PodBill Just what I expected

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

dorozco028-847-359337 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!

JoeB131 While movies like Gone with the Wind glorified the Old South, this movie showed its gritty underbelly.This movie was made when Hollywood found it could finally do sexually explicit scenes, and they went all out in doing so, filming several scenes of interracial sex (must have gone over really big in 1975!) The film is meant to be an indictment of the racism and sexism of 1830's southern society, I guess, but comes off as preachy and even a little silly. Well, it's Dino DeLaurentis, a man who managed to foul up King Kong and Flash Gordon.the weakest part of the movie is the character of Ganymede (Mede) played by Boxing less-than-great Ken Norton. What is obvious about this film is that Norton was no actor. He mumbles his lines and we never get a feeling for what his character is about.James Mason was working for alimony money as the patriarch of a run-down plantation, while Perry King plays his son who is almost as close to a decent human being as any white person gets in this film. Susan George plays his long suffering wife who decides to get back at him for his "Wenching" by sleeping with his prize fighting slave (Norton).Is it worth seeing. Well, maybe. It's a film that had critics very upset in 1975, but it's become kind of a camp icon today.

swillsqueal In this film, the masterful James Mason plays the plantation patriarch, a Big Daddy you wouldn't want to be owned by. This is undoubtedly THE BEST Film made about the era of slavery in the USA. It puts the sanitised, romantic "Gone With the Wind" to shame. "Mandingo" will make you uncomfortable even in your most comfortable seat. "Mandingo" is a mirror. See your reflection; it will scare the living bejeezub out of you.This is a film about power. Racism is about power. When some people have absolute power over other people, they become sadistic and sometimes, the objects of their sadism become masochistic. Absolute power is always justified with ideological rationalisations become dogma, in this case the the dogma that black skin makes a person less than human. Power corrupts the individual's sense of morality. With power over others, one becomes more or less immoral, hardened to a subordinate's suffering. Self-esteem is generated by putting down the one perceived to be inferior and slaves were considered less than human, a notch or two down on the food chain. Slaves were treated as objects of power, like the organic results of animal husbandry, like the commodities you purchase and eat: cattle, pigs or sheep. Thus, having sex with a slave for a 'white' male owner was like breeding new animals for sale with a view to profit. 'White' females, of course, were not allowed to engage in this sort of animal husbandry with slaves. The patriarchal whisper one hears in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" becomes a murderous roar in "Mandingo".In "Mandingo" we see realities of absolute power's affect on the social psychology of a society. Even after more than a century of time, American society, especially the South is still scarred by the psychological damage which simmers under the surface of smiles, whiskey fueled tears and freshly mown lawns."Mandingo" is a must see. It's better than "Glory", although "Glory" would be an appropriate second on a double feature bill with "Mandingo". "Mandingo" is even better than "Burn" and much better than "Roots". The acting is superb. The screenplay is magnificent. The cinematography is choice. Yes, this movie is violent; but slavery was a daily violence on the lives of those who suffered it. Face it. Yes, there is sex in this movie: squirm in your seat as you feel a touch of titillation. Yes, there is abuse on all levels from pedophilia to outright murder. But the abusers aren't comic book level bad guys; they aren't Jokers on the set of "Batman". They are the ruling class of the Old South. Sometimes their humanity shows through. Sometimes bad guys are ever so well ensconced in the the rituals of polite society that they come across as the upholders of civilised behaviour. That they are also enmeshed in a daily life organised around the exploitation of those who produce their wealth speaks volumes about the quality of their humanity and our own social relations of power today.Get "Mandingo" however you can. Show it to your friends. Discuss it after you see it. Get ready for the movie experience of a lifetime. Forget about "Basterds"; forget the demented, ultra-violent comic fantasies of Quentin Tarintino. Forget about the sanitized films of the Antebellum Age. See "Mandingo". See the hard truth about chattel slavery and then do some reflection about how power over others functions to generate a generalised state of dominance and submission in the social relations of the here and now, wherever you live on this planet.

fimimix I read "Mandingo" when it first was published. I am a Southerner: I must comment that slavery was almost as prevalent in the northern parts of the USA as it was in the southern parts. After all, "The Mason-Dixon Line" isn't exactly in what we Southernerns call "The Deep South". So, the thing to keep in mind is - if you're not really well-educated about slavery in this country - that some of the states thought-of as having no slavery is simply myth. Even in the northern cities, people owned slaves.Although some users say the book isn't nearly as sexually explicit as the movie is, I don't remember it that way, at all. In fact, the movie is truly "cleaned-up". In the book, the characters aren't much more than scoundrels; the movie attempts to show them as a rather untidy society. The novel makes it perfectly clear that the plantation is not much more than a shambles, purely for breeding; the characters are ALL over-sexed, even the old man ("Warren Maxwell"), James Mason's role.A male, "Mandingo"-slave was very desirable in many ways, especially for the huge bundle of "meat" usually found in their pants. If their is any doubt that white-folk are more common to "rape" and pillage upon black-folk, then just read-up on what's gone on in Africa, among its cultures, for centuries. Darfur ring a bell? News-reports about soldiers breaking women's legs so they can't run away from rape ? I am attempting to write a autobiography, and write at-length on this subject. Indeed, there were plantations such as "Falconhurst" (?), because humans are humans. HOWEVER, the majority of plantations with a large number of slaves knew their value - $10,000 per ? Indeed, there was always miscegenation on all plantations, because there is miscegenation in all of our cities: humans are humans. That director Richard Fleischer chose to direct a lurid film depicting a inflamatory situation is admirable, but certainly can't be taken as "truth" for all plantations ALL OVER THE COUNTRY.I agree with one user who wrote that Mason must have needed to pay the rent, when he chose this role. Same for almost everyone in the film. Jack Kirckland wrote filth, and that's what the movie needed to be. My opinion is that Perry King ("Hammond Maxwell") was very convincing in his role; as for his sexual-activity, he didn't know much better. All plantations had slaves with different "degrees" of blackness - after all, the "house-servants" were a more refined breed than those who worked the fields.True, it WAS illegal to educate Blacks. Can you really believe that all slave-owners stuck to that law ? Bull ! The scenes in "Mandingo" which were supposed to have taken place in New Orleans could have been much wider in description. "Octaroons" - a very low degree of blackness - were present in every prominent family in that city, simply because they WERE beautiful, and usually accepted by the general society. As deplorable as the sexual activity is in the film, it's practiced in every country in the world, because humans are humans.I don't know which version of the film I saw, but I thought it was too short.....not because I wanted to see more degradation: I wanted the characters to be fully developed. In the version I saw, I felt that whole scenes had been cut, and the whole story wasn't told.You can find as much "documentation" The Deep South was a very genteel part of our country, just as you can find some plantations were hell-holes. You can't judge one by the other. Anyone who denies this isn't being realistic - enjoy the movie and leave it at that. I felt the cinematography could have been better, but I don't have any idea what "generation" of tape I was watching. Perhaps DVD is much clearer.That's the way it is, Guys - truth is truth. Degradatiion IS a human-trait.........