The Scalphunters
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Actor: Burt Lancaster, Dabney Coleman, Ossie Davis, Shelley Winters, Telly SavalasBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Scalphunters
DVD Review: entertaining Western parody on race relations.
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Description of The Scalphunters
OscarĀ(r)-winning* director Sydney Pollack delivers a "rousing good show" (The Film Daily) with this fast-paced western full of "irresistible humor" and "delightful ironies" (MotionPicture Herald). Starring OscarĀ(r) winners** Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters along with Telly Savalas and Ossie Davis, The Scalphunters is "a lively, ribald and unpredictable pleasure which carries the western into new country" (Los Angeles Times)! When trapper Joe Bass (Lancaster) is bushwhacked by Indians who steal his fursand leave him a runaway slave (Davis) in exchangehe's determined to get his property back. But when the Indians are attacked byoutlaws, Joe and his unwanted companion must join forces to retrieve the furs in a startling, action-packed journey of self-discovery that concludes with one of the "all-time cinematic comeuppances" (Citizen-News)!Bestsellers in DVD
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