Cut-Throats Nine

Joaquín Romero Marchent's 1971 Spanish western is counted among the harshest examples of its genre. A group of convicts is being taken to prison across mountainous country escorted by a small cavalry detachment, and Sergeant Brown, who commands it, has brought his young daughter along. On the way the wagon overturns, the soldiers are killed and what remains is the sergeant, his daughter and nine chained prisoners. What follows is a survival story moving through snow and a struggle among the convicts to get the upper hand. The film does not conceal its violence; wounds, cuts and deaths are shown in detail far beyond the habits of its time, and it ran into trouble in many countries as a result. The landscape and the music carry the tension. Who it's for: viewers who like hard westerns and the extreme end of genre cinema. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding graphic violence and scenes of sexual assault; the film contains them.