Review #281: 'Cut-Throats Nine' (1972)

A band of military prisoners being transported through the mountains come across of group of bandits who kill all but one of the military, crashing the wagon full of the chain-gang convicts. The surviving Sgt. Brown (Claudio Undari) must protect his daughter Sarah (Emma Cohen), and help get the convicts to their destination. They have no food, no transport, and the gang of killers, rapists and thieves are becoming increasingly cunning and violent. When they discover that the chain binding them together is made of the gold the bandits were looking for, the convicts begin squabbling between themselves, while Sgt. Brown must work out which of the bandits raped and murdered his wife.

Billed as the 'goriest and most violent western ever made', the film certainly has its fare share of gruesome moments (although I would assume there are plenty of gorier and more violent westerns out there). Cut-Throats Nine isn't in the vein of classic American westerns that starred the likes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda, but more like the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, and the ultra-violent revisionists like Sam Peckinpah. Only with more guts, charred bodies, rape and general unpleasantness. Given it's many flaws, it's actually not a bad western, and the extra horror adds to the dirty, grimy feel of its exploitation roots.

Technically, the film is quite well shot, with the snowy mountains providing a beautiful backdrop to the carnage. Sgt. Brown's story is peppered with flashback scenes shot in dream-like slow-motion, as is some of the violence. It brings to mind Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), where the gun-fights were poetic, mythic, and almost pornographic. But the film often becomes tiresomely grim, with little or none of the characters being remotely sympathetic. Well, maybe that's the point, showing how relentless and wild the 'West' was. Hardly up to the standard of the aforementioned The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974 - also Peckinpah), which were both nasty masterpieces, but a pleasingly entertaining and exploitative western.


Directed by: Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent
Starring: Claudio Undari, Emma Cohen, Alberto Dalbés
Country: Spain

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie