A strange man from Bodie (Aldo Ray) rides into a jerkwater town that he proceeds to terrorize. He tortures the local prostitute in a saloon, kills a man who tries to help, clubs the barkeep with a bottle, shoots his own exhausted horse, steals another, kills the owner, etc. He even takes over the town Indian's tepee, drinks his hot coffee directly from the fire pot, and eats his corn off the stalk. The psychopath then burns down the town before he rides away on his stolen horse. All the while the semi-cowardly pacifist lawyer-sheriff (Will Blue = Henry Fonda) sits, then watches, and then works up the courage to get the drop on the sadist or perhaps shoot him in the back. He is not successful, but so aren't the docile town citizens, who number about 15 or 20. Blue has to salvage what's left, and it isn't much. Could the burning town and "Bodie's" savage laughter be symbolic of hell and Satan? There is some rebuilding, but you know the stranger will be back (Don't they always return?). Aldo Ray plays one of the most effective mean roles in western cinema history, i.e. without the need for dialog. His hulking presence is enough. He certainly does a good job in killing off much of the veteran cast in his two town "visits." A movie feature is the double ending, perhaps one of the first for a US Western, and perhaps a prelude to future slasher flicks.There is no way this movie was the real West, which was tamed after all. We know that the old time lawmakers – Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Temple Houston, Charlie Siringo, Pat Garrett, Heck Thomas, Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen, and the rest – did what they had to do. And these folks did not die until the 20th century, and Madsen lived to be nearly 100! The law was well-enforced even by the Hollywood cowboys – W.S. Hart (who knew the real West), Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Johnny Mack Brown, Gene Autry, and many others. The typical scenario was like this: First, the bad guy did his dastardly deed and initially got away with the crime. Next, the good guy gathered evidence and was soon hot on his trail. Then came the inevitable result: the hoosegow or Boot Hill. Welcome to Hard Times is thus strange indeed. For not only did it take away the persona of the hero, but it also gave the bad guy an egocentric place in the overall setting. It may even have helped to give rise to the western anti-hero (á la Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and others). This movie was filmed in 1966, but not released until the following year. For a long time the old-style western was never the same except mainly for the Duke's work in the 1960s and 1970s. The genre today has not really come back.This off-beat western is supported by a very competent and incredibly well-stocked supporting cast (although they are mostly wasted). Old timers like Edgar Buchanan, Keenan Wynn, John Anderson, Warren Oates, Denver Pyle, Janis Paige and the rest are always a delight to watch. The cinematography is fine, and the dancing girls are attractive enough. But the movie itself just could not represent the real West!

Recap: A brutish and violent gunfighter holds the little frontier settlement of Hard Times in terror. Local mayor Will Blue is helpless, and the terror only ends with the gunfighter burning the town and riding out. The town is almost deserted, but when a saloon manager, along with his group of prostitutes settles in the town to serve the miners from the surrounding mountains, there is hope once again. But Blue struggles with both his own guilt of having done nothing and other locals accusations of the same. And sometimes the gunfighter will return, will Blue be able to defend his town then?Comments: A rather uneventful and badly acted western. Especially the movies threat, the gunfighter, is so exaggerated so that the threat seems just silly. The it is supposed that the drama should come from the tension between the surviving townsfolk, but it never gets really interesting. One problem is that the supposed hero, Blue, is nothing of the kind. And without a hero and an absent threat, there is no real reason to care. Is there? In fact, Blue is so little of a hero that he doesn't even succeeds to gain redemption when the villain returns. He doesn't do anything until the villain is out of bullets, and defenseless. Only then does Blue fight him.With nothing to care about, the movie uninteresting at best, and boring at worst. It certainly is disappointing. A veteran such as Henry Fonda should be better in choosing his projects, and do better with the material at hand. But I guess he didn't care either… 3/10

It's amazing that Henry Fonda made the fantastic "Once Upon a Time in the West" the same year, or thereabouts, that he made this atrocity. Tonally inept, directed like a school play, with an obnoxious, heavy-handed score, this is an object lesson in how not to make a western. As you probably know by now, an impossibly brutal killer terrorizes a small town but no one has the courage to stand up to him. You'd think they could hand out a few guns and encircle the guy, instead of taking him on one at a time. Various central-casting western types cycle through, brandishing their mustaches and petticoats, and seem to have been left to their own devices on such matters as line readings (Keenan Wynn, in particular, barks his dialog as though dictating it to a sign painter). Ersatz Aaron Copeland music kicks up for interminable montages of town-building. Henry Fonda and Janice Rule have the same argument for two hours until, mercifully, some bloodshed makes the conversation moot. You will mourn the two hours of your life you sacrificed on the altar of this inert flick.

I kept waiting for this bad movie to move beyond its stock characters and hackneyed plot, but it never made it. We have floozies with hearts of gold, grizzled old-timers, cowardly townspeople, and an over-the-top Aldo Ray playing evil incarnate. Elisha Cook is given the opportunity to reprise his Shane role, the spunky, fearless, impulsive, and doomed fool: Jack Palance, with one of cinema's great sneers, shot him dead in Shane and Aldo Ray does him the same courtesy in Welcome to Hard Times. One plot gimmick after another is thrown in, evidently just to fill up some screen time, when more time might have been spent developing the characters of the townspeople.