The Meanest Men in the West (1978)
Bronson and Marvin star as murderous half-brothers who are running from the law as well as each other. A climatic confrontation proves to each of them just how mean the other can be. "The Meanest Men in the West" is actually an amalgam of two episodes of the hit 1960's TV series, "The Virginian." In one installment, a wealthy man's daughter is kidnapped by a nasty gunslinger. But the crime is only just a means for the ruffian to draw the tough title character into a blood- thirsty revenge scheme. In the second, a drifter burglarizes the Shiloh ranch. Then an unhinged girl relies on the man to aid in her flight from home.
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Perfect cast and a good story
Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess
Awesome Movie
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
This film has many troubles including a bad timeline. The first season portions guest starring Lee Marvin are set in 1898. At one point he sings the Lizzie Bordon song, referring to a woman who murdered her parents in 1892. Yet in the sixth season segments featuring his brother, Charles Bronson, he writes the year 1887 in the family bible as the year of his just born son. Elizabeth Grainger (Sara Lane) is kidnapped and referred to as Judge Garth's (Lee J. Cobb's) daughter, when in reality she was John Grainger's granddaughter and Clay Grainger's niece, and no relation to, nor never met the judge. MCA obviously was trying to capitalize on the popularity of the film The Dirty Dozen, starring Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson.
*Spoiler/plot- 1962, Two murderous brothers are pitted each other in this story of hatred and revenge. They are on the run from the Law and each other. They collide when psychotic bad man Marvin attempts to settle a life-long feud with his equally deadly brother, Bronson. After a series of hair-raising public crimes like cattle rustling, train robberies, kidnaps, gunfights, ambushes and personal betrayals; the two outlaws face-off for the final time.*Special Stars- Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Lee J Cobb, James, Dury.*Theme- Bad men never really win.*Based on- Cain and Abel biblical myth.*Trivia/location/goofs- A disappointingly cheap Universal 'composite' patch work film made up from archive footage film clips from a NBC TV episode of 'The Virginian' and a good Fox feature film, 'The Return of Frank James'. Huge plot holes abound in this film's story. The best action scenes were taken from other projects and saved the filmmakers production money. Filmed from the back 'doubles' were used to match the patchwork clip shots in the scene action to make this file footage trick to work effectively. It doesn't. In the Bronson featured bank robbery scenes, you can clearly see that Bronson was strangely matted into a bank interior background. His head image outline was 'vibrating' due to the bad EFX processing to accomplish this. *Emotion- A somewhat forgettable western with a stellar cast made up of disjointed archive footage clips taken from other better Universal media projects. It's really too hard to follow the paper-thin simplistic plot in this movie by this money saving trick. Also, an overuse of stars reaction in single scenes to move the film along makes this film's pacing very tedious and destroys the continuity of the plot. Combined with the film's small explanatory prequel on the brother's early hard family life in the film's beginning, the viewer gets confused and bored from caring much about the characters.The director Sam Fuller should be ashamed of this one. Marvin looks and weakly acts like he never left the much better John Ford film, 'Who Shot Liberty Valance?" of the same time period. Bronson disappoints the viewer with his flat performances. All this, combined with the stolen action film sequences was a confused bore. You are better off missing this 'mean' turkey of a western.
This has gotta be the worst movie of Charles Bronson & Lee marvin. I was truly disappointed. An absolute waste of time as well as money. I read the reviews by other viewers but still I bought it. I wanted to kill myself by the time I reach the first half of the movie. There are many better movies of Charles & Lee Marvin which are not on DVD & yet this movie is been released on DVD! It's really a surprise.Pls. guys, do not waste your money & time on this one. It's better to break your head against a wall than watching this.
A Sam Fuller-directed and scripted episode of the TV show The Virginian starring Lee Marvin and Lee J. Cobb is cobbled together with another episode (I assume) starring Charles Bronson to create this dreadful mess. Bizarre voice-overs, misplaced shots, and freeze-frames attempt to create the new plot. Utterly ludicrous and a disservice to a great filmmaker.