Comandos al infierno

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.

Sergio Corbucci's Western is packed with noisy action and lots of violence. Italian-Spanish co-production financed by Jose G. Maesso and Albert Band with full of action , exaggerated characters, shootouts and drama. This is a surprisingly low-key Spaghetti Western set in the post-Civil War era in which a washed-out confederate Colonel (Joseph Cotten) and his band of three sons (Julian Mateos ,Guido Pernice, Angel Aranda) lead a hearse and taking on a variety of problems and risks with the aim to go on the rebel cause. As three diverse characters and their father who call themselves ¨The Hellbenders¨ joining forces to carry a stolen currency and weapons. The crazed ex-Confederate Cotten plans to utilize it to reorganize Confederacy and rekindle the war but finding numerous complications .

This entertaining picture contains a twisted plot, Western action , crossfire and bits of campy and refreshing events with twists and turns. An improbable blending of standard Western with pursuits, high body-count and it's fast moving as well as quite entertaining. An interesting casting full of usual Spaghetti faces make this oater well worth the watching. Delightful Western in which the violent family uses their wit, breaking all the rules and kicking virtually every cliché in the pants, as the group relentlessly deceives, plunders, robs and kills. Decent but sometimes lumbering Western goes on and on about the same premise , as minutes are superfluous, it has quarter hour of excess , as it pack some moments turn out to be dull and tiring . Furthermore, here appears ordinary secondaries of Spaghetti/Paella Western, such as: Julián mateos, Ángel Aranda, Aldo Sambrell , Ennio Girolami, Jose Canalejas , Alvaro De Luna, Simón Arriaga, Rafael Vaquero and Benito Stefanelli who is also master of arms and stunt. The musician Ennio Morricone or Leo Nichols composes a nice soundtrack with catching leitmotif and well conducted ; it's full of guttural sounds with use of harmonica , trumpets and guitar. Striking cinematography by Enzo Barboni or E. B. Clucher (author of Trinity series with Terence Hill, Bud Spencer) who does an adequate cinematography with barren outdoors , dirty landscapes under a glimmer sun and photographed in Eastmancolor with negative regularly processed, that's why results necessary an urgent remastering . Interiors filmed at Italia , Cinecitta studios , and outdoor sequences shot on outskirts of Madrid La Pedriza , Colmenar Viejo , and of course , at Almeria, Spain, as usual. In addition , there are many fine technicians and good helpers, intervening as assistant direction Ruggiero Deodato, future director of ¨Cannibal Holocaust¨ and evocative Art Direction by Perez Cubero and Galicia.

The direction by Sergio Corbucci (along with the uncredited Albert Band) is well crafted, here is more cynical and less inclined towards humor and contains too much action, but especially this attractive western contains ample violence. Therefore the film contains shootouts, bloody spectacles and fist fights. Sergio Corbucci filmed his first Western in Spain, explaining the following: ¨I saw that in Spain there were these magnificent horses, these extraordinary canyons, this desert landscape that looked a lot like Mexico or Texas, or rather how we imagined them. So, when Sergio Leone and I were filming 'The Last Days of Pompeii' (1959), we often said to each other: "Wait a minute, we could make an incredible Western here, right?" Corbucci was an expert in Spaghetti Westerns, but also in comedies, his Western scores were usually composed by Ennio Morricone, and the comedies were frequently composed by Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis. The other Sergio made several Spaghetti classics as ¨ Django¨, ¨The great silence¨, ¨The specialist¨ , and Zapata Westerns as ¨The Mercenary¨, ¨The Compañeros¨ and ¨What am I doing in middle of the revolution¨ . In addition Sergio directed other other less successful S. W. such as: ¨Far West story¨ ,¨Johnny Oro¨, ¨The white the yellow an the black¨ and ¨Minnesota Clay¨. It's an offbeat , surprising and uneven Western but will appeal to Corbucci aficionados . Rating : 7 , riotous Western in which there's too much action and violence and excitement enough.

