The Meanest Men in the West (1978)

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.

What was this?! A complete botch. Kalig uses his half-brother Harge Talbot Jr (who he secretly hates for the death of his mother when he was born) in a plan to seek revenge against the judge who sent him to prison. Honestly I couldn't be bothered revealing much more because I came away feeling really gypped after expecting to get some Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin interaction. However their scenes are obviously edited together from totally different productions, which are supposedly two episodes of the western TV show "The Virginian". It's actually quite embarrassing and erratically staged. The way certain scenes are worked in are terrible, confusing and extremely unconvincing that found my snickering at the stock footage. Especially when Bronson and Marvin share the screen. Just look at those studio shots! ugh! From be it to the slipshod editing, what also brings it down was the non-existent direction, tacky music score and unusual photography. There so many odd filming techniques that try to cover it. It's just so hard to cut up this one because it's just lazy work. L.J Cobb also shows up on the same reel as the grizzled Marvin. Even with these names, everyone is pretty much on the sideline slumming it, with Marvin constantly staring and sneaking about. Gee, he might have just been as a viewer. The conventionally patchwork story is predictable from the get-go, with little purpose and a drone-like narrative that loosely draws up the two episodes together for one wretch story. Which manages to also drag. Sam Fuller's name is attached to it, but it's a fizzled effort. Even on their own, they wouldn't have made for anything of interest. The action sequences are useless and muddled. Pointless, just pointless.

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.