Buddy and Portia’s Story”

Posted on August 16, 2023 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

The Love Boat sets sail for season 3!

Episode 3.1 and 3.2 “The Alaskan Wedding Cruise: Carol and Doug’s Story/Peter and Alicia’s Story/Julie’s Story/Buddy and Portia’s Story”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on September 15th, 1979)

The third season of The Love Boat starts with a special voyage to Alaska and a two-hour running time. It’s double the guest stars, double the melodrama, double the goofiness, and double the romance! The opening also features new clips for Doc, Gopher, and Julie. Whereas the first two seasons introduced Doc listening to his own heartbeat, the third season opening features him laughing while leaning against a railing. Gopher’s new opening credit features him looking wistfully out at the ocean and it’s a much more mature look for him. As for Julie, she’s still smiling and perky but she’s let her hair grow out. If the first two seasons of The Love Boat featured Julie looking like the star of the high school drama department, she looks more like the most popular cheerleader now. As for the Captain, he continues to salute the camera and Isaac continues to do his signature pointing.

The episode opens in Canada. The boat is docked in Vancouver, where it has been rented out by a huge and wealthy wedding party. The boat will be sailing to Alaska. Isaac has been reading everything that he can find about Alaska and he spends most of the episode sharing trivia about the state’s history. Gopher, preparing for Alaska’s cold weather, buys a gigantic coat. Meanwhile, Doc Bricker makes jokes about his ex-wives and Capt. Stubing tries to keep everything professional. (“You’re not going to the North Pole!” he snaps at Gopher when he sees the size of his new fur coat.)

As for Julie, her mind is elsewhere. Alaska is where Jack (Tony Roberts) lives. Who is Jack? During the second season, he was a passenger who fell in love with Julie and who asked Julie to marry him. She knows that she’s going to see Jack in Alaska and she’s going to give him an answer as far as his proposal is concerned. (If you don’t remember Jack asking Julie to marry him, don’t feel bad. I had forgotten about it, too. Fortunately, the first hour of this episode is full of flashbacks to Jack’s previous episode.) Is Julie ready to settle down? While Julie tries to make up her mind, she also has to deal with the romantic intentions of the wedding party’s dorky best man (Donny Most).

As for the wedding party, Carol (Lisa Hartman) and Doug (Mark Harmon, sporting a truly unfortunate haircut) are looking forward to getting married, even though Doug’s ex-girlfriend (Caren Kaye) is also on the boat and determined to win Doug back. If that means jumping out a cake while wearing a bikini, she’ll do it. Doug is more concerned about the fact that his estranged, alcoholic father, Peter (Ray Milland) had turned up on the cruise despite having not been invited to or even informed about the wedding. Peter has stopped drinking and is trying to make peace with his son and his ex-wife, Alicia (Eleanor Parker). What Doug and Alicia do not know is that Peter is terminally ill. And what neither Doug nor Peter knows is that Alicia is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Carol’s plain-spoken grandfather (Lorne Greene) feels uncomfortable with all of the rich folks but then he meets Doug’s equally plain-spoken aunt (Audra Lindley). Could we be heading for a double wedding? It is The Love Boat, after all!

There aren’t really any big surprises on this episode but it’s likable nonetheless. For this episode, the crew and the cast actually sailed to Alaska and all the action was filmed during an actual cruise. The scenery is gorgeous, even if it’s obvious that the cast was frequently freezing while filming their scenes. By this point, the show’s regulars had their chemistry down perfectly and all of the 3rd season premiere’s guest stars are well-selected. I especially liked the performances of Lorne Greene, Audra Lindley, the great Ray Milland, and Tony Roberts. Julie and Jack’s reunion was far more touching that I think anyone would expect from a show like The Love Boat, with Tony Roberts playing the role of Jack so well that the viewer really did believe that, under different circumstances, he and Julie truly would have had a wonderful life together. This was a great way to start the third season.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 2.21 “Yesterday’s Love/Fountain of Youth”

Posted on May 9, 2023 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 1986. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Smiles, everyone, smiles! It’s time to take a trip to Fantasy Island!

