If it does, bypass the vacuum side of the fuel pump to see if things start working. If they do, the vacuum side of the fuel pump is bad. I hope this helps. I recently bought a 1969 Cougar XR7 with a rebuilt 393 V-8. It has trouble starting and sounds like there is an internal backfire.
Fuel seems to blow back through the carburetor and moisten the top of the air filter cover.
If it doesn't start it seems to flood and the starter will not turn over at all. This occurs while driving in town. There is no easy answer here. The backfire and the hard start could be caused by badly advanced ignition timing, a bad distributor cap, crossed plug wires. Any of these things and a number of other things also could make the engine overheat.