It seems like the theme of the movie expressed in my summary line, a quote from Joseph Winfield Lee (Ossie Davis) to Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster), was used again in 1982 with Stallone's "First Blood". The analogy is apt, Joe Bass uses his tracking and hunting skills to avenge the theft of his winter stock of furs, first stolen by the Kiowas, and then again by Jim Howie's (Telly Savalas) 'Scalphunters'. Throughout the ordeal I thought to myself, it doesn't seem like there's that many furs to be all that bothered about, an assessment also shared by Lee, so there were at least two of us on the same page.
So Lee mentioned at one point that his Kiowa name was Black Feather, stolen by that tribe when they raided the Comanches. It made me wonder if that was really part of Lee's background or was he just making it up as a way to deal with Bass. I guess it works either way, though nothing else in the story ever pointed to his having spent time with Indians.
I had to laugh when Savalas's character called himself a curly haired, blue eyed angel, but you'd probably have to catch a film that came out a few years later to see him with hair. That would have been as the title character in 1972's "Pancho Villa", which in it's own way explains how he wound up bald. You'll just have to see it.
The weirdest thing that caught my attention in the story was when Lee and Bass went at it near the end of the picture, and Bass took advantage of what looked like a trampoline jump out of a ditch to continue fisticuffs with his rival. There's no way he could have managed it from a standing position, so borrowing that page from the Euro-West spaghetti tradition was cool to see. Not to mention how mud caked the two men got to cement their relationship as partners riding off into the sunset.
But by and large, my own pick for the unsung hero in this Western had to be the pack horse carrying the furs and getting rustled every which way depending on who the more belligerent force was at the time. A close second of course would have been Bass's own horse who could stop on a dime when the situation called for it. That was pretty slick of Lee to try it out for himself.
So Lee mentioned at one point that his Kiowa name was Black Feather, stolen by that tribe when they raided the Comanches. It made me wonder if that was really part of Lee's background or was he just making it up as a way to deal with Bass. I guess it works either way, though nothing else in the story ever pointed to his having spent time with Indians.
I had to laugh when Savalas's character called himself a curly haired, blue eyed angel, but you'd probably have to catch a film that came out a few years later to see him with hair. That would have been as the title character in 1972's "Pancho Villa", which in it's own way explains how he wound up bald. You'll just have to see it.
The weirdest thing that caught my attention in the story was when Lee and Bass went at it near the end of the picture, and Bass took advantage of what looked like a trampoline jump out of a ditch to continue fisticuffs with his rival. There's no way he could have managed it from a standing position, so borrowing that page from the Euro-West spaghetti tradition was cool to see. Not to mention how mud caked the two men got to cement their relationship as partners riding off into the sunset.
But by and large, my own pick for the unsung hero in this Western had to be the pack horse carrying the furs and getting rustled every which way depending on who the more belligerent force was at the time. A close second of course would have been Bass's own horse who could stop on a dime when the situation called for it. That was pretty slick of Lee to try it out for himself.