With a scenic opening credits sequence framing the high country of Wyoming in the 1800s, one might be led to believe THE MOUNTAIN MEN to be a family adventure, or something along the lines of Grizzly Adams. But once we get introduced to the two guys in this particular deck of cards, the truth comes out: Grizzly Adams, this ain't.
Charlton Heston and Brian Keith, who had previously teamed up in their early days in the 1953 western ARROWHEAD, are, respectively, Bill Tyler and Henry Frapp, two grizzled, hard-living mountain men living out in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming in the days just prior to wagon trains and immigrants making the big move out West. Heston's mountain man is in the beaver trade, but he is astonished to eventually find that beaver is going out of style. Keith, meantime, gets into something of a running gag feud with Heston as to whether the Indian tribes that keep pursuing them are Crow or Blackfoot. Not only does it turn out to be Blackfoot, but the Blackfoot chief Heavy Eagle (Stephen Macht) is out to get them after his slave bride Yellow Moon (Victoria Racimo) escapes from his iron grasp, and gets Heston's and Keith's protection. The end result is, not surprisingly, rather rough and violent.
Featuring the usual expected professional performances from old pros Heston and Keith (Keith, in particular, with his four-letter tirades, minus any F-bombs, almost overshadows Heston--not an easy thing to do even when the man who played Moses and Ben-Hur isn't up to par), THE MOUNTAIN MEN is not a particularly spectacular piece of work in the hands of director Richard Lang, but it is hardly the atrocity that a lot of critics made it out to be when it was released in 1980. This was a project close to Heston's heart, as its screenplay was written by his son Fraser Clarke Heston; and it is true to the historical essentials of the lives of mountain men, if not necessarily to Indian culture. It is quite bloody in places, and one white explorer (Seymour Cassel) literally loses his head rather gruesomely to Macht near the climax, so clearly THE MOUNTAIN MEN isn't for the younger set. But with two stalwarts like Heston and Keith leading the way, Racimo being quite good as a squaw, and Macht making for a convincing foe (if not a truly convincing Indian), it makes for solid entertainment, if sometimes drenched in bloodiness and off-color language--particularly as it may have been one of the last reasonably good Westerns made in Hollywood before Cimino's atrocious HEAVEN'S GATE all but killed off everyone's appetite for the genre.
Charlton Heston and Brian Keith, who had previously teamed up in their early days in the 1953 western ARROWHEAD, are, respectively, Bill Tyler and Henry Frapp, two grizzled, hard-living mountain men living out in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming in the days just prior to wagon trains and immigrants making the big move out West. Heston's mountain man is in the beaver trade, but he is astonished to eventually find that beaver is going out of style. Keith, meantime, gets into something of a running gag feud with Heston as to whether the Indian tribes that keep pursuing them are Crow or Blackfoot. Not only does it turn out to be Blackfoot, but the Blackfoot chief Heavy Eagle (Stephen Macht) is out to get them after his slave bride Yellow Moon (Victoria Racimo) escapes from his iron grasp, and gets Heston's and Keith's protection. The end result is, not surprisingly, rather rough and violent.
Featuring the usual expected professional performances from old pros Heston and Keith (Keith, in particular, with his four-letter tirades, minus any F-bombs, almost overshadows Heston--not an easy thing to do even when the man who played Moses and Ben-Hur isn't up to par), THE MOUNTAIN MEN is not a particularly spectacular piece of work in the hands of director Richard Lang, but it is hardly the atrocity that a lot of critics made it out to be when it was released in 1980. This was a project close to Heston's heart, as its screenplay was written by his son Fraser Clarke Heston; and it is true to the historical essentials of the lives of mountain men, if not necessarily to Indian culture. It is quite bloody in places, and one white explorer (Seymour Cassel) literally loses his head rather gruesomely to Macht near the climax, so clearly THE MOUNTAIN MEN isn't for the younger set. But with two stalwarts like Heston and Keith leading the way, Racimo being quite good as a squaw, and Macht making for a convincing foe (if not a truly convincing Indian), it makes for solid entertainment, if sometimes drenched in bloodiness and off-color language--particularly as it may have been one of the last reasonably good Westerns made in Hollywood before Cimino's atrocious HEAVEN'S GATE all but killed off everyone's appetite for the genre.