Set in the 1850s Southern United States, the film follows Cassy and Luke, two black slaves who are sold to the sadistic plantation owner MacKay.

He added: Amazingly, the Theater Guild, which usually has an eye for good drama, is behind the thing, but Wednesday's huge audience at the Fox, almost entirely black, did not seem to be.

Vilanch did, however, praise the performances of Davis and Warwick, the latter of whom was deemed "a very stylized singer who shows that her talents may not be confined to Burt Bacharach's arrangements.

Only Dionne Warwick (Boyd's angry, alcoholic mistress who dresses African style) manages to keep her dignity intact and rise above it all.

[10] in The New York Times, Vincent Canby described the film as "a kind of cinematic carpetbagging project in which some contemporary movie-makers have raided the antebellum South and attempted to impose on it their own attitudes that will explain 1969 black militancy.

He added: The movie, which was produced by the Theater Guild, is the first to be directed by Herbert J. Biberman, the blacklisted Hollywood director, since he made the controversial Salt of The Earth in 1954.