Welcome to Hard Times is a 1967 American Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Henry Fonda as the leader of a dying town that is too weak to stand up to a brute terrorizing the few remaining residents.

Blue takes in Fee's young orphaned son Jimmy and convinces his woman, Molly, to stay there with them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[8] Butler makes positive comments about the performances of Fonda, Ray, Wynn, Oates, Buchanan, Paige and Pyle.