The Scalphunters

In the Rocky Mountains around 1850, trapper Joe Bass is stopped by a band of Kiowa, who take the furs from his winter hunt and leave him with Joseph Lee, an educated escaped slave they had captured. Joe has no use for the man and only wants his pelts back, so he sets out after the Kiowa. Before he can reach them, a gang of scalp hunters led by Jim Howie kills the Indians and takes both the furs and Joseph. Outnumbered, Joe follows the gang alone, looking for a way to recover what he considers his.

Sydney Pollack directed this Western comedy, the first of the seventeen films he directed in chronological order and the one preceding They Shoot Horses, Don't They? William W. Norton wrote the screenplay, and Burt Lancaster, Arthur Gardner and Jules V. Levy produced. Lancaster stars as Joe Bass, with Ossie Davis as Joseph Lee, Shelley Winters as Howie's companion Kate, Telly Savalas as Howie, and Dabney Coleman and Paul Picerni among the thirty-two credited cast members. The production credits forty crew members.

Released in early 1968, the film runs 102 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from about 5,100 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.4 from 125 votes, indicating a modest but durable following. A critics' rating of 5.6 from ten reviews sits below both audience scores, suggesting reviewers were less taken with the film than viewers have been.