A Lode of Pap

By T.E. Kalem

There is a measurement in physics called absolute zero. It is a point 459 Fahrenheit degrees below zero at which all molecular activity ceases. Nothing moves. Everyone has sat through films that deserved an AZ rating. It is disappointing that Peter Fonda of Easy Rider fame should have produced one. The Hired Hand is pointless, virtually plotless, all but motionless and a lode of pap.

The intent was to make a "realistic" western in which a little sporadic violence would uncoil naturally, like a rattler surprised during a desert snooze. The time is about 1880 and the place is a sleazy little ghost town in New Mexico country. Three drifters--Collings (Fonda), Harris (Warren Gates) and Dan (Robert Pratt)--drift into it. Dan is gunned down by a mean, sneaky killer named McVey (Severn Darden). Collings and Harris push on to the farm of the wife Collings had deserted six years before. The wife, Hannah (Verna Bloom), takes on the pair as hired hands.

Unpregnant Pauses. What Hannah and Collings felt or feel about each other is never made remotely clear, but a reconciliation is brought about partly through their little daughter. Harris leaves, only to be trapped and tortured by McVey. When one of Harris' fingers is tossed before Collings like a medieval gage, he gallops off to save his drifter pal and meet his doom.

Whether this story line could have been saved is questionable. Padding it out with Marlboro-country scenery is no great help. The horses graze and people gaze--at the sky, at each other, at nothing.

The dialogue is vapidly laconic, with plenty of unpregnant pauses, and Fonda delivers it that way. He possesses the bruised canine look of his father with its perpetual hint of being over-loyal and underloved. Gates is good at suggesting a beat-up, used-up man who has not turned bitter. The untainted honesty of Verna Bloom's performance gives it the effect of beauty. She has an authentic frontier woman's face, planed by the seasons and by loneliness At one point, she says, "I'm all aching and sore from these last six years " After only 90 minutes spent at The Hired Hand, we know what she means.

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