Star Billing: Trevor Howard (1st), Britt Ekland (2nd), 'Jurgen Goslar' (3rd), Ron Ely (4th), Ray Milland (5th), and Cameron Mitchell (6th).
One of a number of 1970s productions about slavery. The others were Racines (1977), Ashanti (1979), L'Enfer des Mandingos (1976), Mandingo (1975) Huckleberry Finn (1974), Les négriers (1971), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1977), A Woman Called Moses (1978), Racines 2 (1979), and The Fight Against Slavery (1975).
Reportedly, many of the African natives attributed the cause of the ferry boat disaster during production to superstition. Movie '78 No 2 magazine (Australia) states "the film crew, they said, had shot on an island which no man had touched for centuries, and it had disturbed the peace of the ancestors. In fact, a number of mysterious incidents occurred during filming".
Apparently, the American version of this film has cuts, with the European version being uncut and longer. ALL films have "cuts" otherwise know as editing. Sometimes these are to tailor a film to local tastes and/or standards. Understandably locations with lower standards will have fewer edits. Producers of films can also add or subtract certain scenes to achieve the rating they desire (G, PG, M, R, X)
According to 'Time Out', the film contains "brandings, rape, cruelty to animals, spurting arteries, vultures working over dead natives, baby trampling, assorted deaths, and repeated shots of ankles chafed to the bone by iron anklets during the great slave trek".