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Bond: "The Chinese have a saying: 'Before setting out on revenge, you first dig two graves'."
Melina: "I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!"
―James Bond and Melina Havelock[src]

Melina Havelock (Greek: Μελίνα Αβελοκ) is the fictional daughter of British marine archaeologist, Sir Timothy Havelock, and his wife, Iona, and a love interest of James Bond. Based on the character Judy Havelock from the short story For Your Eyes Only that is included in the eponymous anthology written by Ian Fleming, the Bond girl first appeared in the 1981 James Bond film of the same name, portrayed by French actress and model, Carole Bouquet. Melina would later to be appears in the comic adaptation of the film by Marvel Comics and was subsequently adapted for the 1983-87 tabletop role-playing game, James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Biography[]

Melina Havelock is half Greek, half British. She is the only daughter of Iona and Sir Timothy Havelock, two operatives working for the British Secret Service. She is brought in to help them as they are commissioned by the British Secret Service to investigate the sinking of an electronic surveillance vessel, the St. Georges, and to recover the ATAC (Automatic Targeting and Attack Communicator) transmitter, a device for controlling and coordinating the Polaris nuclear submarine fleet. However, the couple is killed to the coast of Albania and Greece while Melina visited them onboard the Triana, their yacht. Unable to but mourn the death of her parents, the young woman now swears revenge with their murderer.

Identifying the assassin as a Cuban hitman named Hector Gonzales through a private detective agency, Melina locates him at the villa he owns near Madrid, Spain, and goes there to exact her revenge. There, she assassinates Gonzales by shooting him with a crossbow as he is diving into his swimming pool, but is only able to escape (in her Citroën 2CV hire car) with the help of James Bond, who was also there to investigate Havelock's murder. Having seen a man (Emile Locque) paying Gonzales, she vows her quest for vengeance must go on, though Bond tries to warn her off.

Melina travels to Cortina when she is sent a fake telegram telling her Bond has met her parents killer and to meet him in Cortina. Melina has a lucky escape when Bond notices her, and stops her getting run over by a couple of Yamaha motorcycles. He eventually persuades Melina to go back to the Triana in Corfu and let him investigate. She agrees to do so, but not for long.

After Bond kills Locque, he heads back to the Triana where he finds Melina clearing the seabed working on a Temple her father was restoring. After looking through her father's logs, Melina tells Bond about a wreck that her father, Sir Timothy Havelock, had located.

Bond and Melina travel underwater to a depth well over 500 metres in their two man submarine Neptune, to this wreck, the St. Georges. During the disarming of the ATAC aboard the St. Georges, Melina's air hose is ruptured during a fight with a man in a JIM diving suit. Melina rushes back to the boat whilst Bond takes care of the impostor.

After dealing with a Mantis submarine sent by Aristotle Kristatos, who had previously employed Gonzales to kill the Havelocks for him, Bond and Melina return to the surface. Back on board the Triana, Kristatos is waiting and relieves them of the ATAC. After escaping from Kristatos in a unique underwater sequence, they head with Milos Columbo to Kristatos' mountain retreat where he is hiding and recover the ATAC.

After finally catching Kristatos, Melina insists on killing him, but Bond tries to stop her, telling her that she would be no better than Kristatos if she killed him. The decision proved irrelevant however, as Kristatos was knifed to death by Columbo while reaching for a concealed knife. After that, Bond and Melina are back on the Havelock's family boat where Melina says she would like a moonlight swim. Bond drops Melina's robe and she drops Bond's robe, and they go skinny dipping (nude swimming) together.

Alternate continuities[]

For Your Eyes Only (Marvel)[]

James Bond 007 (role-playing game)[]

Personality[]

Because of the Greek blood that runs through Melina's veins, she is always determined to track down the people who cause her parents harm as she tracked down and killed Gonzales before trying to kill Kristatos. She is always willing to take any to do justice in her own way. She is a determined, strong-willed, intelligent and courageous young woman who has a number of resources to achieve her goals. Cold and unrelaxed, she is also mysterious and charismatic and has proven to be a useful ally for both Bond and Columbo.

Behind the scenes[]

As the producers had seen the movie Flash Gordon (1980), they had originally wanted Italian actress Ornella Muti (Princess Aura) to play the role of Melina, having written it especially for her, while wanting actor Timothy Dalton (Prince Barin) to play the role of Bond and Chaim Topol to appear in the movie. While Mutti did not end up appearing in the film or any other in the series, Topol played Columbo and Dalton played Bond after the departure of actor Roger Moore. In addition, a draft of the script called for Melina to be the girlfriend of MI6 Agent 006, who was then to be assassinated at the beginning of the film. Dutch actress and model Sylvia Krystel was originally cast as Melina but was unable to join the shoot because she was shooting scenes for the film Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981). Bouquet was suggested to play Melina by Jerry Juroe, the publicist for the distributor of the United Artists series, and after seeing the actress in the romantic drama That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), director John Glen and producer Albert R. Broccoli went to meet her in Rome to offer her the role.

During filming of For Your Eyes Only it was found out that Carole Bouquet couldn’t dive as she had sinus problems. To create the close-up underwater scenes, slow motion film and fan machines were used. and Bouquet both wore diving masks and bubbles were added in by special effects to complete the scene

Gallery[]

Melina Havelock/Gallery

Trivia[]

  • The name "Melina" refers to the famous James Bond Girl Honey Ryder from Dr. No, as "Melina" is the Greek word for "Honey". Coincidentally, Honey also lost her father, who was allegedly killed by the titular antagonist, and was also a scuba diver.
  • Carole Bouquet had previously auditioned to play the James Bond Girl Holly Goodhead in the previous film, Moonraker, a role that eventually went to the American actress Lois Chiles.
  • The plot of Melina wanting to avenge the murder of her parents seems to be prefigured in the pre credits of the film where Bond kills his archenemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld to avenge the murder of his wife while the criminal mastermind was himself seeking to kill 007 to avenge the fall of SPECTRE.
  • Melina may have influenced Camille Montes from the film Quantum of Solace, who also sought revenge for the murder of her family by killing his murderer.
  • The poster for the film shows Bond standing between the bare legs of a woman implicitly supposed to be Melina, although these are not the legs of Carole Bouquet but those of American model Joyce Bartle. A similar case will occur for the poster of the film The Living Daylights, which presents the James Bond Girl Kara Milovy from behind, although it is not the actress Maryam d'Abo but the American model Kathy Stangel who poses on the poster. Both posters were among the most controversial of the franchise, with the For Your Eyes Only poster prompting conservative exhibitors and newspapers to superimpose longer shorts on Melina's legs so as not to shock the public.
  • Although Bond slept with Melina at the end of the film, he previously rejected the advances of Bibi Dahl, the protégé of Kristatos (probably because of her young age) while Carole Bouquet was only one year older than the actress Lynn-Holly Johnson (Bibi). It is therefore implied that Melina was significantly older than Bibi in the story. Roger Moore confirmed this by having stated in his autobiography that Bibi was only supposed to be 16 years old during the events of the film.

References[]

See Also[]

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