Quentin Tarantino has called Mandingo one of the few big budget exploitation films Hollywood has ever produced, and you can definitely see a lot of this film in his Django Unchained. I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling this an exploitation film, but it's certainly startling at times and deals with the subject of slavery without backtalk or ambiguity.The movie takes place in Deep South prior to the American Civil War. Slavery is at its highest bloom and it's just as bad as you've probably heard. First night rights are freely exercised, slaves are just one step above animals, sold like cattle and while they're not beaten daily – they still need to work, and it's not like you beat your cows daily, either – it doesn't take much for them to incur the wrath of their masters.The movie is also notable in that it uses the term 'mandingo' somewhat correctly. The term referred to any slave of the highest quality and not just to those who fought against one another. Though even that fighting might be a myth. The movie tells the tale of one particular manor, its owners and the pair of mandingo slave that were brought there, one of them to be trained as a fighter.It's a tough movie to sit through if you're squeamish and while it's not overly gluttonous in its depictions of violence, like Django Unchained is, it doesn't shy away from them either or pull its punches. A very good movie to check out if you liked Django and/or are looking for a darker historical piece.

I just watched Mandingo and can't for the life of me figure out why this film would get any critical reviews. You can't criticize the truth unless you yourself are part of the lie or involved in hiding the truth or you just want to ignore the truth and live in a fantasy world. Like those freaks that refuse to acknowledge the holocaust really happened or say it wasn't that horrible. This film hits you with the truth about 1840ish slavery with a vengeance, shocking, sickening, and uncomfortable as it should be. It doesn't sugar coat the South and especially the Deep South with shades of romantic Gone with the Wind feel sorry for us we lost our culture nonsense, but shows in detail all the dehumanizing, sickening, savage racist attitudes that existed in the south at that time. The buying and selling of human beings should be as sickening and repulsive as it gets and left to me this film would be mandatory viewing by all high school students in this country to help them understand the barbarism of slavery and how it's residue still affects and infects this country to this day. If you get a chance to rent or view this film a note of advice, be prepared for the truth!

What makes this an infamously guilty pleasure, and an extremely politically incorrect movie, might not have been intentional. Perhaps the writers wanted to show slave owners in the deep South exactly how they were, or how they hadn't been betrayed in other films or TV shows – as completely unapologetic and comfortable with their lifestyle.For instance, James Mason's plantation owner Warren Maxwell laying his feet on a slave kid's chest to get rid of his rheumatism. This is but one example of how MANDINGO takes racism to a completely new level – since owning slaves was legal, it's shown in a workaday fashion.But after the first fifteen minutes of blunt dialog there's a pretty decent story involving Warren's son Hammond, played by Perry King, who reluctantly marries his cousin Blanche, brought to life with vicious melancholy by STRAW DOGS ingénue Susan George. Blanche is jealous of her husband's slave "wench" and, basking in rueful isolation within the dilapidated mansion, she throws a violent tantrum that's quite chilling.The real stuff occurs when Hammond purchases a Mandingo Fighting slave, Mede. Real life boxer Ken Norton proves his worth as an actor and is especially good in the intense fight-to-the-death scenes that make you forget about all the other stuff, unfairly categorized by film historians as camp cinema… Perhaps they were just too stunned to take this seriously, and too ashamed to really enjoy it.Either way, this is a film that could have only come out of the 1970's. That alone makes it truly worthwhile.For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com

When it was first released, Mandingo was promoted as the one movie willing to tell the truth about American slavery. It features graphic depictions of every horror that slavery inflicted upon African Americans, ranging from brutal punishments to rape. In many respects, it is an antidote to the benign depictions of slavery in films such as Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation.It is also just as gross a distortion of slavery as they were.First of all, missing from the film is the most fundamental aspect of the slave experience: labor. Slaves were first and foremost used as workers. Based on this film, one would get the impression that slaves served no other purpose than to be beaten by or have sex with their masters and mistresses.More damning, despite the film's appeal to an African-American audience, Mandingo strips its black characters of all dignity. Yes, black slaves were subject to horrific abuses. However, they were also able to maintain their own religious practices, and formed families of their own. They were not simply the helpless victims Mandingo depicts them as.Furthermore, the film fails on a basic cinematic level. Most of the acting is downright terrible, with Susan George giving a histrionic, career ending performance.The only good things about this film are an opening theme by Muddy Waters and the atmospheric sets, which capture the dark, grim reality of a plantation house before the gaslight era.