Made as a sequel to the controversial Mandingo made only a year prior, 1976's Drum is basically a major studio exploitation picture. Mandingo was in many ways too, but it had to it at least a veneer of gloss and a certain pedigree to its casting that at least gave it some more credibility than this sequel.

The picture beings in New Orleans where the titular Drum (Ken Norton) wins a nasty fight against another black man named Blaise (Yaphet Kotto), overseen by the madam of a brothel, Marianna (Isela Vega), who just so happens to be his mother. Drum is a man of mixed racial heritage. He doesn't know that Marianna, a Caucasian, is his mother or that his father is an African royal with whom she had a fling years back. A slave girl named Rachel (Paula Kelly) raised the baby as her own to help Marianna avoid a scandal, though there's more to Rachel's relationship with the madam than may first seem apparent. After the fight, a French man named DeMarigny (John Colicos), who owned the slave that Drum just beat, makes a move towards Drum. Without wanting to spoil the insanely trashy opening salvo this one fires, things quickly get out of hand before DeMarigny can make his move but there are a lot of female breasts and some ‘sinister' gay voyeurism involved.

From here we shift to Falconhurst, the plantation featured in Mandingo, where Hammond Maxwell (Warren Oates taking over for Perry King who played the part in that earlier film) is now basically in charge of everything. Drum and Blaise were both purchased by him and is now in his service. Meanwhile, Hammond and his daughter Sophie (Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith) do what they can to enjoy life while Augusta Chauvet (Fiona Lewis) does what she can to get closer to Hammond, while he has more of a taste for a slave woman named Regine (Pam Grier), who Drum has also got the hots for. Evidently the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree as Sophie is also aroused by all of the male slaves that the Hammond family keeps, essentially hopping into bed with them at any given opportunity. As Drum gets accustomed to his new digs he strikes up a friendship with Blaise, who coaxes his new friend into helping him stage an uprising against their white masters timed to coincide with a gala affair Hammond intends to through.

This one is a trash-film lover's delight. Oh sure, it tries to layer on character development and things like… story but for the most part this is just an excuse for people to fight and screw for about two hours. This one has it all: high fallutin' southern dialogue, a ridiculously over the top gay villain, interracial sex, testicular injury and ball ripping mayhem, whippings, shootings, fights and loads of nudity. It's as if the producers took what little redeeming qualities Mandingo had and tossed them out the window before distilling that film's sleazy elements down to its exploitative essence. It's a terrible film by pretty much all standards, the decent production values, costumes, locations and sets can't hide that, but it is ridiculously entertaining if you're in the right frame of mind and can appreciate just how base its pleasures really are. The movie has even got loads of completely tasteless bad comedy thrown into the mix, all of which seems completely out of place and stands in stark contrast to whatever sort of social message may or may not have been intended at some point during the writing of the script.

But what of the acting? Well, way too much of this movie depends on Ken Norton to emote, and he doesn't really seem to be able to do much of that. He handles himself well in the action scenes and he's handsome and beefy enough that we can understand why the ladies like him the way that they do, but he just doesn't have any range. Compare this to Warren Oates, who seems to have no problem going as over the top as the story wants him to and who would seem to have been enjoying himself here. Oates is a talented actor with some legitimate classics on his resume, and while this isn't one of them he does at least make the best of a bad situation. Smith is fun to look at but her part is pretty vacant and Pam Grier isn't given any more to do in that regard either. John Colicos plays his terribly written stereotype like a lunatic while Yaphet Kotto tries to redeem himself but just can't quite pull it off. It's all pretty ridiculous, a complete misfire of a film.

Drum debuts on Blu-ray from Kino in a 1.85.1 widescreen transfer presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Though there are some minor white specks here and there, that's about it as far as print damage goes, the image is typically very clean and nicely detailed. Colors are reproduced very well, this is quite a colorful movie in terms of the locations and the costuming employed in the picture, and that comes across well. Black levels are nice and deep and both texture and detail are nicely upgraded from what a standard definition DVD would have provided. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and there are no issues to note with any trace of either edge enhancement or noise reduction. This is, for the most part, quite a strong picture.