After being coerced by a roving gang of Kiowas to trade his season's worth of hard-earned furs for a runaway slave, Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) vows to take back what's his. Before he can get them, though, the Kiowas are slaughtered by a gang of `scalphunters' led by Jim Howie (Telly Salavas), who nips Joe Bass's furs in the bargain. With Joseph Winfield Lee (Ossie Davis) in tow, Joe Bass trails the fur and scalp-laden Jim Howie and vows yet again to reclaim his property.
THE SCALPHUNTERS (1968) is a comedy-western that somehow manages to makes palatable some terrible things - specifically, slavery and the harvest and sale of human scalps. It doesn't condone them, of course, but it doesn't dwell on their horrors, either. Lancaster is energetic and perfectly cast as the savvy fur trapper who is determined to get what's his back again. Salavas and Shelley Winters as his trail moll, are pretty good, as well. The heart of the thing, though, is Ossie Davis as the erudite slave who seems the only person to see the big picture, as it were. As he'd prove a couple of years later with `Jeremiah Johnson,' director Sydney Pollock is deft at handling offbeat action movies. THE SCALPHUNTERS is a fun movie that merits a strong four stars.
Truly great western
This film is one of a kind. It addresses racial issues and friendship and loyalty questions while providing comedy and action in abundance. This may well be Ossie Davis' finest performance, and Burt Lancaster is right on the mark as Joe Bass, stereotypical yet not-so-stereotypical mountain man. The see-saw relationship between the two is a hoot to watch, and utterly convincing. Nothing John Wayne did--with the possible exception of "The Shootist"--can equal this maverick western.
Exciting western with right blend of action/humor
The Scalphunters is a very enjoyable western that is not as well known as some of star Burt Lancaster's other movies, but it is more than worthwhile. Trapper Joe Bass is heading back to St. Louis with a pack mule full of beaver pelts when a group of Kiowas intervene and take his pelts, leaving him a smooth-talking, educated slave by the name of Joseph Windfield Lee. Bass unwillingly takes Lee along, but before he can get his pelts back from the Kiowas, the warriors are attacked bya group of outlaws who scalp Indians for $25 a person. Bass embarks on a journey to get his beaver pelts back, no matter what it takes. The Scalphunters is not considered a classic western, but it has everything to make it highly enjoyable. A great cast, a lively musical score from Elmer Bernstein, beautiful scenery, and the right mix of action and humor all combine to make one of Lancaster's better movies.
The four main leads to the movie set The Scalphunters apart from many other westerns. Burt Lancaster is great as Joe Bass, the trapper who will attempts to get his pelts back at all costs. Bass is similar to Lancaster's Bill Dolworth in The Professionals in that he enjoys living and will stop at nothing to keep on enjoying living. Telly Savalas is also very good as the villain, Jim Howie, the leader of the gang of scalphunters who steals Bass' pelts. Shelley Winters seems somewhat out of place as Kate, Howie's woman who wants to get out of the west and into a big city as fast as she can. Ossie Davis steals the movie as Joseph Windfield Lee, the highly educated runaway slave who becomes Joe Bass' unwilling companion. The interplay between Lancaster and Davis provide some of the movie's most hilarious moments. The DVD offers a beautiful-looking widescreen presentation and a theatrical trailer. For a lesser known but still very good western with great perfomances from Lancaster, Savalas, and Davis, check out Sydney Pollack's The Scalphunters!
I don't know the real history of the gunfight at the OK Corral. I saw the recent movie TOMBSTONE with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer and found it thoroughly enjoyable but I never considered it to be "historical". It was just hysterical.
HOUR OF THE GUN is another, older version of the story. It too is excellent and more believable as a historical drama but I have no conception that it is historical other than the recognition that Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Ike Clanton were real people; Tombstone, Arizona, Colorado, Mexico and the OK Corral are real places; and a gunfight really did take place at the corral. That doesn't matter to me because this too is a fine film and thoroughly entertaining. It has none of the comic element that TOMBSTONE had but it is a high quality western... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Garner - Jason Robards Director(s): John Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Warlock" is a great classic western with an amazing cast. I am sad to see Dolores Michaels not get billing on the DVD, as she did on the original moive posters. While she retired early from acting, she not only was beautiful, but a very solid actress. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Widmark - Henry Fonda Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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During his Twentieth Century Fox contract years, Gregory Peck looked to veteran director Henry King as something of a father figure and gave two of his best performances--in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and The Gunfighter (1950)--for him. The Bravados (1958) isn't in that league, but it's a surprisingly tough film from the flabby CinemaScope years when the studio, director, and star all seemed to be floundering.
Peck plays Jim Douglass, a dark, haunted man who rides into a Southwest border town on the eve of a hanging. The bad men set for the drop (Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Lee Van Cleef, Henry Silva) are the same ones he's been pursuing for the rape and murder of his wife. Douglass isn't happy about leaving it to the law to carry out his vengeance--and so there's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gregory Peck - Joan Collins Director(s): Henry King DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This restoration of Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is nothing short of magnificent, a noble attempt at restoring a famously wrecked masterpiece. When Peckinpah went over budget and over schedule during the Mexico shoot, unshot scenes were canceled and the footage rudely cut by the studio. The director disowned the results. In 2005, surviving footage was patched back in, and a new musical soundtrack commissioned to replace the score Peckinpah hated. This raises some legitimate questions about interpreting a director's intentions, and about messing with film history, but Major Dundee--The Extended Version is such a rousing, mysterious experience, one feels grateful.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) is a vainglorious officer busted to the decidedly inglorious job... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlton Heston - Richard Harris Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 20 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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