The Treasure of the Silver Lake is a 1962 Western film directed by Harald Reinl, loosely based on German author Karl May's 1891 novel of the same name. It was the first in a highly-successful series of films based on May's works by the West German studios Rialto and Constantin Film, starring American actor Lex Barker as the frontiersman Old Shatterhand and French actor Pierre Brice as the Apache warrior Winnetou.

Harald Reinl was an Austrian film director. He is known for the films he made based on Edgar Wallace and Karl May books and also made mountain films, Heimatfilms, German war films and entries in such popular German film series as Dr. Mabuse, Jerry Cotton and Kommissar X. His directing output includes more than 60 titles. With his Edgar Wallace and Karl May adaptations, Reinl advanced to become one of the most successful directors in German cinema in the 1960s: with the four Karl May films he made between 1962 and 1965 alone, Reinl reached 32 million viewers.