'The Cruel Ones') is a 1967 Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Joseph Cotten, Norma Bengell, Julián Mateos, Gino Pernice and Ángel Aranda.

Colonel Jonas is a fanatical and unrepentant Confederate who led a regiment called the Hellbenders in the recently ended Civil War.

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.

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.

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).