Mel Novak, the great movie villain known for his slick turns as the sniper Stick in Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, the gangster Blue Eyes in Jim Kelly’s Black Belt Jones and the informant Tony Montoya in Chuck Norris’ An Eye for an Eye, has died. He was 90.
Novak died Wednesday of natural causes at a hospice facility in Granada Hills, his daughter Nikol Conant told The Hollywood Reporter.
In a career that spanned seven decades, the charismatic Novak did lots of his own stunts, as in The Ultimate Warrior (1975), starring Yul Brynner and Max von Sydow. That was one of the four films he made with Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse.
In his death scene for that post-apocalyptic adventure, “They covered me with peanut butter and sunflower seeds and then put 40 live rats on me,” Novak recalled in a 2018 interview. “I told their trainer, ‘If one of them bites me, I’ll bite you, and a human’s bite is worse than a rat’s bite.’
Sofia, 35, shared her story after the sudden death of her husband, Alex, five months ago. “I was broken when this happened, and I’m still mourning my loss,” she wrote. Alex, who was 45, had two sons from his previous marriage to his ex-wife, Natalie . Sofia explained that the boys “treated their dad like an ATM,” but she didn’t interfere with Alex’s parenting….
