It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. There’s a bit of a chill in the air and there’s a bit of a chill in the vibe in here. There’s no cover charge. The hostess can seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are
encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week I asked you about the new experiment down in the Arizona Fall League that dictates where fielders, especially outfielders, can stand. Anyway, most of you, 78 percent to be exact, agree with me that it’s a dumb idea. Let fielders catch the ball.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. We’d love for you to stick around for that, but it’s not required.
I’m kind of cheating here with our Halloween jazz as I present bassist Christian McBride and pianist Emmet Cohen playing the Benny Golson-penned tune “Killer Joe.” Sure, it’s always been interpreted that the song is about a metaphorical “lady killer” and not a literal one, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to cast it the other way.
Two more greats join McBride and Cohen as Warren Wolf is on the vibraphone and the drummer is Joe Farnsworth.
I promised that I’d watch some more horror for Halloween so I watched the 1971 Dario Argento-directed giallo film The Cat o’ Nine Tales (or in Italian, Il gatto a nove code), which was the follow-up to his successful first film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo). The film stars James Franciscus and Karl Malden dubbed into Italian, and I have to admit that was a big reason I decided to watch it. (Although there is an English-language version of the film out there.) The film is fine, but it’s certainly a step down from Argento’s classics like Crystal Plumage and his later works Deep Red and Suspiria. (Or Once Upon a Time in the West, which Argento wrote the story for director Sergio Leone.)
The Italian giallo genre is a weird hybrid. Heavily influenced by the works of Alfred Hitchcock, giallo tends to combine elements of the psychological thriller and murder mystery genres with the graphic violence of horror pictures. (Hitchcock, in turn, was influenced by the giallo genre when he made his 1972 film, Frenzy.) The Cat o’ Nine Tails has all of those elements as well as the beginnings of the vivid color schemes that he would employ so effectively in Deep Red and Suspiria. He’s not quite there yet, but the film does have a certain visual flair that became Argento’s signature.
Where the film falls flat is that the plot is just kind of “meh.” It’s not bad, but it also doesn’t have you on the edge of your seat. Malden plays “Cookie,” who is a blind puzzle maker who lives with his ten-year-old niece Lori (Cinzia De Carolis). He literally bumps into Franciscus’ Carlo, an investigative journalist. Carlo is covering a break-in at a state-of-the-art genetics lab that didn’t appear to steal anything, but because the lab does important work, it’s big news and a big concern of the police.
Soon after the break-in, one of the scientists (who was apparently blackmailing someone) at the lab falls in front of a moving train. It’s a gruesome sight, of course, and Carlo’s newspaper got a photo of it as he was interviewing someone at the station while it happened. The thing is chalked up to an accident until Cookie tells Carlo to check the whole photo where they find someone’s arm pushing the man on to the tracks.
Soon, however, the photographer is also brutally murdered and the photographic evidence is stolen. Cookie and Carlo then team up to try to figure out what is going on at the genetic institute and who is willing to kill to keep it a secret. They have nine leads to follow, which is where the “Cat o’ Nine Tails” title comes from.
Honestly, there are too many leads that they follow and it stretches credibility that the killer manages to always be one step ahead of Cookie and Carlo until the end. The plot also hinges on a now-dated pop belief in the “XYY chromosome,” which had entered the popular imagination of the late-sixties as the “criminal gene.” That mostly came out of the mistaken belief that Richard Speck had it. Speck did not have the XXY chromosome and there’s no evidence that people who have a greater tendency towards violent, criminal behavior. (More like learning disabilities and fertility issues.) But it was one of those things that people believed in 1971, so it is the big secret that someone is trying to cover up.
The Cat o’ Nine Tails is a pretty graphically violent film. Besides the scientist getting mangled under a train, several people get garroted or stabbed, with blood flying everywhere. I’ve said I get squeamish about these sorts of things, but I was mostly fine with this because it was so obviously fake. It was clearly a dummy getting run over by the train, for example. Also, Argento always preferred his blood to look a bright, almost fluorescent, red rather than realistically like actual blood.
Franciscus and Malden and fine and it’s certainly hilarious hearing them speak Italian in what is obviously not their voices. Both of them were probably doing this film for a paycheck and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage certainly marked Argento as a director any actor of the era wanted to be associated with. But according to Wikipedia, at least (and it is cited), Argento wasn’t happy with the results of The Cat o’ Nine Tails and considers it one of his lesser works. Still, lesser Argento is better than a lot of stuff out there.
If you want to get into the giallo genre, I’d certainly recommend that you’d start with some of the other Argento films mentioned here or the works of other directors such as Mario Bava, Aldo Lado or Luciano Ercoli. I’m sure there are other great ones that I haven’t watched yet or whom I’ve forgot who the director was. But if you’ve already seen the classics and want more, you won’t be upset with The Cat o’ Nine Tails. After all, it’s still Argento.
Here’s the trailer for the restored 4K release of The Cat o’ Nine Tails. This is in English, which denies you the fun of watching Malden speak Italian. But I suppose it sounds more natural.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
It’s no secret that the Cubs had a problem with their pitching staff this year. Through disappointing seasons and injuries, the Cubs succeeded despite their pitchers and not because of them. But even among a group of turtles, one of them has to be the fastest, right? So who was the Cubs’ Pitcher of the Year for 2026?
I know I’m throwing over the complaint department by asking this question and I hate to do that. It’s not that I’m a positive guy (far from it) but rather that I see little point in airing my complaints in public. But I don’t really have a better question for tonight.
I have five candidates for the award, but you can also vote “other” and tell us your choice in the comments. Hey, it’s not like these five towered over the rest of the staff.
The candidates are:
Matthew Boyd: Boyd got hurt mid-season, but unlike the next guy on this list at least he returned. He was also much improved after returning from his injury, putting up a 3.57 ERA after the trip to the injured list. Overall, Boyd went 1o-5 with a 3.91 ERA over 22 starts and 126.2 innings.
Ben Brown: Brown was very good this year with a 1.68 ERA over 68 innings. The problem is that it was only 68 innings out of eight starts and 12 relief appearances. Brown went down in mid-June and despite hope that he’d return, he never did.
Shōta Imanaga: You never knew what you were going to get when Shōta took the mound this year. He made 32 starts and 14 of them were “quality starts” and many of them were very high quality indeed. On the other hand, Imanaga had several really bad starts in there as well. For the year, Imanaga finished with a record of 11-10 and a 3.77 ERA.
Ryan Rolison: For someone claimed off of waivers in January and who didn’t make the Opening Day roster, Rolison was a key member of the Cubs bullen all year. Rolison made 60 appearances (two “opener” starts) and pitched 63 innings. In that time, he went 9-2 with a 3.14 ERA and three saves.
Jacob Webb: Webb became the Cubs closer by default, but he kept it by getting saves. Webb pitched 67 innings over 68 games and went 6-5 with a 3.36 ERA and nine saves.
You can pick one of those or you can pick your own. I’d give you more options, but our software only allows for six options now.
So who was the Cubs’ Pitcher of the Year?
Thanks everyone for stopping by. We’re always happen to see you. Please get home safely. Stay warm. Call a ride if you need one. Please recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.