Episode 2.21 “Yesterday’s Love/Fountain of Youth”

(Dir by George McCowan, originally aired on March 17th, 1979)

Tattoo has the hiccups so Mr. Roarke pops a brown paper bag beside his head and scares the Hell out of him. Tattoo loses his hiccups and Roarke get the joy of tormenting his assistant.

As for the fantasies, they both involve youth and aging.

Charles (Craig Stevens) and Peggy Atwood (Eleanor Parker) met in 1944, when he was in the Navy and she was a member of the USO. Now, over thirty-years later, Charles wants to open a bait shop and Peggy wants to get a divorce. Their children pay for Charles and Peggy to take a trip to Fantasy Island, where Mr. Roarke has recreated the period in which they first met. He’s also invited all of their old friends to come celebrate Peggy and Charles’s anniversary. Unfortunately, one of those friends is the totally arrogant Brick Howard (Guy Madison), to whom Peggy was engaged before meeting Charles. It quickly becomes apparent that Brick wants a second chance and that, unlike Charles, Brick has bigger plans than spending his retirement selling fishing bait.

Will Peggy leave her husband for Brick Howard? Or will she decide that running a bait shop sounds like a great way to spend her twilight years? You’ll have to watch the show to find out …. or you can read the next paragraph.

Of course, Peggy stays with Charles! It wouldn’t be Fantasy Island if the ending wasn’t a happy one. Add to that, when has anyone named Brick Howard not turned out to be a cad? As you can guess, this fantasy was a bit predictable but the cast of veteran actors were all likable and they gave it their all. This fantasy was simple but pleasant.

As for the other fantasy, world-famous explorer Jeff Bailey (Dennis Cole) needs money so Mr. Roarke arranges for him to be hired by aging millionaire J.J. Pettigrew (Lew Ayres). J.J. has heard rumors that the fabled Fountain of Youth can be found on an island near Fantasy Island. He offers to pay Bailey a million dollars if he can find it. Of course, Bailey does find the Fountain but he also discovers that the Fountain is guarded by a fierce tribe of headhunters. The headhunters have no intention of allowing anyone else to have any of the water’s fountain. The headhunters may be intimidating but they also believe that a polaroid camera can steal their soul. Bailey threatens to take all of their pictures at one point and tells them that J.J. possesses “white man magic.” Seen today, it’s a bit awkward to watch. To be honest, I imagine it was a bit awkward in 1979 as well.

Using his canteen, Bailey steals some of the water from the fountain but, while he and his girlfriend (Mary Louise Weller) are fleeing the natives, he loses the canteen. J.J. has a heart attack and appears to be dead but, at the end of the episode, Roarke announces that J.J. is expected to survive and he’s written Bailey a check for a million dollars. Bailey found the fountain and that was their agreement. So, I guess that all worked out.

Overall, this episode was uneven. The anniversary story was sweet but predictable. The headhunter story was sometimes cingey but still enjoyably campy. This was pretty much a standard episode of Fantasy Island. Still, I can’t help but wonder why J.J. didn’t just buy an eternal youth fantasy instead of hiring Bailey to search for the fountain. I guess that question is destined to be forever unanswered.

Next week’s episode is all about comedians and prisoners!

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island (dir by Richard Lang)

Posted on September 6, 2022 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 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Ah, Fantasy Island!

There have been several versions of Fantasy Island. In the late 90s, there was a version that featured Malcolm McDowell as the somewhat aloof owner of the island. More recently, there was a movie that featured Michael Pena as the owner of the Island and which tried to turn the whole thing into a horror franchise. It wasn’t very good. And right now, there’s a show on Fox that features Roselyn Sanchez as the grand niece of the island’s original owner. The Fox series is about to start its second season. It’s a bit silly, which is why I kind of love it.

And then there’s the Fantasy Island that started it all, the Aaron Spelling-produced series that ran from 1977 to 1984 on ABC and which has lived on in reruns and on streaming platforms like Tubi. Both the original series and all of its subsequent spin-offs took place on a mysterious tropical island where people would pay to live out their fantasies. In the original series, the island was run by Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban), who wore a white suit and encouraged everyone to smile whenever the guests arrived. Serving as Mr. Roarke’s second-in-command was Tattoo (Herve Villechaize), who was 3’11, always wore a matching white suit, and announced the arrival of the plane by ringing a bell and shouting, “The plane, the plane!” Of course, each week would bring in a different group of guest stars. They would come to the island with a fantasy and, hopefully, they would learn that reality was the only fantasy that they needed.

