We’re back with another blaxploitation flick today. This one is 1972’s Melinda, one of a series of unrelated films in the genre named after a woman.
This one’s a little different, though. Unlike Coffy, or Cleopatra Jones, or even Abby, Melinda isn’t the main character here.
In fact, (SPOILER) she gets killed about a third of the way into the narrative. On top of that, Melinda isn’t even her real name!
Our main character here is actually a handsome, narcissistic, hedonistic Los Angeles deejay named Frankie Parker who bears a surprisingly coincidental amount of resemblance to a handsome, narcissistic, hedonistic New York deejay who later moved to Los Angeles—Frankie Crocker.
It seems that Melinda had secret recordings that could get some very powerful people in major trouble.
This, of course, is similar to starlet Christa Helm, who was rumored to have some interesting recordings that went missing after her still unsolved murder in 1977, nearly five years after this movie was made. At the time of her death, Christa Helm had been recording an album produced by…Frankie Crocker.
In yet another bizarre connection to Christa Helm, actor and stunt man George Fisher shows up as a bad guy in Melinda. Fisher also went on to playing a bad guy in Christa Helm’s unreleased epic, Let’s Go for Broke, filmed the following year. Weird!
Vonetta McGee is in the title role and continues to show up in flashbacks throughout the picture. She’s pretty and she’s a good actress who went on to do more mainstream work in films like Clint Eastwood’s The Eiger Sanction.
It’s the second female lead here, Rosalind Cash, who gives a more nuanced performance than her character even calls for. She was another excellent actress who ended up starring on a soap for many years before dying while only in her ‘50s.
Leading man Calvin Lockhart could have and probably should have become an A-list star. He was that good an actor and had movie star quality to spare. Unfortunately, he also developed an early reputation of being demanding and unreliable. That’s the kind of thing a major star can get away with, but not someone just climbing the ladder. So, Lockhart was reduced to giving first class performances in second or third-class pictures.
The U.S. martial arts craze hadn’t begun yet when Melinda was made. It began when the Shaw Brothers’ Five Fingers of Death became a surprise urban hit the following year. This picture marks the early debut, then, of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon co-star, Black Belt Jones himself, Kentucky’s own Jim Kelly! Kelly is shown in the beginning to be Frankie’s friend and martial arts teacher, foreshadowing a later development in the plot.
Rockne Tarkington, memorable from the Saturday morning kids’ serial Danger Island from just a few years earlier, gets both some fun scenes with half-naked actresses and some bloody scenes where he gets beaten to within an inch of his life.
The pre-requisite white villain is, for a change, not so much a racist as he is just out to protect is murderous secrets from being revealed. Paul Stevens, another soap star with a perfect mix of charm and gravitas handles that role.
The score, credited to singer Jerry Butler, is nothing special but there is an amusing gag where one of Butler’s songs for the film is introduced by a deejay over the radio.
All in all, Melinda gives the viewers a B-movie plot with some A-list actors. As an action film, it’s actually kind of slow much of the time. In the end, it’s the performances of the stars that make Melinda both watchable and enjoyable. That and, for some of us, the crazy weird coincidental connections to the Christa Helm case.
Includes theatrical trailer.
Booksteve recommends.
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