Der Letzte der harten Männer

Nowadays, people would take a different meaning if you told them you were watching a movie called The Last Hard Men. But this film in question is a Sam Peckinpah styled Western that has two leading men that were cast in Peckinpah's films going head to head against each other in this vicious revenge western. James Coburn escapes from Yuma prison on the chain gang and instead of going on the run, he plots revenge on the lawman that brought him in and kidnapped his daughter. This puts his old nemesis taking himself out of retirement to put down his long time enemy and get back his daughter. Both Heston and Coburn are fantastic and the film is tense, violent and nasty, but is totally well made overall. I can't say that this comes close to Peckinpaw's best work, but for something similar The Last Hard Men gets the job done and is a pretty solid lesser known western.

The Last Hard Men finds James Coburn an outlaw doing a long sentence breaking free from a chain gang. Do he and his friends head for the Mexican border from jail and safety. No they don't because Coburn has a mission of revenge. To kill the peace officer who brought him in and in the process killed his woman.

That peace officer is Charlton Heston who is now retired and he knows what Coburn is after. As he explains it to his daughter, Barbara Hershey, Coburn was holed up in a shack and was involved in a Waco like standoff. His Indian woman was killed in the hail of bullets fired. It's not something he's proud of, she was a collateral casualty in a manhunt.

Lest we feel sorry for Coburn he lets us know full well what an evil man he truly is. Heston is his usual stalwart hero, but the acting honors in The Last Hard Men go to James Coburn. He blows everyone else off the screen when he's on.

Coburn gets the bright idea of making sure Heston trails him by kidnapping Hershey and taking her to an Indian reservation where the white authorities can't touch him. He knows that Heston has to make it personal then.

Coburn's gang includes, Morgan Paull, Thalmus Rasulala, John Quade, Larry Wilcox, and Jorge Rivero. Heston has Chris Mitchum along who is his son-in-law to be.

The Last Hard Men is one nasty and brutal western. Andrew McLaglen directed it and I'm thinking it may have been a project originally intended for Sam Peckinpaugh. It sure shows a lot of his influence with the liberal use of slow motion to accentuate the violence. Of which there is a lot.

For a little Peckinpaugh lite, The Last Hard Men is your film.

This hard-hitting, often violent western in the Peckinpah/Leone tradition is surprisingly directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, whose previous westerns (particularly those that starred John Wayne) were mainly in the John Ford mode. It is both surprisingly traditional (good guys/bad guys) and incredible up-to-date as well.

Heston portrays a former captain of the Arizona territorial police who has been in retirement for a year, having turned over the law enforcement reins to a reform-minded sheriff (Michael Parks) and finding his ways of enforcing the law being taken over by autos, telegraphs, telephones, and the railroad in the first years of the 20th century. But soon he is confronted with a menace from his past--a half-breed outlaw (Coburn) that he put away more than a decade before for a train robbery that killed four guards. In a subsequent shootout, Coburn's wife was killed; and so Coburn is out for a most nasty sort of revenge. It involves the kidnapping and, eventually, the rape of Heston's daughter (Hershey) by him and his gang. The result is a taut and violent pursuit through the mountains and deserts of southern Arizona.

THE LAST HARD MEN, based on Brian Garfield's novel "Gun Down", is violent in many places, including the showdown between Heston and Coburn, and the rape scene involving Hershey and two members of Coburn's gang (Quade, Paull) is probably every bit as questionable as similar scenes in STRAW DOGS and DELIVERANCE. But that doesn't detract too terribly much from the film's psychological approach to the western genre. McLaglen is able to handle the bloody story with significant panache, and Heston's performance as an aging lawman was probably the best one he ever gave in any of his 1970s films. Coburn makes for an especially cold-blooded heavy, and both Parks and Chris Mitchum (as Hershey's intended husband) do good turns as well. The music here is cribbed from Jerry Goldsmith's scores to 100 RIFLES and the 1966 remake of STAGECOACH, but it still works here.

Wisely filmed totally on location in southeastern Arizona, and utilizing the Old Tucson set, THE LAST HARD MEN needs to be released by Fox on VHS and/or DVD soon. It is a western that deserves nothing less.

