I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The most interesting thing about DRUM are the fight scenes (of course), but there are far too few (and they're far too short) to hold one's attention for long. Once again we have Ken Norton playing, well, Ken Norton. The filmmakers toss in just about every tawdry twist they can conceive, but it doesn't necessarily make the movie any more watchable; it's bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation for the sake of bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation, nothing more. More's the pity: Norton showed some potential as an actor. As a fighter, he made the most of a golden opportunity when he broke Muhammad Ali's jaw in their first fight. Although Norton didn't come close to winning the second or third fights (all 3 are on YouTube; check them out for yourself), he gave a good account of himself. Boxers gave him trouble (Ali, Jimmy Young and Larry Holmes handily out-boxed him), as did real punchers (George Foreman, Earnie Shavers, and Gerry Cooney all but decapitated him en route to easy knockout wins and he passed on a rematch with Foreman and heavy hitters like Ron Lyle and Joe Frazier were never on his list of folks to fight). He's gone, now, but he's in good company. As boxing trainer/commentator Teddy Atlas recently put it: "They've got a heck of a stable Up There."

Drum (1976) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Considering how much I hated Mandingo I was really expecting to hate this sequel but it actually wasn't too bad. A white woman has an affair with a slave and gets pregnant. Twenty years later the child, Drum (Ken Norton), is sold to a slave owner (Warren Oates) where he trains other slaves to do various jobs. Everything is going fine until the slave owner's young daughter starts exposing herself to the slaves and eventually she cries rape even though she's the one doing the stuff. This here leads to an incredibly violent ending where the slaves stand up against their white owners. Director Steve Carver is best known for his exploitation films like Big Bad Mama and various other blaxploitation flicks but he does a very good job here and unlike the previous film, this one here actually tries to tell a story and manages to get some good performances by Norton, Oates and Pam Grier who plays one of the bed whores. The exploitation level is trimmed down in this film, which is one reason why it works better, although the ending crosses a very close line but thankfully doesn't cross it. Lesser direction would have probably gone for cheers when the slaves revolted but Carver does a great job in keeping things low and doesn't go for the cheap exploitation.

Nobody should take this review seriously because all I know of Drum is the cast and the plot.Any movie that had Ken Norton in the lead invites this sort of criticism.Supposedly this movie is the sequel to Mandingo. Didn't Ken Norton die at the end of Mandingo? Doesn't that kind of prohibit him from being in the sequel apart from flash backs and such?Okay.Warren Oates plays the part Perry Kind had in Mandingo. At least one reviewer insists that this is okay because the story takes place 15 years later.Well, if one character returns as his unrelated but identical twin, what the heck.I understand that this movie is by turns realistic, sick, funny, has too much nudity, has not enough nudity . . . Folks, back up. This movie has Ken Norton in the lead. Does anything else need to be said? Anyone who takes it seriously deserves what they get.

Drum, in my opinion, was much more enjoyable than Mandingo. It's more an action film than a drama. Ken Norton gets to say more dialogue, even though he's still no actor. The big plus for Drum is that it's not as long as Mandingo. The cast delivers very bizarre performances, including John Colicos as Drum's evil gay ex-boss, and Warren Oates does well as Hammond Maxwell, although he doesn't have the same wickedness that Perry King portrayed him with in the first film.The final showdown, with the battle between black slaves and rich white people, plus the burning mansion, goes to show that there were some slaves in those days who were mad as hell and weren't gonna take it anymore!Rating: ***