This is a dose of 'old school' Burt Lancaster, playing a larger than life character.
It's also a civil rights western, with the central relationship being that between backwoods Burt and the over educated ex slave Ossie Davis.
Unfortunately it gets the balance wrong between it's humorous elements and it's serious elements, which IMO is a common failing among late 60s Hollywood westerns and part of the reason for the genre's decline.
For example by playing up the jokie bickering between Shelley Winters and Tele Savalas, the movie undercuts Savalas image as a villain and he is never as threatening a figure as he should be.
Review of The Scalphunters
