A slice of ‘western chorizo’?  

POSTED ON OCTOBER 19 2022

Cut-Throats Nine, a B-movie western released in France in 1972 under the unlikely title ‘Few Seconds to Say Amen’, is one of the many European cowboy films that Quentin Tarantino has helped bring to light throughout his career.

‘The Hateful Eight’ (2016) is loosely inspired by it, also portraying the impossible cohabitation between bounty hunters, bandits and confederates at an inn in the middle of the mountains.

Shot not in Almeria but in the mountainous region of Huesca in the heart of Aragon - rediscovered by the ‘Game of Thrones’ production - the film is by Joaquín Romero Marchent (1921-2012), whose last contribution to the genre he had helped to popularise, from 1955, with the creation of his masked bandit El Coyote, a kind of avatar of Zorro.

Condenados a vivir, 1972 © DR 

In 1964, Romero Marchent even beat Sergio Leone to the punch by a few months by making the first European western, ‘El sabor de la venganza’ (‘Three Ruthless Ones’). Restored by the Filmoteca Española, ‘Cut-Throats Nine’ is searingly cruel. As much a survival flick as a western, it is not far from the realm of gore, with even an incursion into the supernatural when one of the characters deemed dead reappears in the midst of the flames...

The movie is also striking for its nihilism and darkness from which, perhaps (we will mention it while we can), only the sole female character escapes, played by Emma Cohen, who died in 2016, the last wife of Fernando Fernan Gomez, featured at Lumière last year.

Tarantino's extensive knowledge of Joaquín Romero Marchent's cinema goes beyond what one might imagine, since twice he also honours the work of the latter’s brother Rafael (1926-2020). In ‘Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood’, the movie ‘Dead Are Countless’ (‘Garringo’, 1969) is mentioned, while in ‘Death Proof’, the poster of ‘El limite del amor’ (1976) can be seen. (No, not a western this time, but an erotic drama that Pedro Almodovar would probably not disown...)  In an interview with ‘El Pais’ in 1999, Joaquin Romero said he had never felt underestimated as a filmmaker in Spain. "I made a very good living. And in Italy, my movies are a huge hit".

Carlos Gomez

Screenings:

Cut-Throats Nine  by Joaquín Romero Marchent  (Condenados a vivir, 1972, 1h27) 

Wed. 19 9:30pm - Institut Lumière
In the presence of Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos (Filmoteca Española)

Sat. 22 9:30pm  - Lumière Terreaux
In the presence of Eric Métayer

En présence d'Eric Métayer