Mandingo

Mandingo was something of a lurid sensation when it was released in 1975, as miscegenation was still something of a taboo. Now it's really no big deal, as Supreme Court justices and NFL quarterbacks are in racially-mixed marriages, but this film, directed by Richard Fleisher, took for granted that it was shocking.

Set in the antebellum South on a plantation, Mandingo doesn't hide the sexual antics of the master-slave relationship. James Mason is the patriarch of Falconhurst, and Perry King is his son. It is taken for granted, even encouraged, for King to have sex with the female slaves, even going so far as to deflower the virgins.

King is also urged by his father to marry to produce an heir, but told that sex with white women is very different, and should be done with clothes on. King has only  lain with black girls, and find one he likes in Ellen (Brenda Sykes). He does end up marrying his cousin (Susan George), but makes a wedding-night discovery that she is not a virgin (she had had sex with her brother, a lovely Gothic touch).

So King ends up spending his time in Sykes' bed, and ignoring George. He also finds a Mandingo slave, Ken Norton (the former heavyweight boxing champ) for sale at a slave market. Mason is obsessed with breeding Mandingos (which I assume is a certain African tribe, though this is never explained). King discovers Norton has a talent for fighting, and matches him against another in a fight to the finish. The resulting fight is grisly and demeaning to all who participate.

The slaves on the plantation who yearn for freedom resent Norton's devotion to his master, and of course we all know that George, in an attempt to strike back at King, will lure Norton to her bed. When the resulting baby is cocoa-colored it will be bad times for all.

Mandingo is dressed up garbage, but it does sustain interest. There's lots of nudity, and at least it understands that slavery was a detestable institution (there are still some who say slaves didn't really have it all that bad). Certainly there was a high instance of rape on plantations, but I don't know if it was this openly practiced, but I have no trouble believing it.

As an artifact of another era, Mandingo is interesting, but not very good.