Mandinga

This was a mish mash of a film that started out going nowhere, got lost on the way then suddenly found a plot in the last 5 minutes when the title character is FINALLY introduced. There were so many ugly, mutton-chopped guys in this film, I lost track of who was the owner and who were the overseers. I have a theory about the casting though; all the bad guys were played by ugly actors (and one ugly actress) and all the good guys/victims were played by beautiful actors. Indeed the actors who played the ultimate victims, the slaves, were gorgeous as was the innocent priest's daughter, while the plantation owner, his minipulative mistress and his overseers were pretty hard on the eyes. On purpose? You make the call.

I hung in there till the end and some others might be able to make it as well. If you just want to look at bare breasts, there are plenty of them here and if you have a slave/master fetish then you'll love this film. Otherwise, watch it once, vomit, shower and never speak of it to anyone.

1st watched 3/17/2002 - 2 out of 10(Dir-Mario Pinzauti): Silly, sex-filled master & slave having too many intimate relations movie. This movie seemed to care more about the sex than the story and kind of worked the story around the sex. Laughable dubbing of the original Italian language in the version I watched with ridiculous ending where the attempt is made to give an anti-slave statement(or should I say one line). What a waste of time for everyone who watches this trash.

Incredibly hilarious mid-70's Italian Rootsploitation with lots of non-consensual S&M, lesbian sex, gratuitous racial cruelty etc...Few redeeming cinematic qualities, except for the fairly cool theme music with dubby "African" drums and flute. Brilliant sample dialog:

White Slave Owner (to White Plantation Manager): "You're so dumb, I'll bet you forgot to interrogate that n****r midwife!"

White Plantation Manager: "Not only did I interrogate her, I did it so well she died before I could get any answers from her!"

All the black actors have 70's afros, and say "yes, massa" in a high-pitched voice. The female lead has sex with everybody on the plantation. 10 Stars for fans of tasteless sleaze.

As you might surmise from the title this is an Italian rip-off of the film "Mandingo", an American movie that was quite successful, but offended a number of people because it tried to combine a serious look at slavery in the antebellum South with lurid interracial sexploitation and "grindhouse"-style violence. Naturally, the Italians couldn't wait to jump on this--they were already making plenty of interracial sex films at the time, and they have never been a country inhibited by good taste (witness the cycle of Italian sexploitation films set in Nazi death camps). This film is less offensive than its model, however, because it's very ineptly made. Not only do you have the atrocious dubbing and dodgy Southern accents, but the "white" characters are all played by dark-skinned southern Italians and the "blacks" are played by northern Africans rather than African-Americans. (I also don't think there's too many palm trees and olive trees in the American South).

A young man returns from Europe to his wealthy father's Southern plantation. He begins an affair with his widower father's gold-digging girlfriend (who the latter refuses to marry). But then he falls in love with a virginal preacher's daughter and marries her, much to gold-digger's chagrin. She gets her chance for revenge though when the couple's first baby is born and turns out to be black! But all is not as it seems. Strangely, there's actually no interracial sex in this movie. The lusty, evil golddigger does seem to get off on watching the males slaves be whipped, and after she and the son catch two "slaves" having sex, they vow to show then "how their masters make love" and their is a brief "interracial" orgy. I'm using quotes, however, because the "slave" couple are obviously both north African Arabs and actually have lighter skin than the swarthy Italian actress playing the white mistress.

Given that all the sex here is between white people (and pretty unattractive white people at that), this would never have made it as an American "blaxploitation" flick. I doubt it made more than a brief appearance on the urban "grindhouse" circuit back in the day but it is currently in "The Grindhouse Experience Volume 1" DVD collection, along with quite a few better movies. I'd recommend the whole collection, but not really this movie as a stand-alone title.

This time around no one who was behind the production of "Mandingo",and "Drum",were no where in sight. Do you blame them? I first saw this film once when it was showed years ago during Friday After Dark on Cinemax,and I found this film to be the most humorous if not piece of pathetic cinema I've ever seen,and for good reason why this film is nothing but cheap imitational garbage that was made for a few dollars on the penny. This was one of the worst films ever to come out of the mid-1970's,and to me the year 1976 brought out some of the worst,especially from the format of you might say,"Bad Italian Cinema". The film "Mandinga" is an Italian rip-off of the 1975 film "Mandingo",but with more sleaze and explicit sexual content you can handle that is absolutely hilarious to watch,especially with some of the ugliest actors ever to grace the screen. As the movie begins.we see life on the plantation:Slaves getting whipped,slaves talking back and from there getting their butts promptly whipped. In the first fifteen minutes of this film,and this is below the belt where a white woman is lectured about how she should never lower herself and have sexual relations with a slave. The slave is chained up so she jumps on him. Soon the white man,or master of the plantation is having sex with a chained up slave woman,and it gets even worse,because throughout the course of this film,which runs no more than 89 minutes,there are about as many sex scenes that they could get into this movie,and I counted more than eight,and some include bits of homosexuality where the white woman and the chained up slave woman are in a lesbian romance. The rest of it is nothing but sleaze,showing more breasts and lots and lots of interracial sex,with a low budget and some very bad acting. This isn't a installment. Its a disgrace.