Union concrtsl ptennsci
Those who like to feel
the earth move under their
feet while listening to the
music will get two chances
to indulge their preference
this week.
Two free outdoor
concerts wiil be presented in
the Sheldon Sculpture
Gardens on. the UN-L
campus at 12 and R Streets
by the Nebraska Union
Summer Concerts
Committee.
The Bluegrass Crusade
will appear Wednesday at
7:30 p.m. and on Friday at
7:30 Koko Taylor and her
Bules Machine will perform.
In 1974, Bluegrass
Crusade was the first place
winner at Bill Monroe's
Second Annual Rocky
Mountain Bluegrass Festival
Band concert. The local
group has also played with
bluegrass masters Doc
Watson, Bill Monroe, Jimmy
Martin and Ralph Stanley.
Members of The
Bluegrass Crusade are Steve
Hanson on five-string
banjo, Gary Howe on
Mandolin, Dave Fowler on
fiddle, John Ingwerson on
guitar and Oave Morris on
string bass.
The Bluegrass Crusade
describes their music as that
originally played by and for
the working people of
America farmers, coal
miners and steel workers. .
They feature accoustic
music with fast
instrumental and two or
three-part high-pitched
singing.
Koko Taylor, featured at
the Friday concert" began
her performing career with:
gospel music in southern
churches. She has appeared
in the Montreux Jazz
Festival and on the Public
Broadcasting Service .
program Soundstage.
GASLIGHT MELLERDRAMMERS PRESENTS
"On tbo Bridge at OidnigM"
Showtime 9:00 PJ.1.
Admission:
Wednesday and Thursday ............ . $1.50
Friday and Saturday. $2.00
Kids ona half pries on Wednesday and Thursday. 20
advance tiiccount to groups over twenty.
322 So. 9th
T
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I
S
V
E
E
'Mandingo 'shallo w
Review by Greg Lukow
Mandingo is one movie that seems to have
worked hard at gaining its reputation as a
perfectly awful movie.
Yet people are going to it. The film is almost
worth suffering through since the sheer, over
whelming gall of it is- not so much appalling as it
is fascinating. Mandingo is two hours of bigotry
in search of a plot; infested with liberal doses of
sadism, incest, violence and inter-racial, soft-core
porn. The characters, however, are so cartoonish
and the offensiveness is so pervasive that no one
can really be offended. Blacks in an audience just
seem to revel in or hiss at different moments of
idiocy than whites do.
The story takes place sometime before the
Civil War in a decaying white man's kingdom
called Falconhurst, a southern plantation that
looks darker, bleaker and emptier than Tara did
after the Yankees ransacked it.
The neighborhood veterinarian examines a
young black, virgin and tells her she's just in
heat. What she needs is "white meat."
Cantabile banjo music and slow camera
movements across the lush backwoods foilage
give the opening sex encounters a silly lyricism as
the plantation owner's son, the resident "white
meat", prepares to oblige.
The movie's most civilized performance comes
from Falconhurst's rheumatic ole messah, James
Mason (who has recently lost his pert, English
mein and started looking like an aginy Bsla
Lugosi). Perry King is the son, Hammond. His
total activities are divided between providing
stud service for black females and turning a
brawny, amiable black named Mede (played by
boxer Ken Norton) into a professional wrestler
killer. .
Hammond fulfills some kind of southern,
inter-family agreement by marrying Susan
George, a petticoated nympho who never learned
that southern belies were supposed to be heard
and not obscene.
At George's unrequited passion rises (watch .
for the scene where she fondles the bedpost), the
movie heads straight for her big seduction scene
with Mede; another dry run under the guise of a
lot of grunting and groaning. Hammond learns of
the affair when the plantation's new heir turns
out to be the wrong color. Shock after shock
piles up and one wonders what .additional,
sadistic kicker the movie can come up with next.
With the boiling water-pitchfork-rifle ending, in
which Hammond wrecks vengeance on Mede, it
finds one.
Mandingo was directed by Richard Fliescher,
a B director making A pictures and the reigning
Hollywood shockmeister (his last films have
included Soylent Green, The Don is Dead, and
Mr. Majestyk).
Don't film makers wince when they have to
shoot some of the scenes in a movie like this?
Objections to comparatively innocent stereo
types like Stephin' Fetichit or Butterfly
McQueen - pale beside his racial - quagmire.
Evidently, to somebody's way of thinking,
pushing the material to this extreme legitimizes
the subject and gives it some kind of convoluted,
no-holds-barred, "seriousness". .
Actors certainly don't have to worry about
their performances in a film like Mandingo.
They're all so grotesquely played that nobody
notices. Perry King's schizoid Hammond, is the
only character with any honest feelings of love
(even if he doesn't recognize or admit them) yet
ultimately his manical fury against Mede makes
him the movie's villain. If Mandingo, like last
year's The Klansman, was any kind of coherent
statement to make it's that the South may have
lost its old, genteel, plantation ideology, but has
retained an even uglier, liberal brutality.
For once, unfortunately, a film has lived up to
its exploitative advertising. Expect the Savage,,
the Shocking, the Sensual. But do you reaily
expect the truth? Ugghh. .. .
Swim Suits
Sandalsy
Halters
WslTEfc) BED CO. J
OF felNCOLHs
1032 "F' St. (I
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Student Union
Barbershop
call 472-2459 for an appointment
lower level Student Union
NEBRASKA UNION
Summer Concerts Committee
Presents
FREE OUTDOOR CONCERTS
THE BLUEGRASS CRUSADE
Wednesday, June 18-7:30 p.m. '.'.v
KOKO TAYLOR and her
BLUES MACHINE
Friday, June 20-7:30 pjr.. .
SHELDON SCULPTURE GARDENS
r " - - - - n n rnnirui--
AT WEST VAN DOftN
NEAR PIONEERS PARK
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V&F Cffafcf.
r southern
Famous
Live music Beer Dress comfortably
-for nesonfations Call 435-4393
p2S3 8
summer nebraskan
tuesday, june 17, 1975