Cinema: The Scalphunters

This amusing western has a racial equality angle, an avalanche, a locoweed stampede, Shelley Winters chomping cigars, and Agnes—an educated horse that sits on its rear end for a strategy conference with Burt Lancaster. Most important, it has Ossie Davis, one of the nation's finest Negro actors.

Davis is beguilingly guileful as a runaway slave who changes hands like a dirty dollar. He is captured by a band of Indians, who unload him on Fur Trapper Lancaster as "payment" for the load of skins they steal from him. The redskins, in turn, are zapped...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!