A Tough Racially Themed Western from over 50 Years Ago

"The Scalphunters" wasn't a Spaghetti Western, nor did it feature the kind of ultraviolence that was about to make Peckinpah famous a year later with "The Wild Bunch."

But at a distance of over 50 years, the film certainly has the look of a "professional job," with four great stars and at its center -- something very uncomfortable to say about race relations.

The times, they have not changed.

The director was Sydney Pollack, already a favorite of star Burt Lancaster(who would direct Lancaster in the oddball and arty "Castle Keep" a year later) and who(also a year later) would make his name as the director of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and then move on to being Robert Redford's favorite director(Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor and on and on and on.)

The film DOES star Burt Lancaster(with a few years left over the title), and centers on two MacGuffins:

ONE: Lancaster's pile of beaver pelts, built up over a long cold winter and now stolen from him in the wild spring -- first by raiding Native Americans and then by the mangy American "scalphunters" who kill all those Native Americans and "re-steal" Lancaster's pelts.

The rest of the movie sees Lancaster versus the scalphunters as he tries to get those pelts back..and kills a lot of scalphunters trying(its rather like Lee Marvin after the cash in Point Blank, or Mel Gibson after the cash in Payback.)

TWO: The second MacGuffin - queasily enough -- is Ossie Davis, as a runaway slave who becomes "valuable property" himself -- wroth $1500 on the slave market, and who passes from the "ownership" of Lancaster to the ownership of Evil but Robust Telly Savalas and his scalphunters. Lancaster wants his pelts back...but he kinda/sorta wants his "property," Davis, back too.

For his part, Davis plays his slave with too much obsequious deference to his white captors, and he's too eloquent and poetic in his speech -- that drives both Good Lancaster and Bad Savalas nuts.

But the film is from 1968 and Hollywood is already beginning to show greater respect for black characters in movies...and slowly Davis reveals his wimpy act is just that (an act) and he tells off Lancaster: "You'd last about ten seconds as a black man." Much fighting and bonding ensue.

The Scalphunters wasn't much of a classic -- the action is sporadic, the ending kind of meanders -- but it just might merit a remake. Who for the Ossie Davis part? Samuel Jackson(perhaps he's too old now.) Jamie Foxx(too close to Django?) Will Smith?

Perhaps the harder role to cast would be Lancaster's -- as he has to lord over Davis for much of the movie with his whiteness and insult Davis's blackness. Perhaps Kurt Russell. With Jackson in a "Hateful Eight" reunion. But Russell's really too old now.

All that said, The Scalphunters probably belongs back in 1968 -- its quality control, its cinematography, long-gone scenery chewers like Shelley Winters and Telly Savalas...

...and Burt Lancaster, back in his fading prime.