Some prominent critics hail the film, including the "New York Times" columnist Dave Kehr, who called it "a thinly veiled Holocaust film that spares none of its protagonists," further describing it as "Fleischer’s last great crime film, in which the role of the faceless killer is played by an entire social system." Director Quentin Tarantino has cited "Mandingo" as one of only two instances "in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie", comparing it to "Showgirls".