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HOME/Archive/Hubbs/Books/Obits/Shorts/Links/Contact By Eric M. Harvey American Vulture contributor Hubbs Kowalski calls me up tonight. “Whaddaya doin’?” asks Hubbs. “It’s Sunday. So I’m not feeling so hot.” I reply. “What? You sick?” “No. It’s just…I don’t know…I never got over that Sunday to Monday school feeling. It’s depressing to have to be on a schedule to do something that you don’t want to do.” “Yeah, I kind of know how you feel. That Poobah over at American Vulture keeps sending me DVD’s to review. Now it’s like work and shit.” “Wait, he’s sending you DVD’s? To review?” “Yeah, LOVE ME DEADLY. THE CAR.” “He sent you those?” “Yeah. Now I gotta review (Richard) Fleischer’s MANDINGO. You ever seen MANDINGO?” “He doesn’t send me DVD’s.” “Yeah, well maybe he don’t love you. Have you seen MANDINGO?” “Long time ago.” “Well, I have. About 4 or 5 times. And it never ceases to amaze me.” “What do you mean? I don’t remember it being that good.” “Look, the reason I’m calling is that my DVD player broke and I need to come over and watch it there. And this way you get to see MANDINGO again. Better yet, why don’t you review it? ” “Oh no. He doesn’t send me DVD’s, I ain’t reviewing it.” “Quit acting like a Georgia Bitch.” “What the hell does that mean?” “It means you gotta watch MANDINGO before you get any more weepy-eyed about not getting DVD’s from the Poobah.” And this time, MANDINGO has burned itself in my brain for life and I don’t know if I’m better off for it.
MANDINGO started life as a 695-page novel in 1957 by Kyle Onstott before producer Dino De Laurentiis (DEATH WISH) and the late great director Richard Fleischer (MR. MAJESTYK) turned it into a little over two-hour film in 1975. It tells the story of Falconhurst, a slave-breeding plantation in Alabama run by the Maxwell clan and follows the sordid and morally bankrupt lives of the Maxwells and their slaves. And believe me, if you’ve never seen MANDINGO, I suggest you see it because you will never see a movie like it made again in America.
The plot is as such: Hammond Maxwell (Perry King, CLASS OF 1984) is to marry his cousin Blanche (Susan George, STRAW DOGS) as part of a financial arrangement between Warren Maxwell (James Mason, YELLOWBEARD) and Major Woodford (Stanley J. Reyes, De Palma’s OBSESSION). On the trip to meet his cousin, he falls in love with a black slave girl (Brenda Sykes, CLEOPATRA JONES) at a friend’s plantation and while in New Orleans, finds the prized Mandingo named Mede (Ken Norton, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion and the titular star of MANDINGO sequel, DRUM). Hammond has found himself wishing for a Mandingo for breeding and fighting purposes. While in New Orleans, Hammond and Blanche are married. However, Blanche has a secret and it’s keeping the newlyweds apart. Needless to say, things go from bad to worse after Hammond and crew’s return to Falconhurst.
Scene after scene of slave beating, slave fucking, slave degradation and the constant use of “nigger” or “nigra” blew my born post-civil rights mind and had me constantly turning to Hubbs throughout the whole movie exclaiming, “HOW IN THE HELL DID THEY MAKE THIS MOVIE? HOW DID IT GET RELEASED BY PARAMOUNT?” Hubbs, with a swig of beer and a puff of a Pall Mall each time, replied, “It was a different time.” “Why do you smoke Pall Malls? My grandmother smoked Pall Malls.” “It’s where particular people congregate. Plus they’re cheap.” Indeed it was a different time. I’ve seen a lot of disturbing things. I claim to need to watch disturbing things to live. Nothing prepared me the outright offensiveness that is MANDINGO. I was not prepared for James Mason using black children as footstools to cure his rheumatism. I was not prepared for Paul Benedict (Bentley from THE JEFFERSONS) inspecting a slave’s ass for hemorrhoids. I was not prepared for the constant nonchalant degradation of black people. And I guess to a certain degree, that was the point.
MANDINGO paints the South in a different light than GONE WITH THE WIND and other films of its ilk. It unflinchingly documents a disgusting and brutal stretch of American history using common Hollywood dramatic narrative which makes the film bearable to a degree, lowering it to a camp level or straight exploitation, depending on your cinematic palate. But the outrages against basic humanity it does present are a stark reminder of how far we’ve come as a society, and possibly, how slow we’ve progressed as well.
You should see it once. Kowalski has now seen it at least five times. When I ask him why, he asks, “ Why do people watch ‘The Blue and The Grey’ over and over? Why do they watch ‘Glory’ over and over? ‘North and South’? All those Ted Turner produced Civil War docudramas? And above all, that shit-ass boring GONE WITH THE FUCKING WIND? At least this shit is truthful.” I don’t know what that means, but leave it to Kowalski to give me a history lesson I won’t forget.
The film itself is available here on U.S. home video widescreen for the first time. It looks pretty good, although I wouldn’t say Legend Films went out of their way to clean it up. However, it’s a decent looking print and I quite enjoy the grainy nature of its presentation. I don’t think an HD clean up would do MANDINGO justice. The audio I assume is mono. There’s no indication on the box of the audio being remastered. There was a problem with audio during Mede’s second fight scene as the sound kept going up and down and was the only part of the disc where it happened. My set up is DVD player to TV, standard RCA jacks so it could be the limitations of my set up but it’s weird that this was the only part it happened at. An incredibly bare bones release (not even an original trailer), MANDINGO I would think is the kind of film that begs for a documentary or commentary. It could be folks don’t want to talk about their participation in it some 30 years on. However, it could be that Legend Films, who has apparently licensed some of the more offbeat Paramount titles to release, probably couldn’t afford to. Maybe they didn’t want to. Shit, people have trailers for MANDINGO up on You Tube so it’s not like they couldn’t find one. All in all, I’m grateful they’ve taken the time to give MANDINGO a widescreen release, as it obviously wasn’t a priority over at Paramount.
Now there is a sequel, believe it or not, called DRUM, which stars Norton, Warren Oates and Pam Grier that’s equally offensive but a bit more tolerable, if that’s possible. Maybe because after MANDINGO, everything is more tolerable. As Hubbs leaves with more beer in his 12-pack box than he came with, he turns to me and asks, “You seen ADDIO ZIO TOM?” “What?” “GOODBYE UNCLE TOM. Jacopetti. Prosperi. MONDO CANE guys. They time warp to the antebellum South and do a documentary on slavery.” I can’t believe Kowalski just used antebellum in a sentence and correctly, I might add. I wave good night and quickly close the door.
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