Watermelon Man (1970) was Melvin Van Peebles' Hollywood directorial debut. Godfrey Cambridge stars as a bigoted white middle class family man named Jeff Gerber who's luck and perfect white sterile life is about to change. One day, he wakes up as a black man. This comes as a shock not only to him but his wife. His children (untouched by racism) don't even seem to care. But the neighbors and his "friends" don't like it one bit and ostracize him from the community. As we go through the picture we witness Jeff's change in attitude and ethics. He loses his family and friends and eventually his high paying job. Jeff learns to accept his change and uses his knowledge to help those in his new community.

Melvin Van Peebles took a lot of flak from his Studio company for not making a "happy ending". Mr. Van Peebles felt that their was no reason and that his movie ended on an up note. I feel the same way as well. How else could have you ended this movie? There was no other way. My only gripe with this movie was the goofy make-up job they did on Mr. Cambridge. They slathered him in peach colored body paint. Other than that nit pick, I loved this movie. Melvin Van Peebles is another one of your most underrated directors that you'll ever come across. His body of work has been sadly neglected by the viewing public.

Highly recommended.

It's hard to imagine that this film was made by the same guy who made "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (Melvin Van Peebles). After all, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" was the most incredibly amateurish and badly made film I have ever seen--and I am not exaggerating. It was WORSE than even the Aztec Mummy and Luchador films I've watched--not THAT'S bad! Yet somehow, with "Watermelon Man" you have a reasonably professionally made film that is thought-provoking and fun. How did he do this--is this the result of some sort of Faustian bargain?! That's the only way I can understand how radically different the two films are.

Now the first thing I should point out that this is NOT a subtle film. Godfrey Cambridge's character and performance are loud...but also pretty funny as well. He plays a racist jerk of a WHITE guy--and they use a lot of makeup to make the very black Cambridge look white--and he did a good job with this. However, one morning I guess karma catches up with him, as he wakes up black!! And I am not talking a bit black--this is Godfrey Cambridge black!! His wife (Estelle Parsons) is NOT pleased but both think perhaps it is some sort of medical condition that will pass. You have to see this film to see what happens next--and I especially love what happens to his character by the end of the movie! This is a smashing criticism of white middle-class America in 1970. Insightful, brash and sure to make you laugh. It's well worth seeing. Oh, and by the way, the little girl in the film is played by Erin Moran--later from "Happy Days".

Melvin Van Peebles must have loved Finian's Rainbow with its Senator from the glorious state of Missitucky turning black to see how the other half lives. But what was done with some whimsical humor in that classic musical, Van Peebles give us with a sledgehammer in Watermelon Man.

Godfrey Cambridge whom I remember so well from his stand up bits on the Ed Sullivan Show stars in Watermelon Man about a self satisfied average white guy, wife and two kids and a nice house in the suburbs who one day wakes up and he's black. A shock to his wife Estelle Parsons although the kids Scott Garrett and Erin Moran seem to react with a certain equanimity. Not so everyone else he's known and worked with. Watermelon Man was at the start of the Seventies the era of black films. It's laced with humor, but also bitter irony as Cambridge who once was as blasé in his racism as everyone else really gets a dose of comeuppance.

I remember back in those late Sixties Cambridge had a bit in his comic act about a watermelon in an attaché case symbolizing as he called 'the New Negro'. From that the germ of the idea for Watermelon Man must have started. He had a good career starting in films and died too soon.

Look also for Howard Caine as Cambridge's boss in the insurance agency where he worked in a really good part and a pair of actors from the old days of the black cinema in some bits, Eddie Anderson and Mantan Moreland. A nice bridge between the old and new.