The Scalphunters (1968)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Blistering performances.

Burt Lancaster offers a robust, fun performance as trapper Joe Bass. One day he's accosted by Indians including the character Two Crows (Armando Silvestre), who force him to turn over his prized furs in exchange for a slave named Joseph (Ossie Davis). Joseph is an articulate and well educated man, but is something of a thorn in Joes' side. Joe is hellbent on reclaiming his furs, going so far as to relentlessly tail the savage outlaws who slaughter the Indians. Jim Howie (an amusing Telly Savalas) is the outlaw leader, Kate (Shelley Winters) his high strung wife.Filmed in glorious widescreen by Duke Callaghan and Richard Moore, the Western comedy "The Scalphunters" was written by William W. Norton and directed by Sydney Pollack. While it purports to treat the character of Joseph with some respect, there may still be viewers who will wince at various indignities that he's forced to experience. Nortons' script is generally engaging, with some witty dialogue here and there. It is a delight to see the distinguished gentleman Davis embrace the more comedic aspects to his character, and there's a lot of entertaining sparring between the two Joes (with Lancaster showing himself to not really be all THAT enlightened). Overall, this film is reasonably exciting at times, even if it's not destined to be a classic.It's the dedicated efforts of a superior cast that make "The Scalphunters" work as well as it does for a somewhat overextended 104 minutes. Lancaster and Davis work well together, and Savalas is also fun to watch as Jim becomes more and more exasperated with this pest that's making life miserable for him and his crew. Winters has some appeal, and there's a few familiar faces among the supporting actors like Dabney Coleman (as Jed), and Lancasters' longtime friend and co-worker Nick Cravat (as Yancy).Dedicated Western watchers and fans of the actors will likely have a decent time with this one.Seven out of 10.

A year before Sydney Pollack hit it big w/"They Shoot Horses Don't They" he made this comic western riffing on the phrase "now you have it, now you don't." Burt Lancaster & Ossie Davis are paired up as the strangest of bedfellows trying to get Lancaster's wares back from a marauding band of scalp hunters led by Telly Savalas & Shelley Winters.Alternately funny & sharply acted, this late 60's entry further pushed the envelope on what Western's were soon becoming.Like the other great American art form jazz, this Western upends many of the stalwart modes we had become used to & plays like an extended riff on a kid's game w/gunfights & a last minute calvary save (in the guise of a pack of Indians) thrown in for good measure.

"The Scalphunters," made in 1968, is director Sydney Pollack's meditation on property, black power, and the amorality of whiskey and sex, and a kind of buddy picture or screwball comedy, told through the guise of a traditional western. Set in 1860 somewhere outside the territory of the United States, it might have been called "How the Runaway Slave Joseph Lee Got His Fists Back" or "The Furry Treasure of Sierra Madre." It's a Pollack picture, so it's genial, good-natured, entertaining, and only a little improbable, and the good guys endure to fight another day. Burt Lancaster grabs the viewer's attention as always, even though the role of a trapper intent on keeping his furs doesn't offer him much breadth here. Telly Savalis, Shelly Winters, and Ossie Davis are all enjoyable, if a bit campy, as a Kansas bank robber, a star-gazing strumpet, and a Latin-quoting runaway respectively. There are Indian attacks, showdowns, and shootouts enough for a John Ford western. The film has aged well.

The Scalphunters was the first of two films Sydney Pollack directed with Burt Lancaster. In fact according to a recent biography of Lancaster, Burt was literally trying Pollack out on this western before giving him an opportunity to direct the very expensive Castle Keep for him the following year. Personally I think The Scalphunters is a far better film.It's a rollicking good mixture of comedy with some very serious themes involved. It's also the last time Lancaster did any really athletic roles as he was 55 when making The Scalphunters. We all bow to old age at some point.Sydney Pollack actually started his association with Burt Lancaster on the set of The Young Savages where he was an acting coach to some of the street kids who were playing gang members. It was his first introduction into motion pictures, he had previously directed and acted in a number of television productions.Burt is fur trapper Joe Bass who gets an offer from the Kiowa Indians he can't refuse. They'll relieve him of his year's trappings in beaver pelts and he'll get an educated house slave in Ossie Davis. Davis seems born to be a slave, he escapes it from the south, then he's captured by the Comanches who then trade him to the Kiowas and then he's forced on Lancaster. Lancaster is planning to get his pelts back, but a murderous gang of Scalphunters beat him to it and massacre almost the whole band and take Lancaster's furs along with horses and scalps that bring a good bounty. Burt's Joe Bass is not exactly a boy scout, but this crowd truly nauseates him.The Scalphunters are headed by Telly Savalas and his cigar smoking refugee from a bordello of a woman, Shelley Winters. Winters has the best performance in the film, this is her third film with Lancaster with whom she had a self documented fling back in the day. Later on Davis gets captured by The Scalphunters and he has to use his wits to survive among them. But they're going to Mexico where slavery has been abolished.The laughs are mixed in with some serious racial issues all around. Lancaster can't quite accept Davis as an equal, Davis is perfectly willing to go along with The Scalphunters and their genocidal war on the Indians if he'll obtain his freedom through them. And Savalas and his crowd are as mean a bunch as you'll ever see in a film, yet some of the funniest bits in the film involve Winters and Savalas.The Scalphunters is a really funny western that if you think about it teaches some good lessons we could all use.