Jess Franco's MANDINGA

Racist, blaxploitation or just Eurotrash?

Before it was made by an Italian director, this was a Jess Franco project initiated after the US produced MANDINGO (1975) proved to be a reasonably successful item. Talk about exploitation!

Alain Petit tells the story in THE MANACOA FILES: Franco and his small cast and crew were to shoot in Montpelier, France. The director left equipment and cast members in a chateau and went to Italy to secure co financing from Sefi Cinematografica [Eurocine was co-producing in France]. In the meantime the French police showed up when called to resolve the unpaid hotel bill. They questioned Franco's staff and William Berger (who was to play the white slave owner) reported that the police then confiscated/impounded some equipment. Franco disappeared and the film was not completed. Berger also states in his interview in OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO that a significant amount of footage was shot. Set in the mid 19th Century deep South,  Lina Romay is cast of a slave woman who is raped by Berger's plantation owner, she gives birth to a daughter, also played by Romay.. The daughter is then raised as a white woman. Petit speculates that up to 45m of film may have been shot. That story may be more interesting than the film itself if it was completed. Certainly the 1976 Mario Pinzauti film of the same title is as sleazy, racist and offensive as exploitation gets. A trashy mixture of sadism, blaxploitation and sexual torture. 

Franco also attempted to produce a thriller (L'ASSASSIN PORTAIT DE BAS ) simultaneously with the MANDINGA shoot, utilizing the same cast and crew (minus Berger) and locations. It was also left undone in the wake of the financial chaos and police raid.