the audience applauded

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

best movie i've ever seen.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

OK, this wasn't a great movie, but I am a bit Telly Savalas fan, so I am going to go a little easy on it. I am also not a big fan of westerns, but I am a fan of Burt Lancaster. I think he may be one of the best actors of all time. Both he and Savalas are not very good people in this movie. It's hard to survive in the old west, so I guess you have to be kind of a jerk. Even though Lancaster is supposed to be the protagonist and Savalas the antagonist, neither of them is very nice. They are both pretty much scalpers. Savalas and his gang steal Lancaster's booty and Lancaster tries to get it back from him. Shelly Winters, who plays Savalas' girl, is also in it as her flamboyant typical self. I would only recommend this if you are a fan of the actors and of westerns in general. I don't think it was a very big budget movie and probably kind of a quickie throw-away movie. You can probably find it free on demand or online so if you hate it, at least all you wasted was time.

This is a pretty good movie that is worth watching. The acting is excellent, with nice performances by Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis, Shelly Winters and Telly Savalas.Burt Lancaster seemed to particularly enjoy his role. Ossie Davis really holds the movie together. Shelly Winters is hilarious and Salavas does a very creditable job.I only had a couple of issues with the movie:The title "The Scalphunters" is beyond ridiculous. This is a comedy, and a pretty good and subtle one.At the beginning of the movie, a gang of twenty white men on horses ambush a group of ten or so drunken Indians, whom they brutally gun down and graphically scalp. This was such an intense and horrifying scene that I didn't realize until half way through the movie is actually a comedy.Other user reviewers on this site pointed out the anachronism of the repeating rifles. Because Ossie Davis' character is a slave, the movie must be set in the pre-Civil War period, when there were no repeating rifles. Lancaster's trapper character is well cast for the pre-Civil War west, but I'm not sure about Salavas' criminal gang. They claim the "territory" has set a bounty of $25 per Indian scalp. I'm not sure if any U.S. territory ever did that. I know the Mexican government did. They are on their way to Mexico. Maybe this is why. They claim to in the business of bank robbing, but I don't think there were ever many banks in the areas that fur trappers operated. Overall, I was confused by the historical context.

The Scalphunters was the first of two films Sydney Pollack directed with Burt Lancaster. In fact according to a recent biography of Lancaster, Burt was literally trying Pollack out on this western before giving him an opportunity to direct the very expensive Castle Keep for him the following year. Personally I think The Scalphunters is a far better film.It's a rollicking good mixture of comedy with some very serious themes involved. It's also the last time Lancaster did any really athletic roles as he was 55 when making The Scalphunters. We all bow to old age at some point.Sydney Pollack actually started his association with Burt Lancaster on the set of The Young Savages where he was an acting coach to some of the street kids who were playing gang members. It was his first introduction into motion pictures, he had previously directed and acted in a number of television productions.Burt is fur trapper Joe Bass who gets an offer from the Kiowa Indians he can't refuse. They'll relieve him of his year's trappings in beaver pelts and he'll get an educated house slave in Ossie Davis. Davis seems born to be a slave, he escapes it from the south, then he's captured by the Comanches who then trade him to the Kiowas and then he's forced on Lancaster. Lancaster is planning to get his pelts back, but a murderous gang of Scalphunters beat him to it and massacre almost the whole band and take Lancaster's furs along with horses and scalps that bring a good bounty. Burt's Joe Bass is not exactly a boy scout, but this crowd truly nauseates him.The Scalphunters are headed by Telly Savalas and his cigar smoking refugee from a bordello of a woman, Shelley Winters. Winters has the best performance in the film, this is her third film with Lancaster with whom she had a self documented fling back in the day. Later on Davis gets captured by The Scalphunters and he has to use his wits to survive among them. But they're going to Mexico where slavery has been abolished.The laughs are mixed in with some serious racial issues all around. Lancaster can't quite accept Davis as an equal, Davis is perfectly willing to go along with The Scalphunters and their genocidal war on the Indians if he'll obtain his freedom through them. And Savalas and his crowd are as mean a bunch as you'll ever see in a film, yet some of the funniest bits in the film involve Winters and Savalas.The Scalphunters is a really funny western that if you think about it teaches some good lessons we could all use.

This unique very entertaining film is, in part, a traditional Western, with several skirmishes involving "Indians", a gang of outlaws, and a lone trapper, who comes to grief from both. In part, it is a slapstickish reluctant buddy comedy involving Burt Lancaster, as trapper Joe Bass, and escaped slave Joseph Lee(Ossie Davis), as well as the often caustic patter between complaining floozy Kate(Shelly Winters) and Jim Howie(Telly Savalas), boss of the fleeing outlaw gang. The trade of Joseph Lee forced upon 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 much poorer or diminished lands or goods frequently 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 he has to to accomplish this. Joe Bass's goal is to retrieve his furs and pack 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 heading for Mexico, his loyalty between Bass and the outlaws waivers. Both talk down to him at times as if he were intrinsically inferior, and talk about selling him on the slave auction block. Part of the comedy relates to the fact that Lee clearly has(unbelievably) absorbed far more high class white culture from his former owners than either Bass or the outlaws ever will. 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 his uncanny ability to tract down the location of the offending party and to escape their superior numbers, he surrealistically pushes quite a few 1000 lb boulders down on his enemies, then later poisons a water hole with locoweed to make their horses revert to untamed bucking broncos(an idea he generously gives his horse, Jughead, 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. After both unsuccessfully attempt to leave the other helpless, Lee and Bass engage in a long slapstickish fight in a muddy water hole, ending in a draw, both covered with gray mud, thus enhancing the impression of equality. But, in a sense, they are both losers, because 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 successfully escaping both Bass and the outlaws, with Bass's furs and horses to boot, something he nearly accomplished. I can certainly see merit in that view. However, the furs and horses don't rightfully belong to Lee. They rightfully belong to either the Kiowas or to Bass (depending on your viewpoint). Besides, we needed to give Lee an opportunity to show that he can duke it out with Bass, as part of the demonstration that that he is at least as respectable as Bass and the other white men, if not more so. Yes, the parting scene leaves us wondering what became of Bass and Lee, the two main characters, and thus is less than satisfying.Quite a few slaves actually did make it across the Mexican border, often with the aid of Mexicans temporarily or more permanently in Texas. Mexico long refused to cooperate in efforts to recapture these slaves. In 1857, Mexico formally declared any slaves crossing the border to be free. Thus, much of the US army was given the responsibility of reducing this flow(mostly unsuccessfully) and Mexicans were prohibited or much restricted in much of Texas....I should also point out that the Kiowas and Comanches were long term military allies during the 1800s, thus Lee's story about a Kiowa raid on his host Comanches is unlikely, historically.