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List Price: $14.95 | | Label: Legend Films
Salesrank: 5445
Released: June 3, 2008 |
| Our Price: $4.74 |
| Used Price: $5.25 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Based on the best-selling book, Mandingo is a shocking look at plantation life in the Deep South. Mede (Ken Norton) is a slave whose master, Hammond Maxwell (Perry King), intends on keeping him as a prizefighter. As Maxwell focuses his attention on his wenches and Mede's brutal training, his neglected wife (Susan George) turns her passions towards Mede himself. The sordid doings explode across the screen as Mandingo plays out its savage and dramatic story.
Mandingo Reviews:
good job done on a difficult subject 
2009-09-06 - Based on an older book originally Written AS A thesis for someone's master's degree, it handles a very sorry part of Amrican history in a delicate but suspenseful way. Of course it is heart wrenching,m but does not overdo the pathos of being a slave in the early south. (
Educational Excellence 
2009-07-02 - Good News/Bad News. The good news is this movie is so far removed from present life for people of both colors that it's character is not a necessary teaching tool today. The bad news is that this movie is so far removed from present life for people of both colors that it's character and subject matter are not taught,learned or sought after today. This was an excellent period piece movie that could not even be made today because of political correctness. Instead of using the "N-word", can you imagine James Mason's character at the end calling the slave with the gun a stupid "African American?" This movie has character, depth, realism, while entertaining as much as any other major movie. I just saw this movie for the first time this year, 2009. All of the actors and actresses captured the fear, hatred, resentment, lust and ignorance as much as slavery could be captured on film. Ken Norton was excellent as Mede, not just another athlete ,with no acting skills(Hulk Hogan) thrown into a movie. He did a good job. Susan George evoked all kinds of emotions from every end of the spectrum, from the neglected wife, to slave abuser and baby killer to seducer of Mede to spoiled daughter, to victim of a racist husband , shamed by the fact that the first child of his wife is by a big, black, slave. Perry King did an excellent job and the son of rich plantation owner, played by James Mason's character. Just when the subject matter became secondary, and one might start to like King's character, since he is the most likable of the racist , violent slave owners in the movie, we are educated once again by the nature of slavery and the viciousness that defined the era.
For all who have an uneducated automatic reaction based solely on the word "slavery", I would recommend this movie. Or , if one just want to be entertained and educated by a movie unafraid to tell the truth,using graphic language, torture and sexual cohersion and violence of the day, this is the period piece movie for you. My only complaint is the ending. I wanted more, but I was left satisified. You will be too.
great movie for us non PC people
2009-06-10 - This was an awesome movie, I am from Mississippi and I could see how it could happen, I am not a Politically Correct type of person so I am not that easily offended. The acting was good and Susan George does a great impression of a Southern Belle. I think she was deceived by Hammond who is not worthy of her affection. It has a sad and tragic ending for slave and master. MANDINGO was based on the book series Falconhurst these old paperbacks can be found at used bookstores."Mandingo" and "the Beguiled" a Civil War movie with CLint Eastwood were filmed just South of New Orleans at a plantation named Ashland Belle Helene
Traumatizing Saga of Antebellum Dehumanization
2009-05-28 - Yeah sure there's exploitative elements here but don't go in expecting mindless trash. More than any other film I've seen it kicks you in the stomach with clear-eyed depictions of how the slavery system demeans and destroys everyone--white or black--who participates. An air of suffocating doom hangs over everything and if you've got sleazy penchants for "rough" play you may come away from this ashen and ashamed, realizing the horrific underlying roots of our current penchant for mixing sex and violence. Well-acted and intelligent, and Susan George is amazing in an unappreciated role. She's supposed to seem shrill and unbearable as a Southern gentlewoman, it's a role her character is clearly not comfortable with and she plays it with a bug-eyed sense of fear, as if desperately trying to pass for genteel in a family that only values surface and is stuck in a mire of double standards and evil. I was devastated for three weeks after watching it. You can understand critics at the time trying to weasel out of the moral obligation the film imposes by branding it sleazy trash. To take it as the serious work of art it really is might destroy you, and will certainly make you think of this country in a different way.
cruel slave masters
2009-04-28 - There are a lot of very violent scenes in this movie but the story is good. I have read the whole set of books. all are good. They could have made movies of all of them.
You want to hate the slave owners. They treat their slaves terribly.
