THE HELLBENDERS

In 1865, Colonel Jonas is a fanatical and unrepentant Confederate who led a regiment called the Hellbenders in the recently ended Civil War. He is determined to reorganise the Confederate Army and defeat the Union. With his sons Ben, greedy Nat, and rapist Jeff, he massacres Union soldiers transporting a consignment of banknotes and conceals the loot in a coffin supposedly belonging to a deceased Confederate officer, Captain Ambrose Allen, who was killed in the Battle of Nashville.

A drunken prostitute, Kitty, pretends to be the officer's widow. When Kitty is killed attempting a double-cross, Ben persuades Claire, a combination saloon hostess and professional gambler, to take Kitty's place—and then they fall in love. They consummate their love during a gunfight between Jonas and a local bounty hunter.

The cool Claire proves her worth when feigning grief to a sheriff's posse who stop the wagon and wish to search the coffin suspecting the party may have been responsible for the theft and massacre. The party has another close shave when they stop in a town where the local minister who knew the late Captain Allen forces the party to stay for a memorial service where the town can pay their respects. Tension arises when the minister produces a man, Sergeant Tolt, who knew Allen's wife as well, but it turns out that he is blind (and so cannot identify Claire as a fraud). Tolt mentions possessing photographs of Captain Allen and his wife, so Jonas decides that Tolt must be secretly murdered and the photographs stolen.

Later the party is attacked by Mexican bandidos but is rescued by the U.S. cavalry who capture several of the bandidos. Heeding Claire's wishes, the soldiers escort the wagon to the fort where Captain Allen was a former commander.

Claire, resentful of Jonas' fanaticism, arranges for the coffin to be buried in 'her' husband's fort. Jonas orders his sons to sneak back into the Union fort, dig up the coffin, and return the money to the wagon; in the meantime, he whips Claire and makes her stay outside of the cave where the group takes shelter in the storm, leading Claire to become gravely ill from pneumonia.

The group moves on—but their horses are killed by what appears to be a mad beggar but is a thief who wishes to rob them. After killing the thief they later fall afoul of Indians who are thought to be friendly and willing to selling horses to the Hellbenders. The chief demands that Jeff (who raped and murdered his daughter with a bayonet when he should have been buying horses) be handed over to him. Ben denounces his family's fanaticism and offers the Indians all the money in the coffin, only to be caught in the crossfire between his arguing brothers, who shoot each other over the money; satisfied, the Indians ride away. The mortally wounded Jonas discovers that his sons dug up the wrong coffin that contains the remains of Pedro the head bandido, who promised Jonas they would meet again. As Ben and Claire watch on, Jonas crawls away and dies by the edge of the river, as the flag of the Hellbenders regiment sinks to the bottom of the river.

Jonas' fanatical quest ends in disaster: his sons kill each other over the money, he discovers the wrong coffin, and dies as Ben and Claire survive to witness the futility of his cause.

The ending underscores the self-destructive nature of blind fanaticism. Jonas' obsession with resurrecting the Confederacy leads only to death and betrayal, even within his own family. The swapped coffin is the final bitter twist, leaving the survivors with loss instead of profit. Corbucci closes the coffin—literally and figuratively—on the myth of honorable Southern vengeance.