A fun fact to get the ball rolling: I started writing this review a little over 10 years ago...

So, to kick off my first Western review here at 42nd Street Cinema, I thought I'd jump straight in with what's arguably the goriest Western to hit theatre screens. Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent's incredibly violent Spanish Western, Cut-Throats Nine / Condenados a vivir. Also known as Bronson's Revenge and Condemned To Live.

Starring: Robert Hundar (Claudio Undari), Emma Cohen, Alberto Dalbés, Antonio Iranzo, Manuel Tejada, Ricardo Díaz, José Manuel Martín, Carlos Romero Marchent, and Rafael Hernández.

This bleak and unforgiving gem arrived at a time when the Italians were considerably outdoing their American counterparts for violent Westerns. Cut-Throats Nine, a wholly Spanish production, appeared and simultaneously outdid every single one of them in one fell swoop. A truly visceral experience where you can all but feel the biting cold, smell the rusty reek of blood and the putrid odour of charred flesh.

Shot against a wintery backdrop of the snow-covered Pyrenees, the characters find themselves striving to survive by any means necessary in a frozen hellscape. The weather and season work in tandem with the desperation and hopelessness the characters face, along with providing a visual reinforcement of an omnipresent death.



AIP (American International Pictures) distributed an English-dubbed version to US theatres in 1973, and UIP (United International Pictures) distributed it in the United Kingdom. The poster employs a key exploitation trope that harkens back to the days of William Castle; a genius marketing ploy where it states patrons weren't to be admitted unless they possess a "terror mask" to help block out the violent scenes.

The plot concerns a wagon load of condemned men being transported from the gold mines at Golden Sand to Fort Green. Travelling with them is Sergeant Brown (Robert Hundar) and his daughter Cathy (Emma Cohen). The wagon is ambushed by group of starving bandits who believe the wagon is transporting gold. The mountain men kill two officers and search the wagon for the gold to no avail. They order the remaining men to return to the mine and come back with the gold, recklessly sending the wagon off by spooking the horses. With no one at the reigns sergeant Brown attempts to gain control of the horses and steer the wagon, realising the futility of the situation Brown and his daughter prepare to jump off, and leave the wagon to veer off-road and tip over.



Now free, but still tethered, the prisoners turn to the sergeant and his daughter, undeterred by the crash and still hoping to get his charges to Fort Green, Brown tells them they're taking the 400 mile journey by any means necessary. They gather the remaining provisions, load-up the two horses, and set off on foot across an unforgiving landscape. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Brown is on a personal crusade of vengeance; convinced that one of the shackled men is responsible for the murder of his wife.

I've read people referring to this as a horror, ahem. I can't agree with that, Cut-Throats Nine is crucially a survival film first and a Western second. There's little showdowns and even fewer "Get off your horse..." moments. It's mean; the characters are uncompromising, the elements are harsh. A grim and nihilistic tale without hope, heroes, or a heroine. The only character with any semblance of innocence is Brown's daughter Cathy and it isn't long before that innocence that is savagely taken from her, right before her father's eyes during a harrowing rape scene. Afterwards, almost catatonic, she takes-up with one of the prisoners with whom she seems to have genuine affection for, and it's during the final moments we learn of a cruel dramatic irony. This is the man Brown has been looking for, the one responsible for her mother / his wife's murder. There's no forgiveness, only selfishness and hate, they all might survive if they could only work together.



Marchent employs unusual editing techniques with very abrupt and dramatic freeze frames, slow-motion sequences, and intermittent snippets of flashbacks. As a result the narrative suffers, something that is most noticeable during a first time viewing, but once you are familiar with the story and the cast of characters the editing choices actually work very well.

Initially, the film moves along at a steady speed, but much like the characters on-screen it begins to lose pace and towards the end of the second act it's crawling. The tense and final act takes place inside a ramshackle saloon with Cathy, the remaining convicts, and a trio of cavalry guys. The ending is a sudden, distinctly '70s, gut-punch that leaves you reeling too.

I also don't want to be accused of overselling the violence because there's a lot of runtime without any of the red stuff flowing, but when it happens there's enough to satisfy any dyed in the wool gorehound; cut-throats, hangings, burnings, charred remains, roadside amputations, point blank executions, eyeballs hanging from sockets, and bloody disembowelments!