H.B. Haggerty | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1987’s The Last Fling! It can be viewed on YouTube and Tubi.

Phillip Reed (John Ritter) is an attorney who has never gotten married, despite all of his friends trying to set him up with single women. Even his law partner (Scott Bakula) worries about how Phillip’s love life is going. Phillip’s married best friends (Paul Sand and Kate Zentall) think that Phillip is scared of commitment. Phillip’s mother (Paddi Edwards) thinks he’s gay. Joanne Preston (Shannon Tweed) enjoys sleeping with him but she owns a lot of cats that make him sneeze. And since he’s played by John Ritter, you better believe that every sneeze is more dramatic than the last.

Gloria Franklin (Connie Selleca) is engaged to marry Jason Elliot (John Bennett Perry) but she worries that her rigidly controlled lifestyle has caused her to miss out on enjoying her time as a single person. When she finds out that Jason is going to go to Las Vegas for a wild bachelor party, she decides to have one last fling of her own.

Phillip and Gloria meet each other at the zoo. (Again, because Phillip is played by John Ritter, there are multiple shots of him making monkey noises while looking at the gorillas.) Gloria tells Phillip that her name is Marsha Lyons. Their meeting leads to Phillip and Gloria/Marsha spending the weekend in Mexico together. (A very young, pre-Saved By The Bell Mario Lopez shows up as the kid who gives them their renal car.) Despite an unseen mishap that causes their car to catch on fire, Phillip and Gloria spend a romantic night at a villa. When Phillip wakes up the next morning, he’s convinced that he’s finally found the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life. However, Gloria is already gone. She leaves behind a video confession, in which she tells Phillip that she’s going to be getting married.

Phillip returns to Los Angeles, determined to track down the mysterious Gloria and stop that wedding.

The Last Fling is an uneven romantic comedy. It starts out as an amiable and sweetly funny film, with both Connie Sellecca and John Ritter giving likable performances. But once Phillip returns from Mexico and starts searching for Gloria, it gets a bit too manic for its own good. Instead of being a funny movie about two human beings looking for love, it instead becomes a live-action cartoon with John Ritter running from one location to another while being chased by Gloria’s husband-to-be. The movie ends up getting so frantic that it actually becomes a bit annoying, which is a shame considering how things started. By the end of the movie, Phillip is so obsessive that it’s hard not to feel that Gloria would be better off just staying single and maybe spending the next weekend in Mexico with Scott Bakula.

The director of The Last Fling played Buzz in Rebel Without A Cause. Fortunately, no one plays chicken in this movie.

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, YouTube, Plex, and a host of other sites.

This week, Charo shows up but Tattoo doesn’t.

Episode 5.5 “Mr. Nobody/La Liberatora”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, originally aired on November 7th, 1981)

Once again, we have an episode the features only stock footage of Tattoo shouting, “The plane, the plane!” Otherwise, Herve Villechaize is not in this episode.

What excuse does Mr. Roarke come up with this week to explain Tattoo’s absence?

He’s hung over.

Seriously, that’s what Mr. Roarke goes with! He explains to Julie that Tattoo was up very late, helping another guest celebrate a drunken fantasy. It must be said that Ricardo Montalban seems to be quite amused to be labeling his sidekick a drunk. Apparently, Herve Villechaize was holding out for more money when this episode was shot and I’m guessing Tattoo being hung over was a “take that” on the part of the show’s producers. To be honest, it feels a bit petty.

It falls to Julie to help Charles Atkins (Sherman Hemsley) fulfill his fantasy. Charles is a short man who has been picked on by bullies all his life. He wants to feel strong and confident. Julie gives him a potion that she thinks will give him “inner strength” but — whoops! — instead it turns Charles into the world’s strongest man. As Roarke admonishes Julie for not being specific when she ordered her potion, Charles embarks on a wrestling career. Can Charles defeat Sampson Smith (H.B. Haggerty), the most savage wrestler in the world? Or will he instead fall in love with Sampson’s publicist, Carrie Wilson (Vernee Watson) and realize that true strength comes from inside? We all know the answer. A more important question is whether Mr. Roarke will ever be foolish enough to let Julie handle a fantasy again?

This fantasy was nothing special. The comedy was a bit too broad, though I did like the heartfelt performances of both Sherman Hemsley and Vernee Watson. The main problem is that the whole thing hinged on Julie screwing up in a way that really didn’t make any sense. Surely, she would have been smart enough to make sure she had the right potion before giving it to Charles. I mean, not being careful with your potions sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Surely, Mr. Roarke would have kept a closer eye on his goddaughter as she handled her first fantasy ever. Poor bumbling Julie doesn’t really work as a sidekick. The show suffers without Villechaize’s snarky attitude.

Villechaize’s absence means that we also miss the chance to see him acting opposite Charo and that just seems like a crime against pop culture. I have to admit that I was a little worried when I saw Charo’s name in the opening credits, largely because I thought she would be playing her silly Love Boat character. Instead, Charo plays a world-famous guitarist named Dolores DeMurica, whose fantasy is to go back to the days of Spanish California and meet her ancestor, the famous El Lobo Rojo. (El Lobo Rojo is basically Zorro but if Fantasy Island’s producers weren’t going to give Herve Villechaize a raise, they certainly weren’t going to pay for the rights to Zorro.)

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Charo’s fantasy. There was a lot of swashbuckling action, Cesare Danova and Alex Cord both gave good supporting performances, and Charo seemed to be energized by playing a character who, while comedic, was not quite as silly as The Love Boat‘s April. Charo actually gave a pretty good performance here and the entire fantasy was fast-paced and fun to watch. It would have been even more fun if Tattoo had shown up but it was not to be.

This episode was a mixed bag, with one forgettable fantasy and one entertaining fantasy. In the end, both fantasies would have been better with Tattoo.