An early blaxploitation thriller gets a Blu-ray upgrade from the Warner Archive Collection
Warner Bros. has been steadily trickling out their impressive blaxploitation catalogue (which includes assets procured from other studios) onto Blu-ray, with recent titles including Hit Man and Three the Hard Way, both previously covered in The Archivist. The lesser known 1972 title Melinda, originally produced by MGM and previously released on Warner Archive DVD, is the latest to get the upgrade.
Marketed to audiences as as “your kind of black film”, Melinda is a hard boiled LA thriller with elements of murder mystery, revenge, and even martial arts action.
Frankie J. Parker (Calvin Lockhart) is a swanky radio DJ who meets and quickly becomes infatuated with Melinda (Vonetta McGee), a ravishing and mysterious beauty. Their chance encounter gives way to a brief whirlwind romance, but the next day, Melinda is brutally slain in his pad – making him the #1 suspect.
Frankie sets out to unravel the mystery of Melinda, a woman he just met and knew almost nothing about – if that’s even her real name. Melinda must’ve been wrapped up in something dangerous, leading to her untimely death. And from the way his apartment was trashed, it seems clear they were looking for something. Helping him in his quest are an ex-girlfriend (Rosalind Cash) motivated by a mix of concern and jealousy, and his karate instructor (newcomer Jim Kelly).
When Melinda came out, Lockhart was already established as an early arriver to the blaxploitation scene, having starred in Halls of Anger and played a supporting role in Cotton Comes to Harlem, both released in 1970. He’s in good form here, a strutting peacock of a man who starts the film far too in love with himself to have enough left over to share with a woman.
Vonetta McGee is utterly entrancing as Melinda, earning the title role even though her screentime is sadly limited. But it’s Rosalind Cash’s character Terry Davis who actually emerges as the female lead, and she’s a reliable presence as always. Jim Kelly is a little stiff in his debut, but still charming and enjoyable to watch, and sporting his signature afro. You can see the hints of his screen charisma, which would more fully emerge almost immediately after this – his next movie was the all-time classic Enter the Dragon, a breakout role which launched his career as a movie star (though the progression is an illusion; Enter the Dragon was shot before Melinda).
Like most films in this genre, this one is a bit scuzzy, a tale of crime and punishment, love and betrayal, sex and death, and guns and karate. There’s a general sense of mean-spiritedness and hard attitudes permeating almost every interaction, even in sparring conversations between friends – not to mention a thread of misogyny, including from (heck, mostly from) our protagonist. Sex scenes obviously aren’t unusual for this genre, but the nature of them here – one a flashback to a gang rape, and the other depicting a voyeur secretly listening through a door while masturbating – are in somewhat lurid taste.
Melinda‘s finale features a memorable showdown with some pretty remarkable elements: Terry, kidnapped, is encaged in a menagerie full of venomous vipers and gila monsters, and Frankie turns the tables, backed up by his entire karate dojo to fight the bad guys.
Coming from the earlier vanguard of the genre, Melinda is a slightly less stylized and more grounded than more famous blaxploitation films that followed, and, like other early examples form the genre, helmed by a black director, Hugh A. Robertson. After the genre took off, more sensationalized films would be made by white directors like Jack Hill, Larry Cohen, Jonathan Kaplan, and Arthur Marks – and no disrespect, because I love and gravitate to those movies – but these earlier examples of the genre, made predominantly by black creators, are a little purer, and hit a little different.
The Package
Melinda is new on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, and served up in their usual Blu-ray format: a simple blue Elite case featuring original poster art and a simple black spine, and a factory-pressed (not MOD) disc.
Special Features and Extras
The Blu-ray includes a trailer (2:49), which is appears to be scanned from a full-frame 1.33 print (the movie itself is cropped to 1.85, which is how it appears on this Blu-ray). The trailer is in SD but doesn’t look bad, aside from the washed out colors.
Get it at Amazon: Melinda Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray
