The Scalphunters

An amiable enough liberal comedy Western, with colour-coded cultural conflict worked through an ironic circular plot. Lancaster's trapper is forcibly traded an ex-slave (Davis) for his pelts by an Indian band, after which the pair set off in uneasy alliance and in pursuit as the pelts are in turn appropriated by a gang of scalphunters. William Norton's script glosses both the racial antagonism and interdependence with a thankfully light hand; Pollack gets in some backwoods practice for the later mythologisation of Jeremiah Johnson. PT.