Truly Dreadful Film

Good concept, poorly executed.

Brilliant and touching

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Dull western is actually two episodes of "The Virginian" from the 1960s, one starring Charles Bronson and the other starring Lee Marvin, edited together and released theatrically almost 20 years later. The episodes are connected in that Marvin and Bronson are supposed to be half brothers, although they didn't appear together in their respective episode and their stories not originally connected. The only reason I wanted to see this film is that one of the two episodes was written and directed by the great Samuel Fuller ("The Big Red One," "The Steel Helmet," "Shock Corridor," etc.), but you'd barely notice when watching this routine TV western. There are flashes where you can see seeds of something better, such some basic story concepts (Fuller wrote and directed the Lee Marvin episode), Fuller's usual knack for action, and, of course, Bronson and Marvin. However, it's all undone by cheap television production values, such as cheap sets, bad photography, and painful overuse of stock footage. Marvin is good, but he seems to just be going through the motions, as does Fuller. Really, there's nothing to recommend here unless you're a Fuller, Marvin, or Bronson completionist.

I wanted to give this a shot because when I read that it was two episodes of The Virginian combined to make a "movie" I thought the first part would have Marvin and the other part would have Bronson. I had seen this done before with "Man from U.N.C.L.E" movies, two Gemini Man episodes together in "Riding with Death", and a few drive in flicks like "The Doomsday Machine, and "They Saved Hitler's Brain". The results are usually not very good but I figured with two legends like Bronson and Marvin it would still be something decent. Little did I know that instead of some footage to tie the two episodes together that instead they would cut scene by scene the two together, and also it seems, with stock footage from a dozen other films. I had to stop watching pretty early in when I saw random Union Calvary soldier footage in with lots of wagon trail footage. The telescope trick was a riot (and lame). If you like really insulting to your intelligence entertainment (to laugh at) then you may be interested in this, otherwise see it for the curiosity and don't stay too long or you may get angry at the creators for making something so horrible. I think this was made for overseas audiences where English is not the first language. 1 of 10.

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.

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.