Girls in
Drum (1976)

"What Pam Grier was to blaxploitation movies, what Bruce Lee was to kung fu movies, what Burt Reynolds was to good-ol'-boy movies, Rainbeaux Smith was to cheerleader movies. She truly has, without trying whatsoever, a Marilyn Monroe quality. She doesn't look like Monroe at all; she just has that kind of vacantness. She's not so much acting as she is existing. Imagine Marilyn Monroe as kind of a '70s hippie junky, then you kind of have Rainbeaux Smith." -- Quentin Tarentino

And on this date in 2002, the remarkable beauty who loomed so ethereal that the world naturally called her “Rainbeaux” departed this mortal coil.

Learn more and mourn with Mr Skin after the jump.

It is overripe, it is perverse, it is in bad taste, and it is the kind of classic no one makes anymore because, really, who would dare?

And, oh yes, it is awesome.

The movie we celebrate is Mandingo, which erupted into neighborhood theaters nationwide on this day in 1975.

Mandingo deals with sexual relations between slaves and masters on a brutal plantation in the pre-Civil War American south as only a maniacally over-the-top masterpiece of hard-boiled movie-making can.

Get the complete skinny on Mandingo -- including loads of skinterracial sex -- after the cut.

A former Miss Teen Illinois Contestant dishes the skinny on her fellow pageant hopefuls (and even winners!) who went on to peel down on the silver screen.