Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.5 “Roarke’s Sacrifice/The Butler’s Affair”

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, Roarke is haunted by a past love.

Episode 7.5 “Roarke’s Sacrifice/The Butler’s Affair”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, originally aired on November 12th, 1983)

This is an odd episode. Both of the stories deal with love. In one of them, Lee Meriwether plays a woman who is in love with her butler, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. She comes to Fantasy Island with a group of friends, all of whom are very judgmental about the idea of Meriwether dating a member of the help. Mr. Roarke deals with the situation by threatening to reveal all of their secrets. He explains that he does a thorough background check on everyone who comes to Fantasy Island. I’m not sure if I buy that because some really bad folks have come to the Island. Anyway, this story ends with Zimbalist starting to loosen up and Meriwether saying that she was going to continue to train him to be her boyfriend once they returned to the mainland. I’m not sure if this is so much a love story as much as it’s a “I want to have sex with someone who I pay so they can’t ever say no” story.

The other story is a bit more interesting. Julie Mars (Cyd Charisse, who I adore) is a dancer who walks with a cane. It turns out that she and Roarke have been in love for years and the implication is that Roarke spent time with her off of the Island. This is really a big deal. It goes against everything that has always been implied about Roarke in the past. Roarke never leaves the Island, that’s what we believed. It turns out we were wrong. He’s not only left the Island before but he’s fallen in love. Julie’s fantasy is to be able to dance again. Roarke grants her fantasy and Edmond Rome (Cesar Romero) wants to puts her in a show. Roarke knows that the only way Julie can continue to dance is if she forgets the love that she has for Roarke. That doesn’t quite make sense but Roarke just goes with it. She leaves the Island, acting as if Roarke is just a friendly acquaintance as opposed to being the love of her life.

That was sad! What made it especially sad is that Roarke doesn’t really have anyone to talk about all of this. Tattoo was close enough to being an equal that Roarke could open up to him. Lawrence is just a butler. Some people confide in their butler. Some people — as seen in this very episode — fall in love with their butler. Roarke, however, is lost without Tattoo.

Poor Roarke!

Hot Shots! (1991, directed by Jim Abrahams)

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

There are a lot of reasons why it’s hard to take Top Gun seriously but, for me, the biggest problem is that I’ve seen Hot Shots! Directed by Jim Abrahams, Hot Shots! does for Top Gun what Airplane! did for disaster movies.

Charlie Sheen plays Topper Harley, the hot shot Navy Pilot who is haunted by the death of his father. (“I’ve even got my father’s eyes,” Topper says before revealing that he carries them around in a cigarette case.) Topper has left the Navy and is living in a teepee with the Old One. Command Block (Kevin Dunn) asks Topper to return to the Navy to take part in Operation Sleepy Weasel. Topper puts on a leather jacket and hops on a motorcycle. The Old One tells Topper to pick up some batteries for his walkman.

Cary Elwes plays Kent Gregory, who says that Topper is not safe in the air. Valeria Golino plays Ramada, the psyciatrist who helps Topper deal with his father issues. Jon Cryer is Washout, who has wall-eyed vision. Kristy Swanson is Bo, the only female pilot. William O’Leary is the pilot who has the perfect life and wife but who everyone calls “Dead Meat.” And finally Lloyd Bridges is Admiral Tug Benson, who has never successfully landed a plane and who has suffered and recovered from almost every war wound imaginable. Tug is clueless but he loves America and his admiral’s hat.

Hot Shots! is one of the better parody films to come out in the wake of Airplane! Charlie Sheen’s limitations as a dramatic actor actually made him a good comedic actor and Cary Elwes does a decent Val Kilmer imitation. Some of the jokes have definitely aged better than others. In 1991, Valeria Golino singing on a piano automatically brought to mind Michelle Pfieffer in The Fabolous Baker Boys but does anyone remember that film (or that scene) in 2025? (The 9 1/2 Weeks scene is even more of a distant memory to most but Valeria Golino is so appealing in those scenes that most viewers — well, most male viewers — won’t mind. In this case, the parody is far more successful than the original.) Hot Shots! is at its best when imitating Top Gun‘s kinetic, music video-inspired style. The mix of quick-cut editing and ludicrous dialogue is hard to resist. After watching Charlie Sheen dance on his motorcycle and Cary Elwes explain what a chafing dish is for, it’s hard to take Top Gun seriously ever again.

Who Is The Black Dahlia? (1975, directed by Joseph Pevney)

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1947 Los Angeles, the body of 22 year-old Elizabeth Short is discovered in an empty lot. Short, who was nicknamed The Black Dahlia because she always wore black, was an aspiring actress who was violently tortured before being chopped in half. Her murder remains one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved crimes.

In this made-for-television movie, Ronny Cox and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. play the two detectives who are assigned to investigate Short’s murder. Though they struggle to find any clues identifying who could have killed Short, they do learn about her life and how she went from being a naïve innocent who came to Hollywood with stars in her eyes to being a hardened and cynical woman who may have been supporting herself through sex work when she was murdered. The film makes use of frequent flashbacks, in which Elizabeth Short is played by Lucie Arnaz. Her friends and acquaintances are played by familiar television faces like Henry Jones, Mercedes McCambridge, June Lockhart, Brooke Adams, Donna Mills, and Tom Bosley. Also be sure to keep an eye out for Sid Haig, playing a tattoo artist.

What Elizabeth Short went through over the course of her short time in Hollywood was probably too graphic to be put on television in the 70s but this movie still does a good job of recounting the basic facts of her life and murder. Because the film is based on fact, no one is ever arrested for Short’s murder. The only suspect is a doctor who turns out to have an alibi. The movie instead focuses on Short trying make it in Hollywood and discovering that it’s a cruel town. Lucie Arnaz was far better than I was expecting in the role of Elizabeth and brought a lot of vulnerability to the role. The film ended with a title card, asking anyone who had information about the murder of Elizabeth Short to call the LAPD. The case remains open to this day.

Hollywood Babylon: TOO MUCH, TOO SOON (Warner Brothers 1958)

Posted on December 13, 2018 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Hollywood biopics are by and large more about their entertainment value than historical accuracy. TOO MUCH TOO SOON is no exception. It tells the story of actress Diana Barrymore, daughter of “The Great Profile” John, based on her 1957 best-selling tell-all, and though it pretty much sticks to the facts, many of them have been sanitized for audience consumption. Dorothy Malone , fresh off her Oscar-winning role in WRITTEN ON THE WIND, is very good indeed as Diana, whose true life was much more sordid than fiction, and we’ll get to all that later. What makes the film for me was the actor portraying the dissipated John Barrymore – none other than Errol Flynn !

Errol Flynn (1909-1959) as John Barrymore

Don’t expect to see the dashing star of CAPTAIN BLOOD and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD here. Flynn (who a year later would release his own tell-all book, MY…

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