"The Scalphunters" opens with an illiterate frontier fur trapper named Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) refusing to trade his furs, with the Kiowa Indians, for a runaway field slave
But at the end, he is forced at gunpoint to do that and Bass finds himself, in one moment, the owner of Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis), an escapee from Louisiana, formerly of the Comanche tribe, until stolen by the Kiowas
Lee, an Africanslave by employment, black by colorresults one of the highest educated families in Louisiana, who can read and write Lee's intention was to circle south, as far as Mexico, because the Mexicans have a law against the slavery trade
Bass' immediate plan was to catch up with the Kiowas and get back his pack horse and furs But his plan soon failed when a band of scalphunters led by a dangerous double-crosser, Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) attack the poor Indians killing almost all of them and taking, by the way, Bass' property Bass a man who moves mountains to get what he wants stampedes their wagons and makes the scalphunters' horses dangerous to ride
The sweetest, and in some ways the funniest moments come out when Bass talks to his horse In one scene, he gets so excited, and turns back to his stallion saying: "By god, you have got an idea!"
Telly Savalas makes Kojak a charmer, but in Pollack's film he is a psychopathic bounty hunter who slaughters a dozen Indians
Kate (Shelley Winters)a cigar-puffing doxy qualified to do things to any manis sick about her lover's wagon She complains that she lives like a squaw Kate's dream was to live like a lady in a fancy house with servants Winters delivers the best line of the whole movie when she exclaimed at the end of the film: "What the hell? They're all men."
Ossie Davis comes out with a real sense of humor In one scene he explains to Kate the benefits of the common cactus, known to the Comanches as Maguey He makes her believe that this plant was used in the ancient times by the Queen of Sheba to restore the natural oils to her beautiful blond hair
It was nice to see Nick Cravat in a modest role as one of Savalas' men As you remember, Cravat was ideally cast as Lancaster's sidekick, Piccolo, in the flamboyant "The Flame and the Arrow" in 1950, a spoof of the Robin Hood genre, set against the castle battlements and banquets halls of medieval Lombardy
Lee, an Africanslave by employment, black by colorresults one of the highest educated families in Louisiana, who can read and write Lee's intention was to circle south, as far as Mexico, because the Mexicans have a law against the slavery trade
Bass' immediate plan was to catch up with the Kiowas and get back his pack horse and furs But his plan soon failed when a band of scalphunters led by a dangerous double-crosser, Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) attack the poor Indians killing almost all of them and taking, by the way, Bass' property Bass a man who moves mountains to get what he wants stampedes their wagons and makes the scalphunters' horses dangerous to ride
The sweetest, and in some ways the funniest moments come out when Bass talks to his horse In one scene, he gets so excited, and turns back to his stallion saying: "By god, you have got an idea!"
Telly Savalas makes Kojak a charmer, but in Pollack's film he is a psychopathic bounty hunter who slaughters a dozen Indians
Kate (Shelley Winters)a cigar-puffing doxy qualified to do things to any manis sick about her lover's wagon She complains that she lives like a squaw Kate's dream was to live like a lady in a fancy house with servants Winters delivers the best line of the whole movie when she exclaimed at the end of the film: "What the hell? They're all men."
Ossie Davis comes out with a real sense of humor In one scene he explains to Kate the benefits of the common cactus, known to the Comanches as Maguey He makes her believe that this plant was used in the ancient times by the Queen of Sheba to restore the natural oils to her beautiful blond hair
It was nice to see Nick Cravat in a modest role as one of Savalas' men As you remember, Cravat was ideally cast as Lancaster's sidekick, Piccolo, in the flamboyant "The Flame and the Arrow" in 1950, a spoof of the Robin Hood genre, set against the castle battlements and banquets halls of medieval Lombardy