After the Civil War a dedicated ex-Confederate officer leads a hearse with a coffin full of money to New Mexico where he wants to revive the Confederation. His company is formed by his three very different sons and an alcoholic women. After the woman gets killed she is replaced by a seasoned female gambler who is well played by Norma Bengell. The whole story unfolds in the way of a road movie where the characters are passing through the typical obstacles of a Western environment. Due to a massacre the bunch committed in the beginning they are hunted by unionists and government officials. Corbucci manages to make the characters who are basically all criminals very likable and I was more often than not at the edge of my seat when the bunch run into trouble. Probably THE WILD BUNCH from Peckinpah got some inspirations from here and Corbucci's COMPAÑEROS can be considered a later variant with a different mood.

The mood of the film is excellently supported by Morricone's score which belongs to his best. Cinematography is above average. The Spaghetti Western Web Board rated this film at #24 of all SW in 2005.

7 / 10

• Joseph Cotten is an ex-Confederate soldier who would like to see the South rise again. To finance such a venture, he and his three sons rob a Union convoy carrying $1 million. The money is placed in a coffin and disguised as the dead husband of Cotten's "daughter" - really just a woman he has hired to play the part of a widow in case they get stopped. The group will have to evade not only the Union Army, but also Mexican bandits, revenge minded Indians, a posse, and each other if they are to get home with the money.

• After having seen Hellbenders, I'm convinced now more than ever that if it weren't for Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci would be the recognized master of the Spaghetti Western. Hellbenders fits nicely beside Corbucci's other genre masterpieces. It may not be as over-the-top as Django or as beautiful as The Great Silence, but in it's own unique way, it's almost as good. Hellbenders takes it's own sweet time telling its story, and that's a good thing. You really get to know the characters and develop feelings for them. The acting, whether it's the crazed brother Jeff (Gino Pernice), the sympathetic Claire (Norma Bengell), or the always entertaining Cotten, is as good as you'll see in this kind of movie. The ending is marvelous. It's got to be one of the most satisfying twist endings I've seen in a SW.

• For those familiar with SWs, all I really need to say about the score is that it was composed by Ennio Morricone. That should be enough. The main theme is a trumpet-dominated mournful piece that grows in meaning throughout the film.

Knowing that a hellbender is actually a large type of salamander, I was weirdly surprised to see that the flag draped coffin bore a likeness of a salamander on it. The Hellbenders were a Confederate outfit in the film, with leader Jonas (Joseph Cotten) and his three sons attempting to revive the Southern cause with a million dollars in stolen money. The story starts out rather unbelievably as Jonas, with only two sons, wipe out a thirty man Union convoy from behind rocks and trees. Now that there's a ten thousand dollar bounty on their heads, their march back home to Nashville is fraught with peril on all sides.

Jonas himself is rather a vile sort, establishing his authority early in the story, and when he yells jump, his sons know enough to ask how high. The development of the story allows enough time for son Ben (Julian Mateos) to come to question his father's autocratic supremacy, in no small part aided by a newly hired stand-in daughter after maniac Jeff (Gino Pernice) dispatches the gold digging Kitty. However high stakes gambler Claire (Norma Bengell) is more than a match for Jonas when she pulls a fast one and has the group headed for Fort Brant where she insists her manufactured husband be buried. The whole time you wonder what evil plan Jonas will cook up for his 'daughter'.

There were a couple of clever symbolic moments in the story which left me wondering whether they were intentional. When the Indians appeared to seek justice for the death of the chief's daughter, it provoked a family Civil War, brother against brother with the outcome satisfactory to the chief.

Anticipating a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" type of ending, I expected to see the coffin release it's contents to the desert winds. The twist of course was just as satisfying, and led directly to an understated definition to the film's title. With time running out and the mission at a collapse, it was fitting to see the wounded Jonas slither across the parched banks of the Rio Hondo looking just like, well, a hellbender.