non-endings (the movie just stops and the credits roll). Still, some of these movies, particularly those of Dario Argento and Mario Bava, became hugely successful and led to dozens--perhaps hundreds--of gialli being churned out before gradually running out of steam a decade or so later. We'll talk more about this genre in a later post. 

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was always going to be a hard act to follow because it is an exceptionally well-done thriller worthy of Hitchcock. In fact, considering the type of film Hitchcock professed an interest in making during the 60's (Frenzy came closest to realizing this ambition), Bird certainly seems like something Hitchcock might have directed under the right circumstances. It even has an ending that works, something that The Cat O'Nine Tails emphatically lacks. (Although, to be fair, the climax and some of the original audio have been restored so that one particularly noxious plot turn at the end has been--sort of--cleared up). 

In contrast to The Sleeping Car Murders, The Cat O'Nine Tails gets almost everything wrong. I'm not sure why a filmmaker of Argento's caliber would make so many bad choices after his thrilling debut but my guess is that he allowed a certain writer/director/confidante of considerably less talent to influence certain scenes. Even so, it's really hard to veer too far off course with Karl Malden leading the cast and James Franciscus serving finely aged eye candy while helping him solve a murder case. 

Typically convoluted--a giallo requirement--The Cat O'Nine Tails features Malden as Cookie, a blind, former newspaperman who goes for an evening walk with his orphaned niece and overhears a conversation between a blackmailer and his victim in a parked car. Pretending to tie his shoe, Cookie instructs the child to take a casual peek at the car's occupants so he can get a description. The next day, after the blackmailer tumbles into the path of a moving train, Lori reads about the "accident" in the newspaper and alerts Cookie that this was probably not an accident. The victim in the newspaper photo is one of the men who was sitting in the car the previous night (she didn't get a good look at the other)! After tracking down Giordani (Franciscus), the reporter who covered the story, Cookie instructs him to contact the paparazzo who snapped the photo. Maybe a closer look at the picture will reveal a murderer. Sure enough, the photographer notices a hand pushing the blackmailer onto the tracks but before Cookie and Giordani arrive at his studio, the man is garotted by an unseen assailant who also steals the photograph. Zounds! 

From there, all paths lead to the mysterious Terzi Institute where scientists are engaged in secretive genetic research experiments, as well as a little blackmail on the side: the guy from the train tracks, in fact, was employed as a scientist at the institute. To complicate matters, Cookie and Giordani discover that the police were already looking into an (apparently) unsuccessful burglary at the institute a few days earlier. Not that it matters because please recall the hands/ass association I made regarding the cops in the previous film and consider that these guys are a notch dimmer. As Cookie and Giordani put together assorted clues, more murders occur, and it becomes a matter of urgency that the killer be stopped before he gets to them--and little Lori. 

As I mentioned previously, many less-than-stellar decisions were affirmed during the making of this film. Of course, the ending sucks. It is both an abrupt ending and a non-ending (see paragraph 10 for clarification). Also, there are too many explanatory/theorizing scenes with people sitting or standing around nattering on about things that could have as easily been dramatized (or eliminated altogether) to greater effect. In fact, the whole movie feels like a lot of these bone-headed expository scenes interspersed with some really great set-pieces and exciting action sequences. 

There's one eerily memorable scene that makes the whole movie for me: Cookie and Giordani have to break into a dark mausoleum to retrieve an incriminating piece of evidence from the coffin of a murder victim. Throughout the scene, you're led to believe that the killer is watching from the shadows but then, suddenly, something happens that sows doubt on everything you've seen up to this point. It's very cleverly done and demonstrates Argento's flair for creating suspense and a sense of terror without resorting to the bloody carnage on display in much of his work (and in most gialli). In The Cat O'Nine Tails, there is very little in the way of blood and guts, although one of the garottings is quite agonizing to watch. 