All seven seasons of the original Fantasy Island are currently streaming on Tubi. However, if you want to see the 1977 pilot film that started it all, you have to go to YouTube.

In many ways, the 90-minute pilot film feels like a typical episode of Fantasy Island. It’s interesting to see that the show’s basic premise and format was already set in stone when the pilot was filmed. (Pilots are notorious for often being dramatically different from the shows that they were created to sell.) The pilot opens with the plane arriving (and yes, from the start, Tattoo rings the bell and shouts, “The plane!”) and three guests meeting Mr. Roarke. Our three guest stars are Bill Bixby, Hugh O’Brian, and Eleanor Parker. Bixby plays Arnold Greenwood, a former war correspondent who wants to be reunited with Francesca (Sandra Dee), the woman with whom he fell in love during World War II. O’Brian is Paul, a famous big game hunter who wants to be hunted for once. Eleanor Parker is Eunice Hollander Barnes, one of the world’s richest women. She wants to fake her death so she can see who, from her life, would actually mourn her and who would just try to steal her fortune.

If the pilot’s format is the same as the series that followed, the general tone is somewhat different. Mr. Roarke is an almost sinister figure, one who doesn’t really seem to think much of his guests and who is quick to point out that no one gets a fantasy until they’ve paid him the required $50,000. (That’s $50,000 in 1970s money. I have to admit that when Mr. Roarke first mentioned how much the fantasies cost, I was like, “Hey, I could afford this place!”)

Consider the story of the hunter. Paul wants to be hunted because he’s suicidal. His real fantasy is to die. The night before Paul’s fantasy is to begin, Michelle (Victoria Principal) shows up at Paul’s room. Michelle explains that Mr. Roarke has hired her to provide Paul with companionship during the night. Unfortunately, Michelle ends up handcuffed to Paul and, as a result, she’s hunted along with him! Now, you could argue that Mr. Roarke did this to teach Paul to think about someone other than himself. But what if Paul hadn’t learned the lesson? Then Michelle would be dead too! What would Mr. Roarke do then? Just have Tattoo dump the bodies in the lagoon? “To hell with you, Roarke!” Paul yells and who can blame him?

And then there’s our war correspondent, Arnold. Arnold’s fantasy seems simple enough but then it turns out that the reason he lost contact with Francesca is because he murdered her! As a result of his fantasy, Arnold not only relives the first time he met Francesca but also how their relationship ended. The entire experience leaves Arnold laughing like a madman as his sanity slips away.

As for Eunice’s story, it’s pretty stupid. She dresses up like a maid so that she can listen to what people have to say about her once they think she’s dead. It’s like an episode of Undercover Boss. At least former Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford makes an appearance as Eunice’s husband. Eunice ends up far less traumatized than either Paul or Arnold but she still had to fake her death to come to peace with her life.

The pilot is entertaining. One can understand why it would lead to a series. The island is lovely to look at. Even with the somewhat sinister tone of two of the stories, it’s still impossible to watch the pilot without wondering what type of fantasy you would pursue if you went to the Island. For me, that’s always been the main appeal of all of the various versions of Fantasy Island. Still, it’s interesting that the fantasies themselves are less comforting than what I think many would expect on account of the show’s reputation. For all the criticism that Blumhouse received for their reinterpretation of Fantasy Island, they were not the first to imagine Mr. Roarke as being somewhat less than benevolent. Of course, when the actual series started, Mr. Roarke was a far friendlier host.

Next week, the series begins and hopefully, no further guests are traumatized to the point of catatonia.

Cleaning Out The DVR: An American Dream (dir by Robert Gist)

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Loosely based on a novel by Norman Mailer, the 1966 film, An American Dream, tells the story of Stephen Rojack (Stuart Whitman). Rojack’s a war hero, a man who has several medals of valor to his credit. He’s married to Deborah (Eleanor Parker), the daughter of one of the richest men in the country. He’s an acclaimed writer. He’s got his own television talk show in New York. He’s been crusading against not only the Mafia but also against corruption in the police department. He has powerful friends and powerful enemies. You get the idea.

