Jenny Neumann | 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 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.

Oh my God, this week’s episode….

Episode 4.18 “The Searcher/The Way We Weren’t”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on March 7th, 1981)

This week’s episode was just silly and it’s going to be a struggle to even come up with the usual 500 words to say about it.

Fred Cooper (Jerry Van Dyke) is worried that married life is losing its spark so he wants to relive the early days of his marriage to Dottie (Laraine Stephens). After going through a magic time travel cloud, Fred and Dottie find themselves living in their old house, which they share with Fred’s aunt. Their neighbors are Vic (Jack Carter) and Myra Fletcher (Dawn Wells). Vic is Fred’s boss. He and Myra are also swingers! Apparently, Fred forgot about that but I have to wonder how anyone would forget that? Anyway, Vic offers Fred a promotion but only if Fred will allow Vic to sleep with Dottie. Fred responds by punching Vic out while Vic is hosting a Swingers Convention on Fantasy Island. (Tattoo must have been very happy this week.) Vic realizes that he was in the wrong and Fred still gets his promotion. But is it a real promotion or just a fantasy promotion? Seriously, what the Hell is going on here?

Meanwhile, young heiress Karen Saunders-Holmes (Laurette Spang) comes to the island with her husband, Brian (James Darren). Brian thinks that they’re just on their honeymoon but Karen actually has a fantasy. She wants to be reunited with her father, a man named Noah who supposedly abandoned her when she was an infant and whom she has never met. Mr. Roarke arranges for Noah (Paul Burke) to be released from prison for the weekend and….

PRISON!? Yep, Noah is a convicted murderer and has spent the last two decades in a prison camp. Noah claims that he was innocent of the crime. Anyway, Mr. Roarke introduces Noah to Karen and Brian and says that Noah will be their guide on the Island….

Brian freaks out! It turns out that Brian is actually the man who Noah was framed for murdering. Brian went off and got plastic surgery after faking his own murder, which is why Noah doesn’t recognize him. But Noah soon learns the truth when Brian tricks him into entering a bog of quicksand!

Does Noah survive the quicksand? He does but we’re never told how. Does Brian then freak out and run into the quicksand as well? Of course. Fantasy Island is such a dangerous place!

This was a silly episode. Brian apparently not only had plastic surgery to change his face but also to reduce his age because there was no way he was old enough to a contemporary of Noah’s. And for the swinger’s convention on Fantasy Island …. I mean, what? Mr. Roarke is suddenly okay with a big key party on his Island? How do you forget that you used to live next door to a swinging couple? Like I said, this was just silly. One fantasy features Jerry Van Dyke being way too goofy and the other features James Darren being way to obviously sinister. Neither worked.

So far, the fourth season has really been a mixed bag, hasn’t it? Hopefully, things will improve next week.

It’s pledge initiation night at Generic University! Four students are hoping to join the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity and its sister sorority. Denise (Suki Goodwin) is English and never goes anywhere without a supply of quaaludes and a flask of Jack Daniels. Seth (Vincent Van Patten) is the blonde jock, who wants to spend the entire night hooking up with Denise, despite the fact that Denise keeps calling him, “Wes.” Jeff (Peter Barton) is the sensitive rich kid who fears that the only reason he’s getting into the fraternity is because of his family’s money. And Marti (Linda Blair) is the girl from a poor family who works on cars during her spare time. In order to pass the initiation, they have to spend the night in deserted Garth Manor.

However, they won’t be alone in Garth Manor. The president of the fraternity, Peter (Kevin Brophy), is planning on spending the entire night playing pranks on them. Helping him will be his girlfriend, May West (Jenny Nuemann) and his nerdy best friend, Scott (Jimmy Sturtevant). Unfortunately, what Peter did not realize was that the four pledges are all smart enough to know that he’s going to be trying to scare them. As a result, they just ignore his best efforts to make things creepy.

Of course, what none of them know is that the legend of Garth Mansion is actually true. As Peter explains at the beginning of the film, it has long been rumored that Mr. Garth murdered his entire family, except for his horribly deformed son Andrew. They say that Andrew still lives in the mansion, waiting for a chance to attack and kill all trespassers…

And that’s pretty much exactly what happens!

But you know what? For a relatively straight forward slasher film from 1981, Hell Night is not a bad film at all. In fact, with its relative lack of gore, nudity, and painfully stupid victims, it can probably be argued that Hell Night is a slasher film for people who don’t like slashers. Hell Night emphasizes atmosphere over easy shocks and actually devotes some time to characterization. Even if the majority of the characters are familiar horror film types, you still care about them. Even poor Denise, who has the thankless role of being the sexually independent girl who you know is doomed from the minute she first appears on screen, gets a few good lines.

(Plus, the film opens with a costume party so, of course, all of the outfits are to die for!)

One of the things that really made Hell Night effective is that the characters are not idiots. They don’t just stand around waiting to be picked off. At first, they just assume that any and all strangeness is a result of Peter trying to scare them. When it becomes obvious that Andrew Garth is alive, one of them manages to escape the manor and goes straight to the cops. And how do the cops react? They tell him that they’re tired of dealing with drunk frat boys and order him to go home, adding to the hopelessness of the situation.

(But, honestly, if some random guy told you that a deformed monster was trying to kill him, would you believe him?)

Hell Night is full of scary atmosphere, clever lines, and good acting. As far as early 80s slasher movies go, it’s one of better examples of the genre.