Spanish director Joaquin Luis Romero Marchent is responsible for this violent 1972 Euro western, which, according to some sources, is also an Italian co-production. That is believable when the first scenes of gratuitous bloodletting take place on screen as this is also mentioned to be "the most violent Euro Western ever made!" Was it? Well, definitely not the most violent in the word's most serious sense (as real, disturbing and effective violence is NOT just blood and gore thrown on screen as in this film) but at least the goriest, most exploitative and among the very worst, too.
A bunch of sadistic criminals, killers and rapists are transported through difficult circumstances to another prison/gold mine through snowy and cold mountains somewhere where nature is much more beautiful than men. Something goes wrong and their horses and carriage falls and breaks forcing the men to continue their journey by foot in the freezing and white forest that surrounds them. There's a guard who is supposed to take them to the destination as well as his beautiful daughter (Emma Cohen) who naturally attracts the convicts. So the guard and the daughter are at the mercy of the convicts and they all are at the mercy of nature.. Sounds like a pretty effective and potential premise (and that also made me interest in this film, alongside its "extreme" reputation), but unfortunately the film has many flaws and concentrates only on one thing: violence and gore.
Some good things in the piece are the nasty hallucinations at the end during which neither the viewer nor the characters know anymore what is true and what is not. The "backwards explosion" comes very unexpected and is also even surreal, which is a very positive merit. Also the beautiful white setting would give plenty to the visual look of the film as well as contrast to the evil characters if used as effectively as in Sergio Corbucci's masterful Il Grande Silenzio (1968, Italy), but now it all leaves just to the starting point in Condenados a Vivir. The film's US title, Cutthroats Nine, definitely tells what was the main interest among the producers with this film.
There is no real camerawork, the music is very annoying and useless, the actors are often irritating and just too boring to look at as none of them develops to anything, and the film is also awfully too long and boring as there are prolonged scenes of walking and talking with hyper slow speed. The film runs approximately 90 minutes in NTSC but that feels like watching someone's hand held, unfocused, amateurish holiday video for two hours.
The graphic violence and nastiness is indeed quite strong and the film looks pretty much like Lucio Fulci and Giannetto De Rossi, whose Italian work is filled with similar blood flowing close ups and other hellish gore carnage. When someone gets hit or otherwise hurt in Condenados a Vivir, they always show the result without hiding anything so violence could not be any more gratuitous and also flat than it is in this film. It doesn't have any kind of impact on those who have seen more films (of course this is shocking for the "squeamish" and unexperienced, with several scenes of bloodletting, limb hacking etc.) but cinema is just for so much more than this. The ending is also quite pessimistic and nihilistic but since everything before it was nothing, even the ending seems just gratuitous without are real intentions to say something about human nature or how men can change in certain situations, for example.
Condenados a Vivir is perhaps the worst Euro Western I've seen so far but since it's quite rare and has this questionable reputation among the enthusiasts of obscure cinema, I'm glad I saw it as a fan of B cinema and exploitation cinema, but still I would have expected much more. But fortunately we have names like Sergio Leone, Corbucci, Sollima and Alejandro Jodorowsky among others. These are the names that have made real movies out of the skeleton of Condenados a Vivir. 2/10
A bunch of sadistic criminals, killers and rapists are transported through difficult circumstances to another prison/gold mine through snowy and cold mountains somewhere where nature is much more beautiful than men. Something goes wrong and their horses and carriage falls and breaks forcing the men to continue their journey by foot in the freezing and white forest that surrounds them. There's a guard who is supposed to take them to the destination as well as his beautiful daughter (Emma Cohen) who naturally attracts the convicts. So the guard and the daughter are at the mercy of the convicts and they all are at the mercy of nature.. Sounds like a pretty effective and potential premise (and that also made me interest in this film, alongside its "extreme" reputation), but unfortunately the film has many flaws and concentrates only on one thing: violence and gore.
Some good things in the piece are the nasty hallucinations at the end during which neither the viewer nor the characters know anymore what is true and what is not. The "backwards explosion" comes very unexpected and is also even surreal, which is a very positive merit. Also the beautiful white setting would give plenty to the visual look of the film as well as contrast to the evil characters if used as effectively as in Sergio Corbucci's masterful Il Grande Silenzio (1968, Italy), but now it all leaves just to the starting point in Condenados a Vivir. The film's US title, Cutthroats Nine, definitely tells what was the main interest among the producers with this film.
There is no real camerawork, the music is very annoying and useless, the actors are often irritating and just too boring to look at as none of them develops to anything, and the film is also awfully too long and boring as there are prolonged scenes of walking and talking with hyper slow speed. The film runs approximately 90 minutes in NTSC but that feels like watching someone's hand held, unfocused, amateurish holiday video for two hours.
The graphic violence and nastiness is indeed quite strong and the film looks pretty much like Lucio Fulci and Giannetto De Rossi, whose Italian work is filled with similar blood flowing close ups and other hellish gore carnage. When someone gets hit or otherwise hurt in Condenados a Vivir, they always show the result without hiding anything so violence could not be any more gratuitous and also flat than it is in this film. It doesn't have any kind of impact on those who have seen more films (of course this is shocking for the "squeamish" and unexperienced, with several scenes of bloodletting, limb hacking etc.) but cinema is just for so much more than this. The ending is also quite pessimistic and nihilistic but since everything before it was nothing, even the ending seems just gratuitous without are real intentions to say something about human nature or how men can change in certain situations, for example.
Condenados a Vivir is perhaps the worst Euro Western I've seen so far but since it's quite rare and has this questionable reputation among the enthusiasts of obscure cinema, I'm glad I saw it as a fan of B cinema and exploitation cinema, but still I would have expected much more. But fortunately we have names like Sergio Leone, Corbucci, Sollima and Alejandro Jodorowsky among others. These are the names that have made real movies out of the skeleton of Condenados a Vivir. 2/10