Light Western comedy about the particular relationship between a fur trapper and a highly polish slave , including a colour-coded cultural confrontation . It's an entertaining story with a touch of peculiarity , some great characters , a colorful cinematography , an amazing music and is funny enough . Solid western with interesting events , violent fights , emotions , humor , thrills and spectacular outdoors . Forced to trade his valuable furs for a well-educated escaped slave (Ossie Davis) , a rugged trapper (Burt Lancaster) vows to recover the pelts from the Indians and later the renegades that killed them . As the pair forms an uneasy alliance , as when the pelts are in turn and result to be appropriated , they set off in pursuit a band of cutthroats led by a cynic bandit (Telly Savalas) . The trapper will stop at nothing to take back what's his .An amusing enough liberal comedy western that has its fun moments , entertainment , action and some violence . Enjoyable as well as amiable screenplay by William Norton , it is exciting enough and glosses both the interdependence among protagonists and their racial antagonism . This plot about a peculiar conflict between a rough , illiterate trapper and a cultured slave is well worked through a chronic circular premise . Very good acting by the great Burt Lancaster as a fur trapper who sets out in pursuit the robbers . Sympathetic Ossie Davis as Joseph Lee , a slave who helps Lancaster to fight enemies and retrieve the pelts . Perfect Telly Savalas as leader of a gang of Scalphunters who has appropriated the furs . Secondary cast is frankly nice such as Shelley Winters as Kate , Dabney Coleman as Jed , Dan Vadis as Yuma , Armando Silvestre as Two Crows and the Lancaster's best friend , Nick Cravat , as Yancy . Splendid cinematography in Panavision and glimmer Technicolor by Duke Callagham and Richard Moore as is reflected on spectacular outdoors filmed in sighting , gorgeous natural landscapes. As it was shot on location in wonderful natural parks from Durango , Mexico . Lively and rousing musical score by the maestro Elmer Bernstein composing one of his best soundtrack .Professionally produced by a great production company formed by Arnold Laven , Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner . The first Levy-Gardner-Laven movie was 1952's "Without Warning"'; in the decades since, they have produced and directed dozens of additional features and especially Westerns . They are experts on Western genre as cinema as television as they produced and directed several TV series including "The Rifleman," "Law of the Plainsman," , "The Big Valley" . The motion picture was well directed by the recently deceased Sidney Pollack with a thankfully light hand . Sydney was an excellent director , producer and secondary actor with several hits on all kind of genres as ¨The Interpreter¨ , ¨The firm¨ , ¨Out of Africa¨ , ¨Tootsie¨, ¨Yakuza¨ and directed two magnificent Westerns , ¨Jeremiah Johnson¨ and this ¨Scalphunters¨ . Rating : Good , better than average and worthwhile watching . The flick will appeal to Burt Lancaster fans and Western buffs .

Learning is a process of life wherein one takes from experience and applies it to a given problem. This is the foundation for the story of Joe Bass, (Burt Lancaster) mountain man and fur trapper. Although a simple man, uneducated and unread, he nevertheless has the wherewithal to overcome the trials of nature and succeed where few men can. Into his unencumbered life enters a Kiowa Indian by the name of Two Crows (Armando Silvestre) and his band, who trades him a black slave for his winter's trapping of furs. Reluctantly, Bass is stuck with a house slave named Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis) who possesses what few men have in 1860, an education. He is talented, cultured and able to learn quickly. In addition to trading his furs to the Indians, they in turn lose them to a marauding gang of murderous Scalphunters, led by their leader Jim Howie (Telly Savalas). Vowing to recover his goods, Bass and Lee start after the scalp-hunters and along the way discover that racial superiority is not only a fallacy, but a hindrance to a much needed partnership. The film is truly enjoyable and a good example of what men can accomplish when they work together. Look closely and you'll see Shelley Winters as Kate, Dabney Coleman as Jed and Nick Cravat as Yancy. Great fun. ****

I guess we have to look at these films from a generation view point in what the great Shirley Mclain has recently stated in that they should start to make films for the over 50s age groups.The film of today certainly seem to be targeted for a ' a different generation" as often I have to switch the box over to see if there is something wrong with the stereo settings as all I can hear is music and a very muffled speech.I find the older films, as in this case, to be irreplaceable and standing in support of the old saying "they don't make 'em like that anymore" With taking anything away from the modern ladies of the screen, were can you find another Shelly, warm, funny, voluptuous with a distinctive class she retained to the end. Ossie Davis, irreplaceable and a gutsy person to play his part with the obvious dedication with which he did.(no wonder he won over hearts and minds) I doubt if the is a black actor with such dedication to that role today as Ossie was then.Burt and Telly. as usual, delivered first rate parts in what proved to be good all round entertainment value. Amazingly enough my 13 year old son sat through it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Which cant be a bad achievement from our generation of old timers.

Wildly entertaining western romp with the still athletic Lancaster (as a frontier trapper) and Davis (as runaway slave) reluctantly teamed against a band of bandits led by Savalas. I noticed this pic as good time fun during a TV showing as a kid, way way before the nice DVD version, and still have fond memories of an easygoing adventure. Lancaster is exuberant in this, despite being well into his middle-aged years; he still comes across as someone who can outfight any man and rassle a grizzly bear on the side. He also presents an iconoclastic character here, supremely content onto himself, with not much use for civilization OR anarchy (represented by the barbaric bandits). Just leave him to do his own thing; if you don't, you're in for a fight - don't matter who you are, as Savalas and his band find out.Savalas is great as the bandit leader, dangerous blow-hard that he is; though not too intelligent, he's still a lot smarter than the other idiots under his rule (including a bearded Dabney Coleman in an early role). His main squeeze is the cigar-chomping floozy Shelley Winters, hamming it up as much as the otherwise all-male cast. Davis, in an odd contrast, comes across as the most sophisticated of the whole bunch, despite supposedly being a slave his entire life; he also proves to be the most duplicitous; he's not simply honorable and disappoints Lancaster more than once. Maybe director Pollack was sneaking in some commentary on the outmoded superior standing of the white race by this point, though I think it was wishful thinking that Davis could get away with as much as he does here in the 19th century. In all, the actors prove to be good hams to the very end.