Melody Anderson

We're leaving the grime mystery world behind and stepping into canon's lighter side with an action comedy adventure that kind of plays like a live-action Saturday morning cartoon.

Our next movie is 1986's Firewalker, directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Chuck Norris and Louis Gossett Jr., with Melody Anderson along for the treasure-hunting ride as well.

This one's basically two broke adventurers, one mysterious map, and a jungle crawl toward a legendary stash of gold in canon's action-comedy-adventure play on Indiana Jones.

Sort of.

I think it's the movie Ted that got it in our head, man.

But it is directed by Mike Hodges and stars Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon, Max Van Sadow as the Emperor Ming, Melody Anderson as Del Arden, and Timothy Dalton, yeah, that's right, James Bond himself as Prince Baron, with music performed by Queen.

I was actually shocked to learn that that was Queen that did the Flash...

Oh, I had always known that.

He's got an iconic soundtrack.

Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, We're doing Dave.

Flash Gordon, my friend.

So this would have been in your wheelhouse completely.

Sam J. Jones was a dark haired fellow.

They had his hair bleached blonde and then Melody Anderson was a blonde and they had her hair bleached brown.

So I don't really know why.

Why they did that,

Now, one film that has a creative style that doesn't let it down, because it knows exactly what it is and it plays to it, is Flash Gordon.

The adaptation of Alex Raymond's comic book hero to the big screen by Mike Hodges had Sanjay Jones in the iconic lead role, Melody Anderson as Dale Arden, Topol as Zarkov and Max von Sydow as Ming.

It's gloriously over the top.

It's beautifully colourful.

As I say, a very long and varied career indeed.

In the show, as you heard in the intro, he is assisted by police detective Brooke McKenzie, played by Melody Anderson, these days best remembered for being Dale Arden in the 1980 Flash Gordon, and his friend Ty Earl, played by Glenn Turman in the pilot episode and Michael D. Roberts in the rest of the series.

Also as a recurring character is Rennie Stantone as Lieutenant Nick Riviera, no relation to the doctor on The Simpsons, by the way, who doesn't know Chase's secret but keeps getting involved in his various adventures.

Now, Manimal's big selling point was Chase's powers to transform into different animals.