Blaxploitation Education: Melinda

Blaxploitation goes noir, which only makes sense

Melinda
Written by Lonne Elder III
Directed by Hugh A. Robertson
1972

It seems like crime was the focus of many Blaxploitation movies, but I don’t know how many of them would be considered noir. The definition of that genre can be kind of slippery, but it often features characters delving into a shadowy underworld and trying to uncover answers about mysteries that get darker and darker the more they search. Melinda seems to fit that definition, with a main character who is generally pretty upright getting involved in increasingly dirty situations as he tries to get to the bottom of a mystery.

At the start of the movie, we’re introduced to Frankie J. Parker, played by the smooth-voiced Calvin Lockhart, who we previously saw as the preacher/con man villain of Cotton Comes to Harlem. He’s a radio DJ in Los Angeles who has a very high opinion of himself. The first thing he says in the movie as he’s looking in the mirror as he gets changed for a karate training session is, “I hate to say this, but I am such a pretty motherfucker.” He spends his time on air extolling his virtues, describing himself as “the mind tripper, the mighty dipper, and the honey dripper…your messenger of enlightenment! After me, who remembers Aristotle? Listen to me with my baaaad, humble self!”

However, as conceited as he is, Frankie J has a good side. Even though he brushes off a request by his sensei (Jim Kelly in his first film role, who would go on to co-star alongside Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and play a martial arts badass in several other Blaxploitation movies) to promote the community center where he takes karate lessons, he encourages his listeners to send in donations to keep the center running. He’s willing to defy his boss’s orders and promote charitable causes because he knows he’s so popular that he won’t face any consequences.

Frankie’s self-regard also leads him to get very friendly with a woman he sees sitting alone at a local nightclub, since he’s sure that she’ll want to spend time with a smooth, sexy cat like him. This turns out to be the titular Melinda (Vonetta McGee, previously seen in Blacula), who is a bit reticent but quickly succumbs to his charms. He takes her to a private party held on the yacht of the club’s owner, a former football player named Tank (Rockne Tarkington), where he runs across his former girlfriend, Terry (Rosalind Cash), who doesn’t seem to be too happy about his womanizing ways. When they get a private moment, he tells Terry that he still loves her, but he feels like she wanted him to be some sort of weak, pliable guy who she controlled (he uses an unfortunate anti-gay slur here, which was all too common at the time), and it’s clear that he’s too proud to feel like he’s submissive. Perhaps he’ll soon find the opportunity for personal growth?

When Frankie takes Melinda back to his place, a bachelor pad that features lots of rugs and pillows with leopard and tiger skin prints, as well as many large portraits of himself, we see that they’re being followed. And as they start to get it on, the guy trailing them sneaks up and listens outside the apartment door, apparently getting a lot of pleasure out of what he’s hearing. Unfortunately, when Frankie leaves Melinda alone the next day to take care of some business, he returns to find her dead.

So that’s where the plot kicks in, with Frankie trying to track down Melinda’s killers and figure out why she was targeted for murder. His quest leads him down a number of rabbit holes as he learns that Melinda was the girlfriend of a powerful figure in the Chicago underworld, a guy named Mitch (Paul Stevens) who also happens to be the primary financier of Tank’s nightclub. When she left Mitch, she took something important, but she hid it before she was killed, so Mitch has sent a variety of thugs to find it and get it back. Frankie ends up enlisting Terry to help him, leading them to reconnect as he decides that he loves her. He also confronts Tank for his apparent treachery, with the latter appearing increasingly pathetic as he repeatedly gets beaten up by people on all sides of the conflict.

It all leads up to a confrontation between Frankie and Mitch, and there’s a big action finale that’s kind of on the goofy side. Frankie ends up enlisting Jim Kelly and the rest of the karate class to ambush Mitch’s men and beat them up, and while that’s entertaining, it’s a bit of a departure from the hard-boiled crime caper we had been witnessing up to that point. But it does lead to a striking final scene in which Frankie despairs after learning that he won’t be able to prove Mitch’s complicity in large-scale crimes, so he snaps and beats the hell out of Mitch with a dead-eyed expression on his face, only stopping when somebody else pulls him away to keep him from committing murder.

This all makes for a pretty good noir mystery, punctuated by acts of violence and an increasing sense of corruption as Frankie delves into the criminal underworld. As a guy who had previously cared mostly about himself, he learns about the darkness of the culture around him and develops more depth to his character and a better understanding of how hard it is for good people to prevail against the forces of oppression.

With these movies, I’m always interested to see how they explore the concerns of the Black community. This one doesn’t have a huge focus on Black people standing up to the Man, but it does feature some moments of recognizable oppression. When Frankie comes home to find Melinda dead, he reacts in shock, barely able to comprehend what he’s seeing, and that might be why he doesn’t even say anything when the police show up and immediately handcuff and arrest him. He does get a bit of his swagger back when he’s being interrogated at the police station, refusing to answer questions without his lawyer and implying that a Black officer is an Uncle Tom for trying to apologize for the actions of his white compatriots.

Later, as Frankie is trying to find the item that Melinda had hidden, Terry volunteers to impersonate Melinda to gain access to a safety deposit box in a local bank. When the people at the bank give her a lot of trouble, asking for multiple forms of ID and even calling the hotel where Melinda had been staying to confirm her identity, she snaps and starts yelling at them about this treatment, saying that they would never treat a white woman this way. It’s partly a way to throw off suspicion and just get to her goal, but it’s also a realistic expression of frustration that has come from the constant microaggressions that she has experienced as a Black woman in American society.

The ultimate reveal of what Mitch was searching for is the biggest example of racist oppression featured in the movie. It turns out he had masterminded a plot to assassinate a Black man who was about to be elected leader of a prominent union, and Melinda had secretly taped him discussing the scheme with the businessmen who had hired him. When it turns out that the tape didn’t actually contain anything incriminating, it makes sense that Frankie would explode out of frustration, since it’s clear that nothing is going to change, and powerful white men are going to be able to continue to hold Black people down while facing little in the way of consequences.

This movie sits in a slightly awkward position, caught between the Blaxploitation trend in which Black heroes prevail over oppression and the particularities of the noir genre, which usually involves downbeat endings in which morally compromised characters fail to make much of a difference. While Frankie does get to display some growth and achieve some sense of justice for the death of a woman he cared about, he’s ultimately unable to do anything about the social forces that led to the situation. It’s an acknowledgment of the harsh realities of life for Black people, although there’s at least a little bit of hope that Frankie and Terry can begin to build a happy relationship in the future. Maybe that’s the best outcome that one could realistically expect.

Blaxploitation Education index:

UpTight
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Watermelon Man
The Big Doll House
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Super Fly
Buck and the Preacher
Blacula
Cool Breeze