The Meanest Men In The West may “star” Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller may be credited as being one of the film’s two directors but don’t make the same mistake that I made. Don’t get too excited.
There was once a TV western called The Virginian. Starring James Drury as a ranch foreman, The Virginian ran for nine seasons on NBC. A 1962 episode, which was written and directed by Sam Fuller, featured Lee Marvin as a sadistic outlaw who kidnapped The Virginian’s employer, a judge played by Lee J. Cobb. Five years later, another episode features Charles Bronson as a less sadistic outlaw who kidnapped the Judge’s daughter.
The Meanest Men In The West mixes scenes from those two episode with western stock footage, a bank robbery that originally appeared in The Return of Frank James, an intrusive voice-over, and an almost incoherent prologue, all in order to tell an entirely new story. Now, Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin are brothers and rivals. After Marvin snitches on Bronson’s plan to rob a bank, Bronson blames his former friend, The Virginian. In order to get the Virginian to come to his hideout, Bronson kidnaps Cobb’s daughter. The Virginian manages to convince Bronson that he didn’t betray him, just to arrive back at the ranch and discover that Cobb has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, Bronson and his gang set off after Marvin and his gang. It ends with Charles Bronson, in 1967, shooting at Lee Marvin, who is still in 1962.
The Meanest Men In The West is so clumsily edited that the same shot of Charles Bronson holding a gun is spliced into a dozen different scenes. Filmed on different film stocks, the Bronson scenes and the Marvin scenes look nothing alike and, since the two episodes were filmed five years apart, James Drury literally ages backwards over the course of the film.
The Meanest Men In The West is for Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin completists only. I think Bronson and Marvin are two of the coolest individuals who ever existed and even I had a hard time making it through this one. If you do watch it, keep an eye out for a young Charles Grodin, thoroughly miscast as a tough outlaw.
California. The 1870s. Sheriff Pearce (Ben Johnson) boards a train with his prisoner, an alleged outlaw named John Deakin (Charles Bronson). The train is mostly full of soldiers, under the command of Major Claremont (Ed Lauter), who are on their way to Fort Humboldt. The fort has suffered a diphtheria epidemic and the soldiers are supposedly transporting medical supplies.
The year is 1874 and James Otis (Charles Bronson) is traveling through the Dakota Territory. Everywhere that James Otis goes, someone tries to shoot him. This is because James Otis is actually the infamous Wild Bill Hickcock and everyone this side of Deadwood has a reason to want him dead. Hickcock has returned to the territory because he is losing his eyesight and he fears that he may be dying. Hickcock has been having nightmares about a giant albino buffalo and believes that it is his destiny to either kill it or be killed himself.
In rural Colorado, the three wives and all the children of Orville Beecham (Charlie Dierkop) have been murdered. Veteran journalist Garret Smith (Charles Bronson) discovers that Orville is the son of an excommunicated Mormon fundamentalist named Willis Beecham (Jeff Corey). Willis, who lives on a heavily armed compound, practices polygamy and wants nothing to do with the outside world. However, Willis’s brother, Zenas (John Ireland), long ago split with Willis and set up a compound of his own. At first, Garret suspects that Orville’s family was killed by Zenas. As Zenas and Willis go to war, Garret discovers that there’s actually a bigger conspiracy at work, one dealing with corporate greed and water rights. (Forget it, Bronson, it’s Chinatown.)
Leon Alastray (Anthony Quinn) is an outlaw in 18th century Mexico who is given sanctuary and hidden from the Spanish authorities by a kindly priest, Father Joseph (Sam Jaffe). In return, Leon agrees to escort the priest to a peasant village that is under siege from the Yaqui Indians. During the journey, Joseph dies and when Leon arrives at the village, he is mistaken for the priest. Even though Leon’s an atheist and a womanizer, he pretends to be a man of God and tries to broker a peace with the Yaqui’s bloodthirsty leader, Golden Lance (Jaime Fernandez). Standing in the way is Teclo (Charles Bronson), a mestizo rebel who wants to keep the Spanish and the Yaqui at war.
