THE HIRED HAND. (1971) DIRECTED BY PETER FONDA. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY VILMOS ZSIGMOND. MUSIC BY BRUCE LANGHORNE.
STARRING PETER FONDA, WARREN OATES AND VERNA BLOOM.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This is one of the sexiest Westerns I've ever seen, and yet you don't see a single sex act in it or even a flash of nekkid flesh. It's sexy in a sultry, dreamy almost lazy way, if you know what I mean. It's sexy without being flashy or obvious, and yet you can almost feel the heat, taste the sweat and absorb the sheer agonising longing of the three main protagonists. Whew, I'd better mop myself off with this here kerchief. It sure seems like it's getting mighty hot in this here movie review...!
The film was directed by one of its co-stars, Peter Fonda of the Fonda acting dynasty. He's the son of Henry, the brother of Jane and the father of Bridget, whom I'll always personally remember from that brilliant 'Eighties thriller, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE. Remember a crazed Jennifer Jason Leigh running around the place with that lethal-looking hook-thing in her hand? Chilling stuff indeed, and the kind of thing you could be letting yourself in for when you take in a room-mate...
THE HIRED HAND apparently wasn't terribly well received when it first came out, but now it enjoys a cult status due to its having been restored and aired at different festivals. Folks nowadays appreciate the film for the brilliant piece of work it is.
It has a gorgeous and unusual musical score, often no more than a melancholy guitar strumming plaintively as the two travelling horsemen hove into view over the horizon. It's a million percent in keeping with the tone of the film, as a cowboy who's deathly tired of being a cowboy comes home to the family he deserted seven odd years ago to see if they'll be so kind as to have him back.
Peter Fonda plays Henry Collings, the aforementioned cowboy. He was ten years younger than his wife when he walked out on her and their daughter Janey. He was restless and wanted to see a bit of the world. Maybe he felt he wasn't ready to settle down and be a husband and father yet, something he surely should've thought about before he, well, you know, had all the procreative sex and what-have-you. Typical guy, huh?
Anyway, Henry's back now on his wife Hannah's farm with his tail between his legs and his wee-willy-winkie firmly tucked away in his britches, mainly because his angry and bitter missus wants nothing to do with him as a husband and father.
He can stay on the farm, all right, but only on the understanding that he's the titular 'hired hand' around the place and nothing more. Henry agrees to Hannah's strict terms, probably because he's so genuinely tired of being a wanderin' star and desperately wants a permanent billet to lay his head and hang his hat and all that.
Henry's bringing a friend with him too, Arch Harris (great name, Harris!), the guy with whom he's been riding around the 'Murican Southwest for the best part of the last decade. Arch is sexy as hell in a sweaty, moustachioed-cowboy kind of way and he's got a toothsome smile to die for. I dig him way more than the Peter Fonda character, who seems drippy and indecisive, characteristics most women dislike in a man.
I was dying for Arch and the wife to get together. They'd be the sexiest couple. Like I said, Henry's too much of a wimpy drip, when it comes to women, anyway.
Verna Bloom is perfect as the long-suffering wife Hannah. Her years of fending for herself and her daughter and running the farm single-handed have left her hard as nails and taken their toll on her youth and on her looks. Underneath the dust and grime, however, she's still a good-looking woman and she has needs, needs about which she's brutally but refreshingly honest. And why not? We all gottem, don't we? Or does being a woman mean that it's wrong for Hannah to express herself in that way...?
The sexiest scene in the whole film is when Verna Bloom (who once had sex with the ultimate cowboy Clint Eastwood in spaghetti western HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) is sitting barefoot on the porch in her rocking chair, telling a spellbound Arch what it was like for her all these years without Henry.
When Hannah talks about how she was eaten up with sexual frustration, all alone there on the farm with only the occasional 'hired hand' to alleviate her longing, Arch's hand moves ever so slowly to touch one of her bare feet. The electricity...! It's sexier than a whole cartload of Kardashians.
The genuine attraction and physical longing between a real man and a real woman is hotter than a selfie of some Z-list celebrity's blubbery arse any day of the week, and I really mean that.
There's a whole revenge story in the film as well, involving Henry and Arch getting back at the guys from another town who shot their buddy Dan, and it's a good exciting story, but for me as a female viewer, this film is all about the underlying sensuality and bleak, barren beauty of the landscape and the three main characters and their suppressed desires. Typical woman, huh?
The film stands out for its distinctive cinematography also. The whole film has a sensual, dreamy and almost poetic quality to it that you might not be expecting from a Western, but it's there and, in places, THE HIRED HAND feels almost like an actual ballet or piece of art in movie form.
The film is out on DVD now, courtesy of the jolly folk at ARROW FILMS, fully restored and everything and infinitely watchable.
Don't make the mistake of dismissing it as a 'hippie-Western' the way the cinema-goers of the day did. If you want to remind yourself what true sexiness looked like in the days before social media and Brazilian waxing, then look no further than THE HIRED HAND. It's as steamy as a pot of instant noodles coming to the boil, and you can take that to the bank.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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