Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

arfdawg-1 The Plot.Two documentary filmmakers go back in time to the pre-Civil War American South, to film the slave trade.Dumb. eh? I watched this because of the many reviews saying it was so powerful and true. Well here's a dose of reality folks: it's part of the Mondo Cane Collection.Doesn't that sort of define what garbage this is going to be?And garbage it is.It's so bad, it's actually unwatchable.Horrible film work. Really bad vocal dubbing even tho the characters are actually speaking in English. And lots of stock footage taken from freaking Africa!. Say what? My God this movie is really a piece of junk propaganda exploitation.You've been warned. It sucks.

ptb-8 I saw GOODBYE UNCLE TOM in a cinema in Sydney in 1972, and I would assess that if being released in 2011, it would not get a film classification today and be shelved or banned. The entire purpose of this fake documentary about back slavery in the 19th century in America, is simply to show as much cruelty towards Black men and women as possible. This is like XXX AMISTAD or ROOTS XXX but with extreme distressing gore and astonishing brutality. The two scenes that have stayed with me horribly for 40 years are of a baby being swung into a wall head first and its face smashed to bleeding pulp, and a row of black men having their front teeth knocked out with a chisel, one by one. These two scenes are two of many similar in a film that is a shopping list of cruel images thought up by the producers, not from any other source. So degrading and so bleak, this is a film that really ought to be destroyed. It serves no purpose other than depict bleeding crying distress meted out to young black people of varying ages.

Eli_Zardo This film's raison d'etre is to display the denigration of Black people for entertainment. That's it, so stop making excuses.The first 100 minutes or so are just an endless series of scenes where Blacks are humiliated. During many sequences it becomes impossible to think of the cast as anything other than people being manipulated by the filmmakers into degrading themselves.The stunning aspect is that while an effort is made to expose the slave trade participants as beastly and ignorant through their actions there is no effort made at all to refute their stance or present any Black characters in a positive way. They are either savages, meek, accomplices or given no voice at all.During much of it the incredibly insulting things the slave trade participants say about Blacks isn't even challenged. Now that could be taken as a style of 'indictment with their own words' but the filmmakers present it all in a way that visually seems to support what is said. Basically they cut from a white character saying Blacks are savages and then they show a scene of Blacks acting like savages!Change a few lines of dialog and this grotesquerie would be perfect fodder for White supremacists. Even the last few minutes where a speechless Black guy in "modern" America reads from The Confessions of Nat Turner perpetuates negative violent/sexual stereotypes.There is however one great scene... a gaggle of white wives discussing the reasons given to them by their husbands explaining why the female slaves keep having babies with paler skin or blond hair.If you're a fan of exploitation of the truly lowest order this thing is a treasure trove, I would actually recommend it based on that criteria, it's genuinely outrageous, inept and shameless. Just don't fool yourself regarding what it's really doing or rationalize it.

julian kennedy Addio Zio Tom: 7/10: Well they don't make them like this anymore and lets face it they never really did. This is really three separate films brought together in a blender set on random. The first film is a highly effective expose on slave treatment and the slave trade in the old south (the slave ship scenes blows Hollywood fare like Armistad out of the water). Using a cast of thousands and exposing practices such as selective breeding that are politely not discussed on American shores (just ask Jimmy the Greek) it simply is one of the most realistic display's of 18th and 19th century slave life ever shown on film. Then there is a second film which is a dated, and looking back rather silly collection, of news footage from the late sixties and early seventies that documents race riots with all the participants speaking in Italian creating an almost Woody Allen feel to the dub (It gives What's up Tiger Lilly a run for its money complete with ragtime music cementing the silliness of what should be serious proceedings.) The last movie is a sexploitation film dealing largely with Mandingo fantasies and containing a copious amount of child porn. (I guess National Geographic rules apply when showing thirteen year old black children naked). Needless to say tasteful does not enter into the conversation. Political correctness is shattered so badly one must feel for those sensitive souls that can't laugh at ridiculousness of the manipulation.Making matters worse the three films are intertwined together seemingly at random with comic buffoonery breaking out during serious scenes (A slave auction is apt to turn into a Benny Hill episode for no apparent reason) and poorly done black revenge fantasies coming, narratively at least, out of nowhere. Anti-white, anti-black and for the sake of inclusion anti-Semitic they once again simply don't make them like this anymore. (It's highly illegal for one thing) Overlong by at least an hour and very poorly thought out in places Addio Zio Tom wears out its welcome but for a short while at least it exposes the truth and makes one think.