Welcome to Hard Times

A struggling small town in the late 1800's is invaded by a psychopathic gunman. Nobody is willing to stand up to him, therefore he has his way and rides off. New residents come and re-build, only to find the man returns. The townspeople must either have the courage to face him or perish. Excellent western dealing with injustice and the unwillingness to resolve it.

'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.

Could "Welcome to Hard Times" be the most bizarre western ever made? It's certainly the most bizarre western Burt Kennedy has ever been associated with, (he wrote and directed it). Unusually violent and clearly influenced by the Spaghetti Westerns and not dissimilar at times to Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider" it's about crazed psychopath Aldo Ray's terrorizing and destruction of the small town of Hard Times. (well, more a couple of buildings calling itself a town), in which Henry Fonda is the mayor who refuses to stand up to him, (there doesn't appear to be a sheriff).

After Ray rides out, leaving very little behind but ashes, Fonda persuades the survivors to rebuild the town, welcoming any newcomers who come riding by and then...you don't have to be too smart to figure what's coming. It's certainly got a sterling cast; as well as Fonda and Ray there's Janice Rule, Janis Paige, Keenan Wynn, Lon Chaney Jr., Warren Oates and Fay Spain and Kennedy's screenplay, from E. L. Doctorow's first novel, is so off-the-wall it's impossible to dismiss it. In fact, if any western from the sixties, or indeed from any period, deserves a cult following it's this one. Is it any good? Of course not but you certainly won't see another one quite like it.

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.

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.