He’s also got a marriage that’s on the verge of collapse. Deborah calls Rojack’s show and taunts him while he’s on the air. When Rojack goes to her apartment to demand a divorce, the two of them get into an argument. Deborah tells him that he’s not a hero. She says he only married her for the money and that she only married him for the prestige. She tells him that he’s a lousy lover. Being a character in an adaptation of a Norman Mailer novel, the “lousy lay” crack causes Rojack to snap. He attacks Deborah. The two of them fight. Deborah stumbles out to the balcony of her apartment and it appears that she’s on the verge of jumping. Rojack follows her. At first, he tries to save her but then he lets her fall. She crashes down to the street, where she’s promptly run over by several cars. The cars then all run into each other while Rojack stands on the balcony and wails. There’s nothing subtle about the first 15 minutes of An American Dream.

Actually, there’s nothing subtle about any minute of An American Dream. It’s a film where everything, from the acting to the melodrama, is so over-the-top and portentous that it actually gets a bit boring. There’s no relief from the screeching and the inauthentic hard-boiled dialogue. When a crazed Rojack starts to laugh uncontrollably, he doesn’t just laugh. Instead, he laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and …. well, let’s just say it goes on for a bit. It’s like a 60s version of one of those terrible Family Guy jokes.

Anyway, the police don’t believe that Deborah committed suicide but they also can’t prove that Rojack killed her. Meanwhile, within hours of his wife’s death, Rojack meets his ex-girlfriend, a singer named Cherry (Janet Leigh). Rojack is still in love with Cherry but Cherry is also connected to the same mobsters who want to kill Rojack. Meanwhile, Deborah’s superrich father (Lloyd Nolan) is also on his way to New York City, looking for answer of his own.

An American Dream is a very familiar type of mid-60s film. It’s a trashy story and it’s obvious that the director was trying to be as risqué as the competition in Europe while also trying to not offend mainstream American audiences. As such, the film has hints of nudity but not too much nudity. There’s some profanity but not too much profanity. Rojack, Deborah, and Cherry may curse more than Mary Poppins but they’re rank amateurs compared to the cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s an unabashedly melodramatic film but it doesn’t seem to be sure just how far it can go in embracing the melodrama with alienating its target audience so, as a result, the entire film feels somewhat off. Some scenes go on forever. Some scenes feel too short. The whole thing has the washed-out look of an old cop show.

All of that perhaps wouldn’t matter if Stephen Rojack was a compelling character. In theory, Rojack should have been compelling but, because he’s played by the reliably boring Stuart Whitman, Rojack instead just comes across as being a bit of a dullard. He’s supposed to be a charismatic, two-fisted Norman Mailer-type but instead, as played by Whitman, Rojack comes across like an accountant who is looking forward to retirement but only if he can balance the books one last time. There’s no spark of madness or imagination to be found in Whitman’s performance and, as a result, the viewer never really cares about Rojack or his problems.

Noman Mailer reportedly never saw An American Dream, saying that it would be too painful to a bad version of his favorite novel. In this case, Mailer made the right decision.

Rage in the Cage: CAGED (Warner Brothers 1950)

Posted on February 2, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

“In this cage, you get tough or you get killed” – Kitty Stark (played by Betty Garde) in CAGED

The Grandmother of all “Women in Prison” films, CAGED still packs a wallop, nearly seventy years after it’s release. This stark, brutal look at life inside a women’s penitentiary was pretty bold for its time, with its savage sadism and heavy lesbian overtones, and matches up well with BRUTE FORCE as an example of film noir prison flicks. Everything about this film clicks, from its taut direction by John Cromwell to the use of sound to create mood by Stanley Jones, plus a powerhouse mostly female cast led by Eleanor Parker .

