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The Scalphunters | 
 enlarge | Director: Sydney Pollack
Actors: Burt Lancaster, Shelley Winters, Telly Savalas, Ossie Davis, Dabney Coleman
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $5.89
You Save: $9.09 (61%)
New (46) Used (11) from $5.89
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 27561
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: MGMD1008330D
UPC: 027616923615
EAN: 0027616923615
ASIN: B0007O392U
Theatrical Release Date: April 2, 1968
Release Date: May 17, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
A trapper is forced by indians to trade his pelts for an educated slave. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 05/13/2008 Starring: Burt Lancaster Telly Savalas Run time: 103 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Sydney Pollack
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 DEN September 29, 2008
D. Newcomb
I consider this one of the great movies. I have watched it dozens of times and it never grows old. It is a witty, funny, dusty, tough, mean, fabulously entertaining Western. Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis, Shelley Winters and Telly Savalas play their roles with masterful technique. I consider it a 5 star movie.
LANCASTER AND DAVIS AT THEIR BEST September 28, 2008
Kay's Husband (Virginia, U.S.A.)
This movie is one that is very easy to like, while having a solid western theme it also contains some comedy. With Shelley Winters and Telly Savalas offering up great lines too. Look for childhood friend of Lancaster's, and earlier trapeze partner, Nick Cravat, in the film as well. And Nick even has a speaking line or two in this one.
Made at a time of Hollywood anti-hero and comedic westerns, this movie holds enough realism and action to satisfy most western movie buffs. Even the Kiowa Indians look fairly real.
So whistle up your horse and ride out to help Burt recover those hard to recover furs, and just maybe Shelley as well!
Semper Fi.
 A solid and enjoyable film. September 11, 2008
flask
Sydney Pollack's "The Scalphunters" (1968) is a briskly-paced, revisionist Western with an entertaining script and equally entertaining performances by a strong cast. Given the title, some viewers may expect a serious and gritty drama about the depraved scalp hunters who plagued the American West. However, in actuality, this well-written light-hearted film is a clever blend of both comedic and dramatic elements.
The story is complicated, yet easy to follow: Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) is a grizzled, Bible-reciting fur trapper with a monomaniacal attachment to his beaver pelts. Held up by Indians, Bass is forced to exchange his pelts for the tethered Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis), an escaped slave who formerly served an educated family in Louisiana. Bass and a reluctant Lee pursue the Indians but, through a twist of fate, Bass' furs fall into the hands of scalp hunters led by Jim Howie (the always engaging Telly Savalas), a burly ruffian henpecked by his prostitute-girlfriend Kate (a fussy, cigar-chewing Shelley Winters).
It is the latter performances which is the key to the film's success. Lancaster, Davis, Savalas and Winters effortlessly spin out humorous performances. And the best scenes are the humorous ones, such as when Savalas yells at Winters' to stop singing those damn Mormon songs or when Savalas defiantly tells Lancaster that he will kill him then steps on a cactus while returning to the wagon.
Yet for all its amusing tomfoolery, the film has a message: The axis of that message revolves around the dyadic relationship between trapper Joe Bass and the slave Joseph Lee; their hopes and their prejudices. Bass desires only to reacquire his pelts and Lee desires only to escape to Mexico. Both are reluctant to help the other. Each holds the other in contempt: Bass views Lee as a meek slave, and Lee views Bass as an uneducated hick. But, in the final scene, both characters are covered in mud; the color of their skin obscured. It is in this scene they find their equality, and one grasps the subtly of the film's psychology.
The Scalphunters August 4, 2008
Douglas W. Elson (Zanesville, Ohio,USA)
I know... it's an old movie...but I liked it when it was new and Amazon was the only place I could find it, (like I knew it would be)...Delivery was fast & the merchandise was in good shape...Is it any wonder I deal mainly with Amazon?
entertaining Western parody on race relations. June 30, 2008
W. Walker (westminster md)
This unique entertaining film is, in part, a traditional Western, with several skirmishes involving "Indians", a gang of scalp-hungry outlaws, and a loner trapper, who comes to grief from both. In part, it's a slapstickish reluctant buddy comedy, involving Bert Lancaster, as trapper Joe Bass, and escaped slave Joseph Lee(Ossie Davis), as well as the often caustic patter between floozy Kate(Shelly Winters) and Jim Howie(Telly Savalas), boss of the fleeing outlaw gang. The trade of Joseph Lee forced on Bass by the Kiowas in exchange for his year's catch of furs and pack horse serves as a parody on the exchange of desirable lands or other property for poor or diminished lands or goods often forced on various Native American tribes.
Joseph Lee hopes to get across the Mexican border, where slavery is outlawed and blacks welcomed. He's willing to do whatever it takes to get to Mexico. Joe Bass's immediate goal is to retrieve his furs and horse. At first, Lee plays along with helping Bass retrieve his furs. But when he is captured by an outlaw gang, who stole Bass's furs from the Kiowas and who happen to be headed for Mexico, his loyalty between Bass and the outlaws is split. Both talk down to him, as if he were intrinsically inferior, and talk about selling him on the slave market. Part of the comedy relates to the fact that Lee clearly has absorbed far more high class white culture from his former owners than Bass or the outlaws will ever absorb. Remember, this film was released in 1968, the year Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Bass nearly recaptures his furs several times, with or without the help of Lee. In addition to an uncanny ability to track down his adversaries and to escape their far greater numbers, he surrealistically pushes quite a few 1000 lb boulders down on them in quick succession, then later poisons a water hole with locoweed juice, to make their horses revert into untamed bucking broncos(an idea he generously gives his horse credit for).
In the final showdown between Bass and Howie, Lee has to decide whom to help, with the consideration in his mind of how he might best get to Mexico. Lee and Bass then have a long, sometimes slapstickish, fight in a muddy watering hole, ending in a draw, both covered with the grayish mud, thus enhancing the impression of equality. But,in a sense, they are both losers, as the Kiowas return . Taking advantage of the distraction of Lee and Bass and the much weakened outlaw gang, Two Crows reclaims the contested furs and pack horse, as well as the now unclaimed Shelly Winters and what's left of the gang's supplies.
Some think the film should have ended with Lee escaping both Bass and Howie, with Bass's furs and horses to boot, as he almost did. I can certainly see merit to that view. However, the furs and pack horse rightfully belonged to either the Kiowas or Bass(depending on your view point) Besides, we needed to give Lee a chance to show he could duke it out with Bass physically, as well as intellectually, demonstrating that he is at least as respectable as Bass and the other white men, if not more so. Also, we needed to give the Kiowas a chance to revenge their loss. Yes, the parting scene leaves us wondering what became of Bass and Lee, supposedly the two main characters, and thus is less than satisfying.
I should point out than many slaves did make it to freedom in Mexico, often with the aid of Mexicans in Texas. I should also point out that the Kiowas and Comanches were long-term military allies in the 1800s, thus Lee's claim that Kiowas raided his host Comanches is unlikely, historically.
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