The Scalphunters

The fur trapper Joe Bass loses his entire catch to Kiowa warriors. In exchange they hand him something: Joseph Lee, an escaped slave, educated and talkative. Bass goes after his furs, only for scalphunters to steal them from the Kiowa in turn. Joseph Lee is running his own calculation; he wants to reach Mexico, where slavery is banned, and courts Kate, the scalphunters' cook. The film ends in a circle, with the Kiowa chief taking the furs once more. Sydney Pollack directed. Burt Lancaster plays Joe Bass, Ossie Davis plays Joseph Lee and Telly Savalas plays Jim Howie, who leads the scalphunters. Elmer Bernstein wrote the score. What makes it interesting is how it uses its genre. It moves like a western comedy while working the question of race directly through the power relation between Bass and Lee, which is why their fighting is funny and uncomfortable at once. Ossie Davis was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. It was shot in Mexico, in the Sierra de Organos national park near Sombrerete. The domestic box office was 2.8 million dollars. A novelisation by Richard Wormser under the name Ed Friend came out before the film opened and stayed in print long after the picture left cinemas. Who it is for: viewers who like unusual experiments in the western and Burt Lancaster. Who it is not for: anyone after the cold, serious version of the genre. The tone is deliberately comic and it carries a serious subject on jokes.