Welcome to Hard Times

This is a gritty and well directed film. Unfortunately, the entire premises strains belief. We are supposed to believe that one man rides into a town and kills people and burns it to the ground while everybody just sits around and watches. In the real world this guy (Aldo Ray) would have been shot down about five minutes after he walked into the saloon. In 19th century America, everyone was armed and would have taken any action needed to protect their lives and property. I thought it was a silly movie when I saw it as a child and it remains silly today.

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.

'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.

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.