Mandingo

This film is about slavery and the plantations. However, it is quite different from many other films which depicted this era because:1.) Most other films gloss over the sheer brutality and only give you glimpses of the physical violence and sexual brutality endured by slaves; and2.) Most other films try to have at least one character playing the role of the "white but conscientious objector" to these social and cultural evils. Importantly, this "redeeming" characters serves as a kind of mascot for the idea that there were always kind and conscientious slave owners even during this era.Mandingo offers none of those psychological safety nets. These are scenes where an adult white male is raping a 13-year-old slave girl, and indulges in sadistically beating the girl while abusing her sexually. If this scene makes you very, very uncomfortable, then the film makers have done their job and done it well. This is what you are supposed to feel: horrified at having to come face to face with the cultural norms of that time. In many ways, this movie is NOT entertaining. There would be nothing entertaining about watching a historical fiction about the Jewish holocaust; and if such a film were overacted and melodramatic, you should not dismiss it out of hand. It would be better to ask yourself a simple question: what value do you get from this film?With respect to Mandingo, what you do get is a brutally transparent, if somewhat poorly scripted and histrionically acted, view of the personal lives of people living in a slave breeding plantation. The plot line allows the viewer to recognize that slavery destroyed the humanity of both the enslaved and the slave-makers. No one wins in this context. The black/white, slave/master paradigm is simply incompatible with human dignity and the American experiment with slavery was nothing short of socio-cultural experiment in brutality, much like other eras in later history, e.g. Mao's cultural revolution, Polpot's killing fields, Stalin's gulags, the Nazi's paradigm of labensraum and purifying the race etc. The only difference is that American slavery, as a social order, persisted for much longer than the 20st century's variations on the theme of human destruction being seen as a virtue or social norm.It is not surprising that some of the people who wrote reviews on this film found it to come across like "soft porn". I was actually quite surprised by the amount of full frontal nudity and unabashed depictions of sexual interactions, ranging from the uneasy tenderness and intimacy between Ellen (slave) and Hammond (owner); the private agonies of Blanche (slave owner's wife) who's husband won't pay attention to her, and her exploitation of her husband's male slave, Mede, to remedy her sexual frustrations and assert some type of control over her situation. The complications in private relationships when "slavery" was the legal status of one of the partners in the relationship. Issues of separation of slave parents and children, the nascent abolition movement, the balancing of an obedient affect against the indignation raging just beneath the forced half-smile and "Yessah Massah!" - NONE of this is meant to entertain you. It is intended to give you an opportunity to temporarily immerse yourself in another culture. Saying that the melodramatic script and overdone acting cause this movie to fail is really a way of deliberating circumventing the hard lessons held in this movie viewing experience. And those, I think, are as follows:1. Real conversations in the slave area were not likely to be Oscar nominated. Ordinary speech often isn't. So, don't be put out by the melodramatic script. Take it as a more fair representation of the banality of daily life and discourse on a slave breeding plantation. That's all.2. The bluntly portrayed sex scenes are not meant to make you feel comfortable. Take them at face value. The lived reality of those times were certainly far more uncomfortable and unforgiving than portrayed even by this film.3. After watching this film, if you feel some type of dissatisfaction, then I think you are on the right track, because you cannot really be looking for satisfying entertainment in a film that treats a topic that is as bleak as a slave breeding plantation. So, why is the sense of dissatisfaction a good thing? Perhaps because it shows that you are motivated to somehow do more justice to that era than this movie did. And you don't need to make a movie in order to do that; you can do that by representing the issues in conversation more accurately to others in your own life. And when mulling over this particular period in history, put aside your need to be entertained by lean scripts and polished acting. Be, instead, satisfied to spend a couple of hours honestly contemplating the banality of evil.Evil really is banal. And this film demonstrates it by forcing scenes of rampant lust and violence to co-exist uneasily with the melodrama and namby-pamby, marmalade-y soundtrack (reminiscent of other grandiloquent wild west films from that era), while the narrative plods on hopelessly towards Hammond's betrayal of Ellen, Gene and his role as the "good white master".

