One of the most neglected and underrated Hollywood films of its era, Richard Fleischer’s blistering 1975 melodrama about a slave-breeding plantation in the Deep South, set in the 1840s, was widely ridiculed as camp in this country when it came out. But apart from this film and Charles Burnett’s recent Nightjohn, it’s doubtful whether many more insightful and penetrating movies about American slavery exist. Scripted by Norman Wexler from a sensationalist novel by Kyle Onstott; with James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Richard Ward, Brenda Sykes, and Ken Norton.