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 Sergio Corbucci's brand new box come out this mouth on Brazilian market, three pictures spotlessly restored, I've pick up "I Crudeli" which I've never saw, mainly by famous Brazilian pretty actress Norma Bengell who co-starring this Spaghetti, by the way I didn't expect too much shall I tell, having the veteran actor Joseph Cotten coming to Europe due he is no longer was asking for by the American filmmakers, thus I went to watch with a foot behind.

Elapsed a half hour I'd change my early thoughts, Corbucci implies an American style, including the audio allowing the English language, sustained by a far-reaching screenplay the story flows so easy, about a Confederate General Jonas (Joseph Cotten) let down for lost the war against the Yankees, settles a daring plan assisted by his three sons to ambush a calvary's convoy that has a large money shipment which would be used in the reboot of the Confederate issue under his leadership, thereafter a successful bloody massacre, the next step is passing through of the Yankee territory to reach at Mexico, the scheme is quite resourceful, aided by his drunkard mistress Kitty (Maria Martin) pretends be a widow carrying back the corpse of his late husband a Confederate hero Captain Ambrose, instead it in the coffin has the stolen money, dully escorted by them.

Tragically the hard-drinking Kitty waver in the first Yankee's barrier, the cold-blooded Col. Jonas gets rid of the unstable woman, hence to keep the previous plan ahead Jonas demands that his most reliable son Ben (Julian Mateos) got a woman on the nearest city to replace as the late widow, Ben sees on the Claire (Norma Bengell) a clever poker player that should fit perfect in the widow role, promising to her two thousand dollars for the job, soon Claire envisages that is in jeopardy due the lewd Jeff (Gino Pernice) tries rape her, also the greedy Nat (Angel Aranda) upon the compliant eyes of Col. Jonas which just slapping them occasionally for others reasons only.

The craftsman director Sergio Corbucci build up a solid storyline stitched by multi-colored characters of several shades, mixing hate, tyranny, greediness and filthy behavior and even human kindness, a movie that stands of test of time, sounds fresh and deserves be discovered by newest generation of the worldwide cinephiles, Corbucci never let me down!!

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First watch: 2021 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5

Joseph Cotton stars as Jonah, an ex-confederate trying to keep the dreams of the south alive following General Lee's surrender. He and his sons, known as the Hellbenders, massacre a troop to steal the money that they are transporting, with the aim of using this prize to restart the confederate cause. The stolen loot is stored in a coffin, disguised as the dead Captain Ambrose, and transported across the desert to Jonah's home town. They are accompanied by a drunken whore, under the guise of Ambrose's mourning widow, supposedly transporting the dead man to his place of rest. The search for the troop's murderers is in full flow, but Jonah is a man obsessed with the cause, and nothing or no-one is going to stop him achieving his objective.....

Hellbenders is an absolute classic of the Spaghetti Western genre, standing proudly side by side fellow Corbucci classics Django and the Great Silence. It continues in Corbucci's usual vein, firing bullets of unjust and unexpected twists at the screen, as the plot spirals towards its grim finale. All the while, the engaging trumpet of Morricone's score becomes more and more pleasing to the ear.

The slow but gripping pace of the movie reminds me of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in the way that its story is joined together by a number of sub plots. But here there is little humour. Aside from Ben (Mateos) and Claire (Bengell), the Hellbenders are an ugly and evil lot. Cotton is compelling as Jonah, his deadpan expression superbly capturing the characters single-minded vision. Pernice (perhaps most famous for having his ear cut off in Django) is truly deranged as the equally perverted and dim-witted Jeff. There are also great cameo appearances from euro-western favourites Al Mulock, Aldo Sambrell and Benito Stefanelli.

The film does tend to plod rather than gallop in a number of places (and this is in no way a bad thing!), and its story is quite different from the majority of the films in the Spaghetti Western genre. But it is a compelling view, with the scene at the Fort and the excellent finale worth the price of admission in itself.