The Hellbenders (Sergio Corbucci, 1967)

7/10
I love Spaghetti Westerns and haven't watched one in a while. So tonight I watched The Hellbenders from Sergio Corbucci (director of two of my favorites, Djano and The Great Silence). The Hellbenders is sort of a SW-come-road movie, about a man played by Joseph Cotten and his 3 sons (the Hellbenders) killing a convoy of Union soldiers and stealing the million dollars in cash they were carrying, to bring it back to the South to reform the Confederacy. The movie was made after Django but before The Great Silence and it feels caught between the two indeed - you don't get the in-your-face violence of Djano, nor do you get the artistry of The Great Silence. So it's somewhat unsatisfying in that regard. The best part of the movie is the psychological wars between the father, his sons, and the "widow" brought in to keep the ruse of 4 men lugging a coffin through the desert alive. Joseph Cotten is great and most of the acting is well done, and Ennio Morricone's score is good too. But the dubbing (English-on-English, mostly) really hurts this movie, which is unfortunate.