General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Scalphunters

The Scalphunters is a 1968 American Western comedy directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Burt Lancaster as an illiterate fur trapper who spends the film trying to recover his winter's haul of hides from a Kiowa band and then from a gang of scalp hunters, trading hands each time with an educated escaped slave played by Ossie Davis.¹ Telly Savalas and Shelley Winters play the leaders of the scalphunters.¹ The film combines action and broad comedy with commentary on racism and slavery, and it culminates in an extended mud-soaked fist fight between Lancaster and Davis.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	April 2, 1968 (United States), distributed by United Artists³
Runtime and format	102–103 minutes, color, Panavision 2.35:1³^•⁴
Director and writer	Sydney Pollack; screenplay by William W. Norton³
Principal cast	Burt Lancaster (Joe Bass), Ossie Davis (Joseph Winfield Lee), Telly Savalas (Jim Howie), Shelley Winters (Kate)³
Production	Shot in Durango and Torreón, Mexico, from 15 February 1967; United Artists spent $4 million on the production in Mexico³
Reception	70% Tomatometer from 10 critics and 56% Popcornmeter from 500+ audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes¹
Recognition	One Golden Globe nomination, Best Supporting Actor for Ossie Davis (1969)⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) is heading to town with the hides he trapped over the winter when a Kiowa band led by Two Crows (Armando Silvestre) stops him, takes the furs and his mule, and leaves him Joseph Winfield Lee (Ossie Davis), an educated house slave they had seized from Comanches.³^•⁶ Bass follows the Kiowas to recover his property. While the band drinks Bass's whiskey, it is ambushed by scalp hunters under Jim Howie (Telly Savalas), who take the furs and capture Lee; only Two Crows escapes.³

The scalphunters earn their living selling Native American scalps, which the film prices at $25 apiece.⁷ Lee, knowing the gang is headed for Mexico where slavery is illegal, has little reason to escape and becomes a favorite of Kate (Shelley Winters), Howie's mistress.³ Bass, left without slave, mule, or furs, wages a campaign of attrition against the larger group, causing rockfalls, feeding the band's mounts loco weed, and killing the marauders one by one.³ Howie plans an ambush under the pretense of returning the trapper's property but is slain by Lee.³ Vengeful Kiowa braves then descend on the remaining scalphunters, sparing only Bass and Lee, who immediately quarrel and grapple in a mud hole until both rise covered in beige muck that makes their skin color identical.³^•⁸

Themes and style

The film works through a contrast between its two leads: Joseph Lee is an educated, cultured man used to reason, while Joe Bass is illiterate and settles things with his fists, and each is convinced of his own superiority until the climactic mud fight erases the visible difference between them.⁸ Turner Classic Movies' essay by Jerry Renshaw describes the film as rich in metaphors about racism and violence, and notes that Pollack uses cinematographer Duke Callaghan's framing to keep Lee and Bass off an equal visual plane until near the end.⁸ The casting fit the moment: Lancaster and Davis were both involved in the civil rights movement, and a 1967 Los Angeles Sentinel article grouped the film with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Hotel as recent pictures addressing racial bigotry "with both seriousness and humor."⁸^•³ Davis himself said the film "could do as much in its own way for civil rights through humor as the valuable efforts of Roy Wilkins and Martin Luther King."³

The social commentary is leavened with action set pieces, including an avalanche and a loco-weed stampede, and comic turns such as Winters's cigar-chomping Kate and Agnes, an educated horse that sits down for a strategy conference with Lancaster.⁷^•⁸ Roger Ebert described the mixture as "the damnedest mixture of different sorts of movies you've ever seen," combining hard action, social comment, broad farce, and comedy.² A UCLA Film & Television Archive note calls the film a Western "with a blistering satiric edge" whose mud-soaked final fist fight is "a true classic of the genre."²

Production

Principal photography was scheduled for Durango and Torreón, Mexico, beginning 15 February 1967, after re-shoots on Lancaster's previous picture The Swimmer delayed the start; some filming may also have taken place in Guaymas, where producer Jules Levy and Pollack had scouted locations.³ The heat at the Torreón locations was the most troublesome aspect of the shoot: a special union arrangement let the crew start at 5 a.m. and stop by 1 p.m. before temperatures became unbearable.⁸ The climactic mud-hole fight was shot on a high mesa at 110 degrees Fahrenheit, with water piped in from far below; Davis recalled that the actors had to be wrapped in blankets against the chill when they came out, despite the heat.⁸

The film marked a milestone Pollack valued. He once remarked that a director could not claim to be a "real movie director" in Hollywood without a Western, and The Scalphunters gave him the chance.⁸ Contemporary sources often called it screenwriter William Norton's feature debut, though he had earlier credits on The Rotten Apple (1963) and The Farmer's Other Daughter (1965).³ Fawcett Gold Medal Books published an initial 250,000 copies of a novelization by Ed Friend.³

Release and reception

The film was scheduled to premiere on March 12, 1968 as the opening-night attraction at the new Fox South Coast Theater in Costa Mesa, California, followed by a New York benefit premiere on April 2, 1968 raising money for Union Settlement, a Harlem community center where Lancaster had spent time as a boy.³ Business suffered from timing: Variety reported that the Philadelphia opening took in $20,000, an estimated 40 to 50 percent below expectations, because of "emergency measures" in the city after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.³ The picture nevertheless appeared on Variety's list of the "Big Rental Films of 1968," with cumulative film rentals of $2.8 million to that date.³

Critical reception was mixed.³ Variety praised the pairing of Lancaster with Davis and of Savalas with Winters, noting that talky slow stretches were cut short before doing damage.¹ Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that the familiar incidents were "played with gusto by Lancaster and Davis."¹ Time Out called it "an amiable enough liberal comedy Western, with colour-coded cultural conflict worked through an ironic circular plot."¹ Later assessments have been divided in the same way: TV Guide gave it 3 of 4 stars as "a comical western with more than a hint of social satire," while David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews called it "a seriously misguided and hopelessly dated endeavor."¹ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 70% Tomatometer from 10 reviews and a 56% Popcornmeter from more than 500 audience ratings.¹ Ossie Davis received the film's one major award recognition, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1969.⁵

Legacy

The film is now generally placed among the revisionist Westerns of the late 1960s. A Royal Holloway thesis on the modern Western lists Pollack's film among the period's works that "frankly addressed slavery and Indian fighting," in an era when the collapse of the Production Code in 1968 allowed more graphic violence.⁹ Kino Lorber released the film on Blu-ray in 2014, and DVD Talk's review called it "an interesting entry in the revisionist Western genre."

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Westerns before 1980 › Released 1961 to 1979

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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