Mandingo

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 gone to see it back in 1975!---And the first season of SNL did a hilarious sketch parody of it which 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 means in the antebellum south deemed/justified it as god's natural order for over 300 yrs is mind-boggling, but yes, it exsisted, and untold atrocities rivaling or perhaps even eclipsing 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 wonderfully by the absolutely gorgeous (when he was young!) Perry King, who is so spoiled on having his pleasure with the most desirable of the black female slaves that he & 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 of her 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 time to explore all of their most depraved, animalistic, strident and hedonistic flights of 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 appearances and having their white wives and children, cultivating wealth, and maintaining the warped social order of the pre-civil war south. Perry King's character, Hammond, has a special predilection for the virgin slave 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 of entitlement 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 them when 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 affection for them, only "utilizing them" for his pleasure...because to show affection with them in bed is to consider their humanity, and that would fly in the face of all of the warped double standard-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 meant trickery, double-dealing, etc.), racial taboos, sexuality, brutality, etc., in this very 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 tradition of ROOTS, QUEEN, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, etc.!!--This goes much deeper and shows a much more realistic & seedier side of slavery and the antebellum southern 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 prized mandingo fighting stud (played by pro boxer Ken Norton) to breed with his best female slaves like cattle, to produce a stable of super-stud fighting slaves which he plans to sell and exploit like fighting chickens...there are the dynamics of interracial love & 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 beliefs that 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 things in 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 pushes buttons 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!

A LITTLE HISTORY FOR MY COLLECTION . AWESOME MOVIE!

ASIN# B014L2Y33M Though I'd give this Olive Films bluray edition three stars. (No extras, no subtitles.) On the plus side: excellent cover art, the picture and sound is vastly improved. Worth the upgrade from the budget priced Legend release (which looks awful). One of the most neglected and underrated Hollywood films of its era, Richard Fleischer’s blistering and undeniably lurid 1975 melodrama about a slave-breeding plantation in the Deep South, set in the 1840s, was widely and unjustly ridiculed as camp in this country when it came out. But apart from this film, Herbert J. Biberman’s 1969 Slaves, and Charles Burnett’s 1996 Nightjohn, it’s doubtful whether many more insightful and penetrating movies about American slavery exist. The director, Richard Fleischer is the most famous filmmaker you (might've) never heard of - his imdb page lists almost a hundred films - some truly great, most of which you have seen. An aside: Quentin Tarantino’s thigh-slapping Django Unchained — a film so historically whimsical that it can show us a slave who’s an expert marksman, can read, and even puts on sunglasses after he becomes a free man — clearly isn’t one of them; at best it’s another Tarantino Pulp Adventure for ten-year-old boys — ten-year-old girls need not apply. That said, I liked it. QT definitely got a "pass" from the majority of critics. (Django gets his revenge after 90 minutes of degregation - a happy PC/ wish-fullfiment ending that placated the liberal (and Urban) audiences. Curiously, this same "logic" doesn't apply to movies such as I Spit on Your Grave and the like. Odd. Scripted by Norman Wexler (Joe, Saturday Night Fever) from a sensationalist novel by Kyle Onstott; with James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Richard Ward, Brenda Sykes, and Ken Norton, who all give brave and fantastic performances.

mandingo 1975.contraversial on its release.i was 13 when it came out yet i heard of it.a film like this would not be made today in these pc times.the treatment of african americans in the pre civil war period.on a plantation owned by james mason doing his usual sterling nasty performance,and run by his crippled son perry king.they run a business of buying selling and breeding slaves.when king marries susan george and buys a mandingo slave ken norton,things start to go wrong when he realises that his new wife is not a virgin,all these things heading to disaster.i dont want to give to much away but mandingo has the power to shock even by todays standards this is not a exploitation film,and is worth watching from a historical point of view.just to see attitudes of the day.that colored are less than, should not be educated are their to be used and abused by their owners male or female.it is an attitude we have seen in the last 150 years.and is a very dark chapter in american history.

tutto ok,l'articolo corrisponde a quello ordinato,l'imballaggio è ottimo e sicuro ,il servizio e è efficiente.Sono state rispettate le mie aspettative

Respecte assez bien le bouquin qui avait fait un tabac à l'époque. Zone 1 , mais avec mon lecteur pas de problème . Seulement en langue anglaise et sans sous- titres mais on trouve ces derniers sur Internet en anglais ce qui permet de suivre ce qui se dise.. Acteurs excellents . Bon rappel de l'origine de cette époque pas bien lointaine dans l'histoire des Etats Unis et auquel les ports de Nantes et de Bordeaux ont fait la fortune des armateurs qui tranportaient les esclaves.

Muy buena película

great story , well acted , about what the ante-bellum Civil War was really like. Made you feel like you were there and how nasty it was.