Jennilee Harrison | 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 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!

This week, we start season 5 of The Love Boat!

Episode 5.1 and 5.2 “The Expedition/Julie’s Wedding/The Mongala/Julie’s Replacement/The Three R’s/The Professor’s Wife”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on October 10th, 1981)

The fifth season of The Love Boat opens with a two-hour spectacular. Our Love Boat crew is in Australia, where they will be guiding The Sea Princess on a voyage through the South Pacific. It’s a bit odd to start off a season of The Love Boat on a different boat but I guess the plan was to show off all the different ships that sailed for Princess Cruise Lines. This episode was actually shot on the boat during a cruise. It’s interesting to see how different the Sea Princess is from the show’s usual location. It has nicer hallways than the Pacific Princess and a much larger lobby. However, I prefer the relative privacy of the Pacific Princess’s multi-level dining room to the wide open space provided by the Sea Princess.

Captain Stubing, Gopher, Isaac, and Doc are shocked when Julie does not board the ship. She’s been on vacation with her boyfriend, Tony (Anthony Andrews), for the last few months. Tony lives in Australia so, really, it shouldn’t be too hard for Julie to make it to the ship. Instead, a substitute cruise director named Yvonne (Delvene Delaney) shows up. Doc and Gopher are happy because it gives them a new co-worker to lust after. Captain Stubing is upset because Julie has sent them all a letter in which she explains that she will be marrying Tony and retiring to the animal habitat where he works. She asks Stubing to give her away and she invites Vicki to be a bridesmaid. Gopher, Isaac, and Doc will be ushers.

Doc is briefly distracted from chasing Yvonne when he spots Barbara Carroll (Michelle Phillips) boarding the boat. However, Barbara has eyes for Ralph Sutton (Patrick Duffy), a rancher who is blind without his glasses. Unfortunately, that means that he can’t read the love letter that Barbara wrote him. Because she wants Ralph for herself, Connie Walker (Jennilee Harrison) lies about what the letter says. *GASP* (Don’t worry, it all works out.)

Meanwhile, an expedition headed by shady Deke Donner (Jose Ferrer) goes to an island and captures a hairy man (Patrick Ward) who they believe is the Mongola, a.k.a., the missing link! (Wait, what?) They hide the ape-man in the ship’s cargo area (huh?) and try to keep anyone else from learning that they’re transporting a living thing. Everyone acts like he’s a caveman but it’s kind of obvious that the Mongola is just a confused guy with a beard. Dr. Jill McGraw (Donna Dixon) falls in love with the Mongola, much to the consternation of her colleague, Dr. Barry Mason (Gary Frank). Meanwhile, Deke’s old friend, Prof. Milo Ender (Harry Morgan), is stunned to discover that the Mongola has a vaccination scar. Milo’s wife, Vivian (Katherine Helmond), encourages Milo to keep the secret to himself so that they can at least make some money off of the Mongola. (Like, seriously, what the Hell is even going on with this story?) Milo agrees, though it doesn’t seem to occur to him that, if he could notice the vaccination scar, then pretty much anyone could notice the vaccination scar. Eventually, the Mongola gets loose from his cage and jumps overboard. “He’s shark food,” Deke says. (What in the name of God is going on here?) However, the Mongola apparently survives because the police are waiting to arrest Deke as soon as the ship docks in Australia.

But what about the wedding!? you’re saying. Well, the wedding doesn’t happen. It nearly happens. Julie shows up at the church. However, Tony finds out that he’s going to die in a month or two so he leaves Julie at the altar. Julie flies back to Los Angeles with the rest of the Love Boat crew.

Seriously, this is the most morbid episode of The Love Boat that I’ve ever seen.

Still, morbid or not, it’s an entertainingly weird episode and the Australian and New Zealand scenery is lovely to look at. (As with all of the two-hour episodes of The Love Boat, there’s a lot of travelogue padding.) There’s something oddly appealing about seeing the usual Love Boat shenanigans mixed in with a story about the Missing Link and Julie discovering that the love of her life is terminally ill. I mean, the song isn’t lying. The Love Boat really does promise something for everyone.

I mean, in the end, we all know that Julie couldn’t get married because then she’d have to leave the show and that wouldn’t happen until Lauren Tewes’s cocaine use became a problem during the seventh season. Tony could either cheat on her or he could die. (Better he die than do what almost every man does at his bachelor party.) The episode ends with Tony still alive so I guess the show’s writer were leaving their options open. Maybe Tony will make a miraculous recovery, who knows?

Myself, I’m just happy that the crew is back together. It’s time to set sail …. again!

Having absolutely nothing to do with either of the Curse films that preceded it, Curse III: Blood Sacrifice takes place in South Africa during the 1950s. American Elizabeth (Jenilee Harrison) has just married plantation owner Geoff Armstong (Andre Jacobs) and is still struggling to adjust to living in Africa. When her sister, Cindy (Jennifer Steyn), comes over for a visit, she and Elizabeth stumble across what appears to be a native ceremony. When they realize that the local witch doctor is about to sacrifice a goat, Cindy steps on and grabs the goat. Not happy at being interrupted and needing to make a sacriice to atone for an earlier murder, the witch doctor places a curse on Elizabeth and her entire family. Later, a rubbery fishman stalks the plantation, using a machete to kill every colonialist it comes across.

Curse III is the best of the Curse films, though that may not be saying much. The film is largely a standard slasher with a super natural twist, right down to the first victims being horny teens. However, both the setting and the 1950s time period make the film slightly more interesting than the usual 90s, direct-to-video horror fare, with the curse being the result of a cultural misunderstanding and many of the victims too blinded by their own prejudices to realize how much trouble they are in. Making what would turn out to be both his first and last film as a director, acclaimed editor Sean Barton showed that he knows how to put together an effective “stalking” scene, wringing out all the atmosphere that he could from that plantation. Best known for co-starring in the later seasons of Three’s Company, Jenilee Harrison is adequate if not particularly memorable in the lead role but the film is, not surprisingly, stolen by Christopher Lee, who plays a local doctor and who lends Curse III whatever gravitas it may have.