an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon", giving it a "zero star" rating. Richard Schickel of Time magazine found the film boring and cliché-ridden. Leonard Maltin ranked the film as a "BOMB" and dismissed with the word "Stinko!" Critical re-evaluation In the years following the film's initial release, the reception of the film became more favorable. The Chicago Reader writer Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in 1985 that Mandingo is "One of the most neglected and underrated Hollywood films of its era [...] it’s doubtful whether many more insightful and penetrating movies about American slavery exist." Movie critic Robin Wood was enthusiastic about the film, calling it "the greatest film about race ever made in Hollywood." The New York Times columnist Dave Kehr called it "a thinly veiled Holocaust film that spares none of its protagonists", further describing it as "Fleischer's last great crime film, in which the role of the faceless killer is played by an entire social system." The film has also been the subject of scholarly praise for its handling of race. In 1996, director Quentin Tarantino has cited Mandingo and Showgirls as the only two instances "in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie". In Tarantino's film Django Unchained (2012), the terminology of "Mandingo fighting" was inspired by the 1975 film. Sequel Drum, the sequel to Mandingo, was released the following year. Released by United Artists, it was once again produced by Dino De Laurentiis. Ken Norton, Brenda Sykes, and Lillian Hayman were the only actors from the first film to return for the sequel. Norton and Sykes played different characters, and Hayman returned in the role of Lucretia Borgia. Warren Oates took over for Perry King in the role of Hammond Maxwell. The story is set 15 years after the events of the first film. See also List of films featuring slavery References Further reading External links Josh Olson on Mandingo trailer at Trailers From Hell 1975 films Blaxploitation films American boxing films 1970s English-language films Films about American slavery Films based on American novels American films based on plays Films directed by Richard Fleischer Films set on farms Films set in the 1840s Films shot in New Orleans Films about interracial romance Paramount Pictures films Films based on adaptations Films produced by Dino De Laurentiis Films scored by Maurice Jarre Incest in