Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Episode 4.20 “Delphine/The Unkillable”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, Originally aired on April 11th, 1981)

For our first fantasy, Dr. Paul Todd (Randolph Mantooth) is a paleontologist who feels that the first life on Earth was silicon-based and that the missing link lives underneath a volcano on Fantasy Island.  He comes to the Island with his girlfriend, Liz (Annette Funicello) and his assistant, Kyle (Alex Cord).  With Roarke’s weary approval, they head off to the volcano to search for proof of Todd’s theory.

And they do find proof!  After Kyle attempts to sexually assault Liz, she falls through a crevice and finds herself in the lair of …. well, it appears to be someone who is waring a rubber suit but Paul and Kyle are convinced that they’ve found their silicon man!  (Kyle attempting to force himself on Liz is seemingly forgotten.)  The Silicon Man appears to be immortal, which proves to be a bit of problem when it decides to carry of Liz.  But then the Silicon Man falls in a pool of lava and dies so I guess he wasn’t immortal.  At the end of the show, Tattoo suggests that the The Silicon Man was made of lava and that’s why he was vulnerable to it but …. what?

Mr. Roarke doesn’t seem to be that worried about the Silicon Man or the fact that one of the island’s volcanoes is spewing lava.  He’s more concerned with his goddaughter, Delphine (Ann Jillian).

According to Roarke, Delphine is the daughter of one of the Island’s oldest families.  She has spent the last few years off the Island, working as an assistant for a magician named The Great Zachariah (Carl Ballantine).  Delphine’s secret is that she actually does have magical powers!  She’s the one who does all of Zachariah’s tricks for him.  However, Delphine now wants to marry Greg (Don Galloway) and she doesn’t want him to know that she can move stuff with her mind and make people materialize out of thin air.  Her fantasy is to lose her powers.

Zachariah, not happy about the prospect of losing his assistant, comes to the Island and teams up with fortune-telling Madame Cluny (Doris Roberts) to trick Delphine into revealing her powers and driving Greg away.  Myself, I’m not really sure I understand why her magic powers would be a deal-breaker.  I mean, Delphine can literally do anything!  And, as we see in this episode, she only uses her powers for good.  Why would Greg have a problem with that?

On the plus side, Ann Jillian (who starred in another show that I reviewed on this site, Jennifer Slept Here) gives a good performance as Delphine and it’s easy to imagine an alternate version of the show where she played Roarke’s sidekick.  On the negative side, the rest of the show and both of the fantasies are just silly and never make any sense.

This was not a memorable trip to the Island.  Seriously …. silicon?