Condenados a vivir

Brutal, bleak and gory, this is an effective Spanish spaghetti western with no good guys at all. There is a hint at the start when we see the seven chain gang prisoners being led by the seeming good guy and his daughter, because counting up the procession, it is clear that the nine of the title includes them too. An engaging film, however desolate, but this is always going down all the way. There are one or two moments of respite but there are too many killings, a rape and hints of cannibalism, for this to be likely to have any happy ending. A rather good plot line, some excellent music, good photography in what looks like very difficult conditions in the mountains and yes, some really nasty killings.

Yep, terror masks. That's what they handed out to US audiences as a gimmick, when this ULTRA violent Espano Western hit their shores in 1970 or there abouts.

This very good movie is about a bunch of sadistic convicts being transported to a penitentiary. They get ambushed and their carriage is destroyed in the event. They then take off on foot, with a rather angry Sargeant and his daughter having to guard this evil chain-gang on the journey.

I won't say much more than this:

Gore hounds and western fans, find this movie! It is supremely violent and makes Peckinpahs "Wild Bunch" seem quite tame in comparison. All others get your Terror Masks ready!!!

Intriguing, grim and gritty Spanish Western has a very harsh, uncompromising tone. Sgt. Brown (Claudio Undari), a cavalry officer, is escorting a sextet of lowlife criminals, all of them chained together, across rugged terrain to prison. As it turns out, he has more than one reason for being deeply committed to this task. Accompanying him is his daughter Sarah (beautiful Emma Cohen). However, a gang of bandits intervenes, and they end up having to make their journey on foot.

As the viewer may expect, the forceful personalities of these cretins ensure many angry confrontations along the way. A flop upon its original release, an enterprising distributor came up with the idea, upon re-releasing it, to punch it up by adding a lot of gory business, all of it quite effectively nasty, and providing theatre goers with cardboard masks that they could wear if they couldn't stomach this material. This really didn't help the movie either, but it did acquire a cult following nevertheless.

Making no clear distinctions between "good" and "bad" in terms of its characters, it comes up with a fairly surprising and sadistic twist at about the half way point, and is very compelling for its portrayal of human beings at the mercy of the elements. With exteriors filmed in the Aragonese Pyreneo region of Spain, the scenery is breathtaking and the winter atmosphere genuinely chilling in more ways than one. The characters are interesting and entertaining in their own sordid way, with the actors delivering convincing performances. The music by Carmelo A. Bernaola is good if repetitive, and the frequent use of flashbacks is arresting, with much use of freeze frames. The ending is effectively downbeat, too. The pacing is rather unhurried, yet there are always fine moments, especially around the 67 minute mark as one of the convicts is stumbling through the wilderness on his own.

Western fans looking for something dark, violent, and morally ambiguous might want to check this one out.

Seven out of 10.

Cutthroats Nine, one heck of a bleak movie. Coming out in 1972, spaghetti westerns were no longer at the height of their hype, as most of them became terrible parodies of themselves. Then came along this ultra violent movie by Joanquin Romero Marchent. I for one woulden't call this the most original spaghetti western or paella western (since it's Spanish), but that don't mean it has to be bad. The scenery of where the movie is set is beautiful, which helps the film have a bigger feeling of a claustrophobic tension. Claustrophobic? Why i say that? Because despite it being set outdoors for most of the time, our nine main characters are cut off from the rest of the world and they only depend on each other, in order to survive. Essentially speaking, you don't really see any good characters and even though Spain were not completely fascist during the second world war, you could tell that elements of fascism found it's way in it's script.

As stated earlier, this movie has a claustrophobic vibe throughout the film and making the situation our nine titular characters are involved in even worse are most of the gruesome killings that take place throughout the film, including to the main character, played by Robert Hundar. Spoiler alert but seeing his character dying early on the film by being burned to death, leaving his daughter, played by Emma Cohen, distraught and alone and that part right there deeply affected and it made me realise "These guys have no future".

Overall, the film has good performances, although the dubbing is what one would say as amateur. The soundtrack is chilling, although it does get a little repetitive sometimes and it would have been great if this was way longer then the 90 minutes and make it into an epic 3 hour movie. I know Tarantino is influenced by this movie but it don't really affect the storyline that much. Great and unknown movie to watch.

It's interesting how sometimes a director will make many movies throughout their career but only one will get noticed. Having looked at Joaquin Marchent's filmography it seems like most of his movies haven't been watched by many people on IMDb. I haven't seen any of his other movies either and probably never will but I enjoyed Cut Throats Nine a lot. The reputation that it has garnered is most likely due to it being probably the most violent and gruesome euro-western made at a time when a lot of them were getting made. But I would argue that the gore wasn't what makes the movie great and that it was a bit excessive. I'm not bothered by such things and it looks rather fake anyway but the insistence of adding gore by the producers cheapens the movie a bit. Then again maybe without it the movie wouldn't have developed a cult following and I would've never seen it.

What makes this movie special is just how dark it is. It's a snowy western just like The Great Silence but it's even more nihilistic than that movie was. Every character in Cut-Throats Nine apart from the lieutenant and his daughter is deplorable. You don't want any of them to survive yet they are the characters we as viewers follow for the whole movie. I find such movies fascinating but I can understand why some can't connect with them. On top of that, the soundtrack is very ominous and the atmosphere is top-notch. Everything adds up into making the film feel absolutely bleak and with no hope in sight. It's a great example of a euro-western that takes the genre and adds a few things on top to make it more interesting. In this case it's making it a survival movie with despicable characters. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes euro-westerns or hopeless cinema watches it even if they don't like gore as it's a very interesting and incredibly atmospheric western.