Episode #24 -- The Hellbenders

(or: "Hey, let's make a movie where nearly all of the main characters are total dirtbags!")

Continuing in the trend set in recent episodes of getting the two of us to watch movies in genres that we otherwise might not choose to watch, in this week's episode we watch Sergio Corbucci's 1967 spaghetti western, The Hellbenders. It's about a family of post-Civil War Southerners trying to get a coffin full of money back to the south so that it can rise again and get its revenge on the North. A lot of people get brutally killed along the way, but you know what? They experience a lot of laughs, and a lot of love along the way as well.

. . .

nah, just kidding! There's little to none of either of those things, just a lot of people being serious pieces of trash. As you'll hear, we had some initial misgivings about the movie early on, based on fears that we were going to be watching an hour and a half of pro-Confederacy horseshit, but that isn't what this movie is setting out to do. It's a rare movie that gets us to nod approvingly when one of the main characters is killed, and at the risk of spoiling the outcome of the movie, let's just say that our necks were sore from all of the nodding that we had done by the time the credits rolled. So much nodding!

NEXT TIME: A spaghettiless Western.