This film is still controversial and shocking some 34 yrs after it's first debut in theatres!I remember hearing my parents discuss this film in shocked disbelief after they'd goneto see it back in 1975!---And the first season of SNL did a hilarious sketch parody of itwhich is still among their more legendary and cutting edge sketches of all time! (-:The subject of slavery itself is unbelievable enough, and that white people of meansin the antebellum south deemed/justified it as god's natural order for over 300 yrsis mind-boggling, but yes, it exsisted, and untold atrocities rivaling or perhaps eveneclipsing those of WW2 Nazi Germany abounded during this time! (It was just never chronicled!)This film was the first to address it from the sexual dynamics;The handsome, lustful and virile slavemaster's son, played wonderfullyby the absolutely gorgeous (when he was young!) Perry King, who is so spoiledon having his pleasure with the most desirable of the black female slaves thathe & his father owns, that he doesn't desire nor know how to even relate to a white woman,who the antebellum man placed on such a high & patronizing moral pedestal that the idea ofher being a sexual being was considered almost a sacrilage!So it was deemed as a rite of passage for white fathers and sons of that timeto explore all of their most depraved, animalistic, strident and hedonistic flightsof the white male sexual imagination with their black slave women on a regular basis!This was expected, accepted and not frowned upon by "polite" white society(male or female) of that time, so they indulged themselves freely while keeping up appearancesand having their white wives and children, cultivating wealth, and maintaining the warped socialorder of the pre-civil war south.Perry King's character, Hammond, has a special predilection for the virginslave women who had yet to feel the passion of another man's embrace,so that he could properly "break them in" to his liking!There is an almost ritualistic approach to this practice and he has a sense ofentitlement about it, while of course, the black slave women have no say in the matter.He is a very contridictory character...one who embodies the times he lives in perfectly.He has unusual compassion and tolerance for his slaves, yet exacts brutal reprimand on themwhen they fall outside of lines of the strict white supremist master/slave social order!He beds black women every night, yet refrains from kissing, caressing, showing real affectionfor them, only "utilizing them" for his pleasure...because to show affection with them in bedis to consider their humanity, and that would fly in the face of all of the warped doublestandard-laden idiotic backwards logic of his times! He makes ONE exception though, later in the film.There is so much contridiction, chicainery (an old word from that time, that meanttrickery, double-dealing, etc.), racial taboos, sexuality, brutality, etc., in thisvery unique film, that it amazes me that it got past the censors of that time!Even though it was the mid 70's & in the middle of the sexual revolution, this was rad stuff!Without going scene by scene and giving away the movie for people who have yet to see it,it just suffices to say that this is not the typical slavery era drama in the traditionof ROOTS, QUEEN, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, etc.!!--This goes much deeperand shows a much more realistic & seedier side of slavery and the antebellumsouthern social morays that many may find offensive to their modern PC sensibilities!But this film was very well done for it's time, had a great cast of credible actors,the production and direction of Dino De Laurentis and others, as well as being well written.There is much more going on here than a white slave owner who buys a prizedmandingo fighting stud (played by pro boxer Ken Norton) to breed with his bestfemale slaves like cattle, to produce a stable of super-stud fighting slaves whichhe plans to sell and exploit like fighting chickens...there are the dynamics of interraciallove & sex, the explosion of the myth of the prystine lilly white princess (played by Susan George)with no sense of her own sexuality, incest issues, and horrible racial folkloric beliefsthat have to be seen to believed!--The father of Perry King's character is played by veteran actor,the late James Mason, who is a downright despicable racist who does/ says some terrible thingsin this film, but like I said before, that's how it was then and what alot of whites believed!You can't look at it through 2009 sensibilities, you have to go back there to the 1830's.I first saw this movie for myself on cable late one night when I was in my teens,then I never saw or heard of it again until it was released to DVD in 2008.This is still an amazing piece of film history that packs a punch and pushesbuttons of racial/sexual/social dynamics which are still struggled with today!Everybody who I have shown this movie to has been moved in every kind of way,on every level you can imagine!-- Check it out for sure!

What a brilliant film. Picture quality very good. Have been looking for this film for a very long time/. Had read the book years ago. Bought and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good delivery time A1+

Very good condition and in the good quality

Delighted to get this old film. Service was very good

As wonderful as it was in the 70s. Simply a classic.

good-ok