transemacabre | Mandingo (1975)

I recently discovered the existence of Mandingo (1975), a movie most relevant now as one of the inspirations for Django Unchained. Mandingo is based on the 1957 novel, and stars James Mason, NWA's Mr. Universe, Ken Norton, and Ken Norton's ass.

If you thought Django Unchained was offensive, Mandingo may actually cause you to spontaneously combust.

No, really, Mandingo is really fucking offensive. It's so offensive that I'm appalled but can't keep from laughing. I'm laughing right now as I'm typing this; the sort of laughter that keeps you from crying. Anyway, Mandingo is about a white plantation owner who fights his slaves to the death in "mandingo fights" (sound familiar?). He buys a jack diesel slave, and a hot "bed wench" slave, and along the way practically buys a white wife for himself, because why not. Then he finds out his wife isn't a virgin (she lost it to her brother!) so he spurns her for his bed wench slave. So the white wife falls into the arms of the Mandingo jack diesel slave.

Ken Norton's ass makes it's screen debute

The mark of a true exploitation movie, to my mind, is that it must have an element of the lurid to it -- it must revel in the very thing its ostensibly trying to pooh-pooh. This is a lurid movie, and one that has the nerve to tack on a half-hearted moral at the end: "Boy, it sure is wrong to hump your slaves and make other slaves cockfight to the death!" This after we've just watched two hours of lovingly-detailed slave-humping and slave-cockfighting.

There's a scene in this movie where a slave boy is carefully arranged around James Mason's feet so as to ease his 'rheumatiz'. I know you won't believe me, so I giffed it for proof.