The 28-year-old Parker convincingly plays 19-year-old Marie Allen, given a one-to-fifteen year sentence for accessory to an armed robbery during which her husband was killed. The mousey Marie is indoctrinated, given a number (Prisoner #93850), and poked and…

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Killer Christmas: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (ABC-TV Movie 1972)

Posted on December 18, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Four daughters reunite at the old family homestead during Christmas to visit their estranged, dying father. Sounds like the perfect recipe for one of those sticky-sweet Hallmark movies, right? Wrong, my little elves! HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, originally broadcast as part of ABC-TV’s “Movie of the Week” series (1969-1975) is part proto-slasher, part psycho-biddie shocker, and a whole lot of fun! It plays kind of like a 70’s exploitation film, only with a high-powered cast that includes Sally Field, Eleanor Parker, Julie Harris , and Walter Brennan, a script by Joseph (PSYCHO) Stefano, and direction courtesy of John Llwellyn Moxey (HORROR HOTEL, THE NIGHT STALKER).

Rich old Benjamin Morgan (Brennan) has summoned his daughters home on a dark and stormy Christmas Eve, claiming his second wife Elizabeth (Harris) is slowly poisoning him to death. Elizabeth was once ‘suspected’ of poisoning her first husband (though never proven) and spent some time…

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Embracing the Melodrama Part II #39: Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring (dir by Joseph Sargent)

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Way back in January, I was looking for something to have playing on TV in the background while I cleaned the house. I went from station to station until I finally came across a movie that I had never seen before. It featured a young-looking Sally Field wandering through a house that was full of stuffy-looking old people. She stepped out of the house and dived, fully clothed, into a swimming pool. Everyone in the house was shocked. Then, one abrupt jump cut later, a bearded David Carradine was hijacking an ice cream truck…

“What the Hell is this?” I wondered. Checking on the guide, I discovered that I was watching Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring, a made-for-television film from 1971. I put off the cleaning for thirty minutes so that I could watch the rest of the film.

(And, if you know how obsessive compulsive I am about keeping the house clean, then you know what a big deal that was for me.)

After watching the rest of the film on television, I rewatched Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring on YouTube. And I decided that I so wanted to recommend this film that I ended up launching Embracing the Melodrama Part II specifically so I’d have an excuse to write about Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring.

Sally Field, who was 25 when this film was first broadcast but looked and sounded much younger, plays Dennie Miller. After being raised in the oppressively conformist atmosphere of the suburbs, Dennie ran away from home and spent a year with her hippie boyfriend, Flack (David Carradine). As we learn from several flashbacks that are almost randomly spread out across the film, Dennie’s life with Flack largely amounted to panhandling and trying to avoid the police. Finally getting tired of living with the controlling Flack, Dennie waited until Flack was busy panhandling and then hitched a ride with a leering truck driver.

Arriving back home after being gone for a year, Dennie is welcomed back by both her father (Jackie Cooper) and her mother (Eleanor Parker). However, Dennie finds it difficult to readjust to her parent’s conformist life style. Meanwhile, her emotionally distant parents are uncomfortable with talking to Dennie about the previous year and instead, cho0se to act as if she never left. Dennie’s younger sister, Susie (Lane Bradbury), both looks up to and resents Dennie. Susie got used to a life without Dennie and now that Dennie has returned, Susie is forced back into the role of being the kid sister.

Meanwhile, Flack isn’t prepared to let Dennie go. Fully committed to both the idea of living a life separate from conventional society and to his own self-image as being the ultimate counter-cultural alpha male, Flack travels across California, intent on tracking Dennie down and convincing her to once again leave with him.

I loved Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring. While it is undeniably dated (as any 1971 film about hippies would be), it also touches on a lot of themes and issues that never go out of date. Whether it was the complicated relationship between Dennie and Susie or Dennie’s discovery that, as a result of her year spent on her own, all of her parent’s friends now view her as being somehow “damaged,” there is so much about Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring that rings painfully true.

And while Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring does not hesitate to point out the hypocrisy of Dennie’s parents and their friends, it’s equally critical of Flack and his countercultural posturing. In the end, you come to realize that Flack and Dennie’s father are actually two sides of the same coin. They’re both convinced that their way is the only way and that they — and they alone — know what is best for Dennie. In the end, Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring is less about mainstream vs. hippie and more about Dennie’s struggle to be an independent woman in a world that doesn’t value or appreciate female independence.

Maybe I’ll Come Home In The Spring is a good film and guess what? You can watch it below!