Fans of Andrew V. McLaglen movies (McLintock!, Chisum, and The Wild Geese come to mind) won't mind the dark, nasty, gory The Last Hard Men with James Coburn and Charlton Heston. It's standard revenge stuff until you notice that it's way more violent and sociopathological than something fluffy like McLintock! or the all- purpose, crowd-pleasing Chisum.

What the six years from Chisum to The Last Hard Men wrought. McLaglen had no trouble dabbling in a bit of gore here and a skosh of savagery there, but The Undefeated and Chisum were rated G. TLHM brings you lots of close-up impalings and incinerations and splashy gunshot wounds, sometimes in slow-mo! It seems that ol' Andy McLaglen was watching a lot of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone in the early 70s!

The biggest change might be McLaglen's treatment of women. In McLintock!, John Wayne woos Maureen O'Hara by stripping her to her undies, dragging her through molasses, showering her with feathers, spanking her with a stove shovel, and boinking her as the lights come up.

To quote Judith Crist, "What girl could resist?"

In The Last Hard Men, Barbara Hershey, a woman I find much more real and appealing than the actressy O'Hara, gets pummeled by Coburn, leaving her gasping on the floor of Heston's home, with a sprig of hair across her face, daring not to brush it away for fear of getting hit again.

Jump to Coburn releasing two of his henchmen to chase down Hershey, as her dad, Heston, watches from a distance. They catch her and rape her while Coburn taunts Heston with "They're xxxxxxx your daughter!"

The switch from chauvinism to sadism, from the early 60s to the mid- 70s, couldn't be a pleasant one for the likes of Hershey's character.

With that said, I sat engrossed in The Last Hard Men when I saw it as the lead up to The Enforcer in December, 1976. It was just the sort of intense, brutal movie that I grooved on in my late teens. I learned to really like Charlton Heston and James Coburn, so much so that I have searched out movies with these two actors, long before I really noticed them.

I got my prurient kicks some years later seeing Barbara Hershey nekkid in the imbecilic The Entity, but the more I think about it, I realize she was more appealing, sexier when she was fighting back against the thugs in the western.

Cripes, where am I going with this?

I miss Heston and Coburn. I miss Wayne (and the PC police in California can pound sand with their complaining about John Wayne being a hater).

I think I liked The Last Hard Men not in spite of its sadism, but because of it. Kind of like The Professionals and The Dirty Dozen.

Does that make any sense?

"The Last Hard Men", based on the novel "Gun Down" by Brian Garfield of "Death Wish" fame, is an effectively harsh, intense Western made in the Peckinpah style, utilizing the common Western theme of changing times and the weary veterans coming to terms with this reality.

Charlton Heston displays quiet strength as former lawman Sam Burgade, whose nemesis Zach Provo (James Coburn) has escaped from a road gang with his accomplices. Provo, a half breed, is obsessed with exacting vengeance upon Burgade after a past shootout had resulted in the death of Provo's wife. As Burgade puts it, vengeance is basically all that Provo lives for now and that there would be a big hole in his life to fill without that hatred. Provo's particularly insidious plan involves the kidnapping of Burgade's daughter Susan (ever lovely Barbara Hershey), upon whom Provo will unleash his drooling degenerate pals if Burgade doesn't come to face him.

Give this movie, directed by Western pro Andrew V. McLaglen, credit for going to a place not typically considered in the Western by having the outlaw gang actually force itself on poor Susan. The violence is also definite post-"The Wild Bunch" stuff with a fair bit of the red stuff flowing as the movie goes along. As would be important for any Western, the scenery is shown in all of its breathtaking glory, and the period recreation handled well. The music score by the consistently reliable Jerry Goldsmith hits all the right, rousing notes. As the climactic action plays out, it's equal parts suspenseful and exciting.

Coburn oozes menace as the seething, vengeance-crazed Provo, and his gang is comprised of men such as Jorge Rivero, Thalmus Rasulala (who unfortunately doesn't get a whole lot to do), Larry Wilcox of CHiPs, Morgan Paull, John Quade, and Robert Donner. Quade is especially good as a true creep. Christopher Mitchum, son of Robert, also comes off well as the "greenhorn" who Burgade realizes he has underestimated. But the most interesting performance in the whole thing is that by Michael Parks, playing the low key, reform minded, not terribly efficient sheriff.

"The Last Hard Men" is good if not great, and is a suitably entertaining movie while it lasts.

Seven out of 10.