El pueblo maldito

There are a lot of interesting aspects to this above average adult western -- Fonda plays a wimp, Keenan Wynn plays a pimp who operates out of a bible tent, and Ray plays a "badman" who seems to have no motive for his destruction of the town of "Hard Times" (they could've picked a better name, eh?) than pure sadism. In Fonda's quest to prove his manhood and make a stand in Hard Times, a lot of fairly complex human themes come to the fore. Rule plays a believably highstrung Western Woman, bent on teaching her adopted son how to kill because she doesn't think Fonda has the guts.

One of Kennedy's better later westerns before he switched completely to the comedic mode, notable for a solid script based on an interesting story with great character performances throughout.

'This sparse and grim epic of the plains is loaded with character and with allegory as well. The bad man who comes down from the hills and destroys the town is analagous to Moby Dick, more about dark fate than satanic evil. The excellence of the film comes from its relative faithfulness to the book, a masterpiece by E. L. Doctorow, the storyteller who gave us Waterworks and Ragtime. I give the movie four stars out of the five, and the book all five. Henry Fonda is the big name star, but this is really an ensemble movie. Catch the late Aldo Ray acting up a storm. (If you have seen the movie, read the book. It adds some dimensions including graphic violence that wasn't put into film when this one was made.) I saw this film on TV late one night many years ago, and it stuck with me like a haunting.

It is very hard to like Henry Fonda's character as the pacifists antihero which is the role he is playing as a lawyer named Mayor Will Blue in the tumbleweed town called Hard Times. Watching how the seasoned tough guy actor Aldo Ray play the bully/rapist overpower the entire townsfolk as a one man out of control mob, how could anyone like the "character: Mayor Will Blue who refuses to confront the mean SOB who is terrorizing his small town.

Just a few years later in 1973 Clint Eastwood played another antihero stranger without a given name in the classic film "High Plains Drifter" with the audience accepting much greater empathy when the town was also burned to the ground and Clint went after the bad guys with a vengeance. I understand why many viewers did not enjoy this Burt Kennedy directed film, and I am sure director/actor Clint Eastwood learned from the mistakes from Henry Fonda's 1967 film Welcome to Hard Times.

My one criticism of this film was the fact that there seemed to be only one young boy in the entire town and how can any town flourish without a school and a church? Very few westerns are acknowledged as classics without a make believe town having school aged children, a church as well as the always standard livery stable.

Even without the bare necessities of a small western start up town I still liked and understood the message which is that one way or another, bully's have to be confronted and ultimately defeated even if it means the sacrifice of a few good men to save the lives and livelihood of many.

I give the film a decent 7 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Burt Kennedy who made so many good comic westerns back in the day, tried his hand at a serious realistic western and fell flat on his face with it. Henry Fonda must have felt like Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley, he and the film got great critical reviews and the public stayed away in droves.

No accident, western fans expect certain things in their films and Welcome to Hard Times delivers none of them. It is a realistic depiction of the growth of a western town, maybe too realistic.

Henry Fonda is the mayor of this little burg and purportedly the hero of the piece. Problem is that there is nothing heroic about Fonda nor the town's people.

Aldo Ray is the silent Man from Bodie, the villain of the story. He's about the worst villain on screen since Liberty Valance, without any redeeming characteristics. He defiles some of the women, shoots some of the men, and sets fire to the town. A few including Henry Fonda try to stop him and fail. Fonda fails in a moment of weakness.

Fonda's girl friend Janice Rule is among the defiled and she grows understandably bitter. The main story line is the conflict between Rule and Fonda, especially over young Michael Shea whose father was killed by Aldo Ray and who Fonda has now taken over raising.

Some veteran players like Keenan Wynn, Warren Oates, Denver Pyle, Edgar Buchanan, and Lon Chaney, Jr., make things interesting as the story drags on. There is of course a final and very bloody confrontation again with Aldo Ray that has some unexpected consequences.

Somebody should have told the town of Hard Times what the town in Johnny Concho did about William Conrad who was in the Aldo Ray role in that film. The solution to the problems of Hard Times was right there.

One thing about Henry: he was versatile. From dottering old Norman Thayer in "On Golden Pond" to the child-murdering gunman in "Once Upon a Time in the West" and everything in between, Henry Fonda showed us his multi-faceted talent over and over again, as he does here as a waffling, semi-cowardly man initially unwilling to confront a bully that terrorizes a small community in the old west.

Aldo Ray's is ideally suited for his character as well, as the murderous brute intent upon destroying a small town and anyone who tries to stop him.

As usual, mild-mannered Good eventually triumphs over seemingly unstoppable Evil, but then, by 1967 Clint Eastwood already had a lock on the other outcome. Still, I enjoyed it quite a lot, and recommend it highly, for among other reasons, to see Aldo munch on a giant green onion as he drinks coffee, in celebration of a murderous rampage he just finished.