There's also a refreshing lack of T&A, which must have been a shock to giallo fans expecting to see starlet Catherine Spaak in the altogether. To be sure, Franciscus and Spaak jump into bed to do the obligatory deed, but it's a chaste affair, with the camera generally hovering above the actor's shoulders and avoiding any full-on boobage or pubicity. It's also a waste of film: Franciscus perspires and dawdles listlessly over Spaak, who, for her part, looks vaguely puzzled, like she's trying to figure out the lyrics to Blinded By the Light. Neither of them seems to get a happy ending out of the coupling although it does eventually segue into something more interesting. To be honest, I really don't like Spaak in this movie. No, I mean I really don't like her in this. Aside from the fact that she simply has no discernible screen presence or personality, I don't understand why her character is necessary at all. I'm not sure if she was meant to be a love interest, femme fatale, a suspect or a red herring but she does score as a fashion victim. Her outfits, with their thigh-high slits and cut-up sleeves look like they were created by a demented chef with a carving knife. They're the very worst of late 60's psychedelia merged with a sort of free-flowing 1970's Frederick's-of-Hollywood-by-way-of-Jack-the-Ripper vibe. Awful, awful stuff! And that wig! Who thought that was a good idea? Sporting an even worse wig--impossible as that might seem--is Rada Rassimov, the actress playing the blackmailer's girlfriend. It's a decent role and Rassimov is a much better actress than Spaak (so am I, for that matter) but that wig was put to much better use on Madeline Kahn in What's Up Doc? On a related note, Rassimov's attire looks like it was designed by the Keebler elves. At least Rassimov gets the most showy death scene in the movie, and what actor doesn't want that? Needless to say, Argento's much vaunted stylistic flourishes--including the fashions--are conspicuously absent in this movie. 

The movie does have a really good score by the legendary Ennio Morricone. It's a sort of avant-garde jazz construction dripping with menace and complex psychological nuances, not unlike Morricone's score for Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Incidentally, both Cat and Bird were part of Dario Argento's so-called Animal Trilogy, with the final entry, the obscure Four Flies on Grey Velvet, being produced in 1971. 

Perhaps most of all, I appreciate the fact that Dario Argento has always been fairly progressive in recognizing LGBT characters (I don't think the Q+ existed in those days) and using them to populate his films. In The Cat O'Nine Tails, a scientist/chief suspect/potential victim is a gay man involved in a love triangle. It's interesting that, while he may not be a stand-up kind of guy, his homosexuality isn't a particular issue for his co-workers or anyone else. Although one scene, set in a gay bar, has Giordani going to interview the flattered scientist, who initially thinks the handsome reporter is flirting with him (one of the man's boyfriends has similar suspicions and freaks out accordingly). Personally, I think Argento should have tweaked the scene where Spaak is revealed to be the elderly institute founder's mistress and not his "daughter", as they'd led everyone to believe. If her character turned out to be trans as well, the plot complications would have been much more interesting, and it might have given Franciscus a little more depth as an actor. Argento went on to develop more LGBTQ+ characters for many of his films, and is notable for his gender-bending casting. 

For all its flaws--and they are legion--I like The Cat O'Nine Tails. Karl Malden delivers a first-rate performance, and he's got nice chemistry with the attractively energetic Franciscus. Lori (Cinzia de Carolis) is cute and effectively elicits concern from the viewer. It helps that the central mystery is not completely implausible and that the killer's motive isn't as farfetched as it is in most other giallo films. Finally, there's no real sexploitation here and it's not a bloodbath so you're kept on edge anticipating things that don't happen. Dario Argento has stated that The Cat O'Nine Tails is his least favorite film although I would argue that most of his post-90's work suffers in comparison. It is definitely lesser Argento but, for me, it's the cinematic equivalent of comfort-food (as opposed to cinematic junk-food), much like old reruns of Columbo are my TV comfort-food. While this film lacks the fierce, over-the-top theatrics and operatic violence of such classics as Suspiria, Profondo Rosso and Tenebre, or even Bird With the Crystal Plumage, it's a decent enough effort that hasn't aged too badly in the era of Me-Too and LGBTQ+ inclusiveness. Oh, and by the way, no subtitles needed.