A vicious stranger, the "Man from Bodie", terrorizes the small settlement of Hard Times. He kills the only men who stand up to him, town founder Mr. Fee and town undertaker Mr. Hanson, as well as raping and killing Fee's girlfriend Flo. Before he leaves, he burns down the handful of buildings.
Only a few people stay, among them Will Blue. Blue takes in Fee's young orphaned son Jimmy and convinces his woman, Molly, to stay there with them. A few other people arrive. Zar and his four saloon girls settle in to serve the nearby miners. Isaac Maple comes looking for his long-gone storekeeper brother, so Blue persuades him to reopen the general store. A drifter, Leo Jenks, also lazes around town.
Blue tries hard to build a family and a prosperous community but Molly despises him for not standing up against the Man from Bodie, and is obsessed with revenge against him for what he did. They both expect the Man will return in the spring. Molly works on Jenks, a fine shot, and even infects Jimmy with her consuming hatred, getting him a shotgun.
The villain shows up and resumes his terrorizing ways. Molly persuades Jenks to go after him. Jenks kills Zar by mistake and is gunned down. Blue is wounded in the shoulder, but then, the Man runs out of bullets and Blue shoots him several times.
Blue carries the Man’s body home to show Molly. When she gingerly approaches, the Man momentarily revives. Molly attempts to stab the villain, but he grabs her hand. Her panicked yell for help brings Jimmy running with his shotgun. Blue grabs the weapon as Jimmy fires, killing the Man and striking Molly in the stomach. Just before she dies, she asks Blue to hold her. Later, from her gravesite, Blue and Jimmy see the town come back to life.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times thought Aldo Ray's performance was "fascinating and hypnotizing": "I would guess, in all his times in Western movies, Mr. Fonda has never seen a more wild and implausible badman than this jughead whom Mr. Ray plays. Not only does he knock the tops off bottles instead of pulling out the corks when he wants to guzzle a couple of quarts of whisky (that's a standard badman ploy), but he ravishes bar girls, shoots his own horse and guns down Elisha Cook Jr. with even more cold-blooded arrogance than Jack Palance did in Shane."[3]
Variety panned the film with contempt for Kennedy's "inept" direction and script. It dismissed Rule's performance as "unsatisfactory", comparing it to a "Method school version" of the iconic Western-movie star Maureen O'Hara. Though taking note of the star-studded supporting cast—noting Edgar Buchanan's performance as the "best" among them, and giving credit for "comic relief" to Wynn and the saloon girls—Variety said the collection of "many pro names" simply underscored a "lack of depth and perception" by the "script and direction."[4]
The movie continues to be critiqued by some reviewers as being awkward and unsettling, with an ending that is unsatisfying[5] (even "nihilistic").[6] While noting there is not a consensus among reviewers, Rotten Tomatoes audience scores it at 39%.[7] However, one modern reviewer describes it as "better than average" for a Western.[5]
Craig Butler in the All Movie Guide notes that the movie "tends to divide audiences" along the lines of whether or not they are expecting, and preferring, a conventional Western (virtue triumphs through justifiable violence), or are attracted to a very contradictory type of movie. For the latter, Butler contends the film offers much "to ponder and to study", but notes that the movie is a "downer" that arguably puts most of its effort into conveying a "message" rather than providing entertainment. Butler describes the film as a revisionist Western, typical of the 1960s, disassembling the classic Western, and reassembling it in ways that did not always follow the traditions of the genre.[8]
Butler makes positive comments about the performances of Fonda, Ray, Wynn, Oates, Buchanan, Paige and Pyle.[8]Time Out concurs that the supporting cast is "immaculate" and notes Fonda's performance as "intriguing".[6]
