Cat O’ Nine Tails 4K UHD Review

The Blind Kitty

“The slinky whodunit mystery offers a standard cocktail of giallo tropes, from the vivacious female lead to a litany of suspects for the killer. Argento puts it all together with some magnificent set-pieces, including a taut finale involving the killer’s reveal.”

Read Christopher’s full Blu-ray review for more.

Video

Arrow’s 4K release gives Argento’s film intensely deep black levels, absolutely black at all times without relenting. The original cinematography favors some crush, but not to a debilitating degree. Shadows provide tone and tension, keeping areas unseen, cloaked in limited light. It works. Contrast isn’t as emboldened, but does find moments to pump out intense light.

Color density brings marvelous heft to primaries. They glow, veering away from natural and taking on an almost surreal beauty. Reds and greens take prominence, truly spectacular in their boldness. There’s no loss to flesh tones, which while slightly warmed, never distract.

From a 4K scan, perfect encoding handles a mild grain structure sans problems. Cinematography favors softer focus, although this doesn’t dim the detail. Especially in close, definition excels, expertly resolved and crisp. It’s clear the resolution makes a difference, and without a spot/scratch anywhere on the print, there’s nothing to break up the image’s purity.

Audio

Weathered mono does what it can, struggling to maintain the higher octaves in the score. Cat O’ Nine Tails doesn’t look its age, but it sounds so, unavoidable as it likely is. The dubbed dialog comes through the centered worn and raw, but audible. Fine, but little else.

Extras

Arrow ports the Blu-ray bonuses to the UHD edition, the first being a commentary from Kim Newman and critic Alan Jones. An Argento interview runs 16-minutes. For over a half hour, writer Dardano Sacchetti speaks about his work. The now grown Cinzia De Carolis speaks 11-minutes about her part. Then comes production manager Angelo Iacono, whose interview lasts 15-minutes. For finality, an original ending and trailers.

Note Arrow includes the English and Italian versions too.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray was provided to us for review. This has not affected the editorial process. For information on how we handle review material, please visit our about us page to learn more.

The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 43 full resolution uncompressed 4K screen shots grabbed directly from the UHD: