Cut-Throats Nine (1973)

the audience applauded

Excellent adaptation.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Cut-Throats 9 (1972) is by far the most gory western ever made. Is it as scary and gory as they hyped it to be by issuing terror masks the answer is no. I don't know what these reviewers are griping over name another American or Eurowestern so gory and violent together? The Wild Bunch violent yes not gory. The story is good and to me well written it grasps your attention from beginning to end and unravels a subplot of why the Sgt. had these particular men selected to be escorted 400 miles to Fort. Green. I also thought it was clever how they made the chains out of gold disguising them as ordinary chains from the gold mine to Ft. Green to fool the bandits as well as the prisoners. It seems there has been quite a few mixed emotions about this later SW but lets face it the genre was fading out fast most ideas where out played and director Marchent gives us a breath of fresh air with the ingredients of mixing the cold terrain with violence and gore and fresh new story ideas made a fantastic little movie. I was very impressed with Robert Hundar's acting as well as Emma Cohen who played his daughter. The best of the bad guys was Dandy Tom (Alberto Dalbes)who was sensational. The music was good with eerie whistles and sounds. I don't know what there is to dislike about this movie but SW fans well like the ending and should understand why the Sgt's daughter did what she did. in her frame of mind to lose everything why go on living (family, lover, and dignity).

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.

By 1972, the spaghetti western was already past its hay day and was looking for different ways, styles and themes to push the envelope. Cut-Throats Nine belongs to that small variety that brought horror sensibilities to the genre (like Sartana, Django the Bastard and others) but it also took it one step further. Whereas other westerns were content to be dark and brooding in an atmospheric kind of way, Cut-Throats is as violent and graphic as any Italian horror movie from the 70's.The plot is minimal but quite good. For better or for worse, the director doesn't go for the psychological angle between captor and captives like Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur did, but instead focuses on the violence and nihilism that is the logical conclusion when nine ugly, dangerous criminals chained to each other are transported through the barren, desolate terrain to a nearby fort.On the western front, Cut-Throats is as bleak and unforgiving as the gritty works of Sergio Corbucci minus the finesse and style of that great cinematician. The feeling is there though. The snowy, rocky landscape, the nihilistic, unredeemable characters, the grit and the violence. There are no heroes and cowboys with white hats here. If John Wayne were to set foot in the western universe Cut-Throats portrays, he would sooner pack his things and find a new hobby like sewing. Much like Hitchcock's Psycho, the person closer to what we could identify as the "hero" is burnt to a crisp 30 minutes in. That's where the movie ultimately succeeds. By being deprived of all certainty, you're left hanging there in the snow with a bunch of ugly cut-throats. Speaking of cutting throats, there's more: people get stabbed, intestines pour out, others are burnt alive, beaten mercilessly, nailed to hooks, get their brains blown out, corpses are burnt, legs are cut off. And with all the same graphic detail one would expect from a gruesome Italian horror from the likes of Fulci or Lenzi. Coupled with the general take-no-prisoners, mean-spirited air that permeates every minute, Cut-Throats is more likely to appeal to exploitation fans than the traditional western crowd.