The Scalphunters (1968)

The Scalphunters mostly details Joe Bass's (Burt Lancaster) failure to recover his consignment of furs stolen from him first by some Indians then from the Indians by a band of scalphunters. In exchange for the initial theft he acquires a black slave, who he doesn't particularly want, and who certainly doesn't want to be a slave.

Various sources (Hardy's Encylopedia of Westerns and the internet [1]) suggest the antiracism bits of the film may be done a bit unsubtly - and they're probably right - although it didn't bother me at the time. There isn't a huge amount of plot but it's pretty entertaining while it lasts, and also quite funny in places. For a light-hearted comedy Western, it's surprisingly violent.

I've not been a huge fan of Burt Lancaster as a western actor, but he seems well suited here, possibly because he's a bit older and more grizzled at this stage of his career. Most of the cast seems to work quite well really.

The UK DVD isn't great: it looks to be the right aspect ratio and from a reasonably print, but there seems to be regular horizontal lines alot of the time (especially noticable in the background) almost like de-interlacing gone wrong. See the pictures....

Link

[1] http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/12412/the-scalphunters.html

Pictures