Bad Men of the West

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.

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.

Granted, I had not heard about this 1974 movie titled "The Meanest Men in the West" prior to stumbling upon it here in 2025. I didn't actually know that it was not a movie as per se, but it was actually two random episodes from "The Virginian" TV series, which I never even heard about. While Western is not a genre I generally veer towards, I do dabble every now and again when given a chance.

Writers Samuel Fuller and Ed Waters put together an okay script and storyline, though I suppose that if you have watched "The Virginian", and thus also watched these two episodes, the story would make more sense. Regardless, it proved watchable enough to sit through.

There were some familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Charles Grodin, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Lee J. Cobb, Ross Hagen, Bonnie Bartlett and Lance Kerwin. The acting performances were fair.

The editing was pretty lousy. Some of the scenes were brutally cut without consideration of the music, making for some very odd changes in sound and music.

My rating of "The Meanest Men in the West" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

(1966) The Meanest Men In The West WESTERN

Plays and feels like a really bad made for TV movie, but it's like the only movie where we can see Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin sharing the same screen together. The set up regards a robbery lead by Harge Talbot Jr (Charles Bronson) and company gone wrong since someone ratted him out. The movie centers on Harge trying to find the culprit responsible which is really his psychopathic brother Kalig (Lee Marvin) who had just kidnapped the judge(Lee J Cobb) who imprisoned him. This also happens to be Lee J Cobbs final film appearance. This movie is quite bad even for fans for both Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson fans.

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.