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.’
“I had to hold my breath for a minute and a half as I was supposed to be dead. I could have used a stunt double at that point. After we shot the scene, Yul said to me, ‘Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!’”
He said his characters died onscreen more than 25 times.
In perhaps his signature role, Novak portrayed the sharpshooter Stick — named for the matchstick he keeps in his mouth — in Game of Death, the martial arts classic that started filming in 1972 but not released until 1978, five years after Lee’s death.
Clouse had directed Novak in Black Belt Jones (1974) before taking him to Hong Kong for seven weeks to film scenes for Clouse’s cut. His role greatly expanded once they started work on the picture, he noted.
Milan Mrdjenovich was born in Pittsburgh to Serbian parents on June 16, 1934. He said he passed on 60 scholarship offers to play football in college to sign a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but an injury to his rotator cuff ended his hopes of playing baseball for a living.
In California, he did some modeling and took acting classes while working as a bodily injury claims adjuster for an insurance company, and he played a Nazi in the Jerry Lewis comedy Which Way to the Front? (1970) and a hitman on a 1973 episode of CBS’ Mannix, starring Mike Connors.
Also in the ’70s, Novak appeared as a doctor in Jonathan Kaplan’s Truck Turner (1974), starring Isaac Hayes and Yaphet Kotto; as a murderous chauffeur in Cat in the Cage (1978), starring Sybil Danning; and as an announcer in his first film with Norris, A Force of One (1979).
He then portrayed an assassin in another martial arts movie directed by Clouse, Force: Five (1981), featuring Richard Norton.
Later, the sartorially splendid Novak played a bodyguard protecting boxer “Gentleman Jim” Corbett in Tom Horn (1980), starring Steve McQueen, and worked for director Garry Marshall — they had played softball together — in Exit to Eden (1994) and Dear God (1996).
His big-screen résumé also included Lovely but Deadly (1981), Family Reunion (1989), Vampire Assassin (2005) and Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance (2015), where his character is also fond of a matchstick in his mouth (though here, they are colored to match his suits).
His memoirs, titled Cross Heirs, will be published in December, his daughter said.
Survivors include another daughter, Lea, and his grandchildren, Ali and Ryan. His grandson Eli died of cancer in 2024.
Novak also was an ordained minister who helped out on skid row, in missions and in jails around Los Angeles and in penitentiaries throughout the country for nearly four decades. Many of those he counseled had seen him in Game of Death, he noted.
“My acting career has enhanced my prison ministry,” he said in an interview for the 2016 book Redeeming the Screens. “I am typecast as a villain in many films. This gives me identity with those behind bars.”