Comandos al infierno

Sergio Corbucci's "I Crudeli" aka. "The Hellbenders", is not one of his best Films, but nevertheless a great Spaghetti Western.

A few months after the end of the Civil War, a former Confederate colonel, still a fanatic devotee to the old South, and his three sons rob a money transport of the US Army, and kill every witness in a bloody massacre. With the money they hope to realize the colonel's plan to reorganize the Confederate Army and to restore the old South.

Although "The Hellbenders" doesn't come up to Corbucci's masterpieces "Django" and "The Great Silence", it is still a great, and in some parts unusual Spaghetti Western. Joseph Cotten is great as Jonas the colonel, a religious Southerner, a fanatic who, in a cold blooded manner, puts 'the cause' over everything else. Norma Bengell's performance is very good, and Julian Mateos, who plays another main character, the Colonel's son Ben, also does a good job. Some of the movie's best performances, however, are those of the supporting cast. Aldo Sambrell is great as a Mexican outlaw and Al Mulloch has one of the film's best roles as a tricky beggar. Benito Stefanelli has very short role as a card player, and Gino Pernice plays the Colonel's son Jeff. The music by Ennio Morricone is very good, of course, although it's not one of his best scores.

Though it has some lengths "The Hellbenders" is a pretty brutal and very good Spaghetti Western, and should not be missed by my fellow Corbucci fans.

Under the pretense of escorting a body back east for burial, ex-Confederate Joseph Cotten and his sons transport a coffin full of stolen cash meant to be used to re-start the Confederacy and begin the second Civil War. However, robbing and killing a military transport was the easy part for Cotten and sons.

There's lots of great moments of suspense and double-crossing treachery in this slightly offbeat, above average spaghetti western, featuring director Sergio Corbucci's usual flair for excessive violence (for the 60's) and a good, more subtle than usual music score by the great Ennio Morricone.

Cotten, (who's great) in an appropriately cruel and domineering performance, heads a cast of familiar European faces, including a great cameo appearance by Spanish actor Aldo Sambrell as a sweaty Mexican bandit.

This largely overlooked Spaghetti Western is one of the most unique and unusual entries in the work of prolific director Sergio Corbucci. Coming after the simplistic, over-the-top action of Django and the inferior Navajo Joe, it marks a beginning of a gradual increase in the quality of his films during the late 1960s.

Corbucci had clearly been attracting attention – Django was a massive hit – and was now commanding bigger budgets, as well as bigger names in the credits. The Hellbenders boasts talented Mercury Theatre veteran Joseph Cotton in the lead role. However, like his friend Orson Welles, Cotton's career was in the doldrums and it's fairly clear he appears here for the money, not the fun of it.

In style and story The Hellbenders is clearly a very different plate of spaghetti. The plot is based on a simple yet original premise. It's a great idea to have the defeated Confederate soldiers who hope to restart the Civil War carry their loot around in a coffin – a perfect symbol for the hopelessness of their cause. This device also allows for several extremely satisfying twists. As far as look goes, there is none of the grit and seediness of other Italian westerns and, with its compliment of cavalry and wagons The Hellbenders has more of the trappings of a John Ford film. It also has a somewhat more positive (albeit rather patronising) portrayal of women than most of its contemporaries, as it is the female lead who outwits all the men. While the basic plot elements are great, The Hellbenders is let down by the minutiae. The characters are fairly one-dimensional. Corners are cut and motivations are unrealistic. The ending is a total mess – while the final moments are nicely done, the screenwriters needlessly squeeze in a beggar and a tribe of vengeful Indians into the last ten minutes.

Corbucci's direction was never great, but he was a cut above the average in the genre, and there are some occasional moments of genius. The first action scene, the massacre of a few dozen Union troops, is brilliantly constructed, and Corbucci gives a level of realism to the violence that even Sergio Leone didn't have at this point. As usual though he is still let down by his overuse of the zoom lens and his having absolutely no feel for landscape shots. The editing on this picture is very good, and no wonder, since it's done by Leone's frequent collaborator Nino Baragli. Ennio Morricone provides the music, although it's a rather mediocre score by his standards.

While some top class actors tend to get a bit half-hearted when they're in less glamorous company, Joseph Cotton does a good job here, lending credibility to this somewhat creaky production. The same can't be said for the rest of the cast who are by and large abysmal. Despite some attention-grabbing cameos from Aldo Sanbrell and Al Mulock, The Hellbenders has a real lack of familiar spaghetti western faces. Luigi Pistilli, Mario Brega, Giuliano Gemma, Tomas Millian, Klaus Kinski – any of those would have been more than welcome.

Despite those flaws I've listed I do enjoy The Hellbenders fairly well, and I do think it's often underrated. If you could just polish up the script, and add a few more decent acting performances, this under-appreciated spaghetti would have been one of the genre's classics.

a special western. because the classic ingredients of genre are only details. because the theme of illusory dream becomes, scene by scene, more dramatic and complex. at the first sigh - the film of Joseph Cotten proposing an ambiguous hero. in fact, few interesting performances - Norma Bengell and Julian Mateos are the most easy to name - , a story who is far to be predictable, a powerful end who has the mark of period but who transforms entire story in a kind of parable. a film who is different by basic expectations. and that fact does it special. because it has not exactly genre apart, the theme is more profound by fights, love stories and line between good and bad guy, the meetings with different people, from the original sin to the desire of justice of the Indians , the memorable performance of All Mulock as the beggar, are steps to the verdict of viewer. a waste trip, madness of lost cause, justice or simply destiny. a film with many touching scenes. and with an useful message.

"The Hellbenders" is Corbucci's predecessor to his genre defining "Django" of the same year. Initially, the film can be dismissed as a low-budget mess because of poor audio and cinematography, but there are redeeming qualities which make this film a landmark in the overall Western genre. It was one of the first to use Almeira, Spain as a backdrop. It follows the adventure of a gang of ruthless Conferates (three brothers and their father, Joseph Cotten) fleeing the Union cavalry, Mexican outlaws, a local sherrif, and a vengeful Indian tribe. They carry a coffin filled with booty, and a permit stating that the coffin contains the body of a dead lieutenant. Corbucci pulls in a femme fatale (Norma Bengall) to foil the gang's money heist. Along the way a Mexican bandit is backstabbed, so to speak, by Cotten, and the bandit proclaims that they will meet again in hell. I'll leave the plot twists for you to discover, but note that "The Wild Bunch," released two years later, has a similar plot and twists. Also note Corbucci's more refined and improved spaghetti western, "Django," employs the use a mysterious coffin, which houses a Gatling machine gun, just so conveniently used again in "The Wild Bunch." Ol' Peckinpah sure did his homework.