Tag Archives: Julie Sommars

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.22 “My Fair Pharaoh/The Power”

Posted on 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.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Fantasy Island goes to ancient Egypt!

Episode 3.22 “My Fair Pharaoh/The Power”

(Dir by George McCowan, originally aired on May 10th, 1980)

This week, Mr. Roarke welcomes two people with two very different fantasies.  Neither one of their fantasies really make much sense but you know Mr. Roarke.  He’s going to give the people what they want, unless he takes some sort of personal dislike to them.  Then, they’re totally going to get screwed.

Lucy Atwell (Joan Collins), for instance, has always fantasized about going back to ancient Egypt and living the life of Cleopatra.  Now, you may wonder why that is, seeing as how Cleopatra lost every man that she ever loved and was eventually killed by an asp.  But no matter!  Mr. Roarke sends Lucy into the past and Lucy quickly discovers that …. wait a minute!  She’s not Cleopatra!  Instead, she’s a part of the harem of Ptolemy (Michael Ansara)!  What the Hell, Mr. Roarke!?  What part of “I want to be Queen of Egypt” sounds like “I want to be a part of some old guy’s harem?”

However, Lucy does look exactly like the real Cleopatra and that might be useful, seeing as how the real Cleopatra is currently being held prisoner.  After a proper amount of royal training, Lucy fills in for Cleopatra and gets to meet and fall in love with Marc Anthony (Ron Ely).  When the real Cleopatra is killed by an asp, the fake Cleopatra gets to rule Egypt and it all works out nicely until …. the fantasy ends.

Oh well, it was a nice weekend.  Time for Lucy to go home except …. who is that waiting for the airplane?  Why, it’s Marc Anthony!  Except his real name is Eric Williams and apparently, he was just a guy living out a fantasy of his own.  He always wanted to know what it would be like to be Marc Anthony because who hasn’t fantasized about briefly ruling Rome and then being exiled and hounded to death by the forces of Augustus?  Anyway, Lucy finds her love and Joan Collins finally gets to play Cleopatra, the role that she was nearly awarded in 1960 before Elizabeth Taylor was selected instead.

Meanwhile, in the episode’s comedic fantasy, dorky Fred Webster (Larry Linville) wants to impress his girlfriend, Laura (Julie Sommars) by being telekinetic.  What?  Seriously, that’s how he wants to impress her?  I mean, it’s Fantasy Island!  Ask for a better job or a nicer car or something.  Anyway, Fred gets his power of telekinesis and uses it to cheat at gambling.  This brings him to the attention of Stephanie (Carol Lynley) and her goons.  When Fred realizes that Stephanie is evil, Stephanie has Laura kidnapped but she’s forgotten that Fred has telekinesis and can just mentally cause a fishing net to wrap up her and her men.  This was an extremely silly fantasy.  In fact, it was too silly for its own good, right down to the scenes where Fred’s eyes take on a green glow while he uses his powers.

This was a pretty forgettable episode but at least there were some nice costumes in the Egyptian fantasy.  Next week, season 3 comes to an end.

Retro Television Reviews: Five Desperate Women (dir by Ted Post)

Posted on 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1971’s Five Desperate Women!  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Five women, who all went to college together, reunite for the first time in five years.  They’re planning on spending a weekend at a cabin on a private island.  Lucy (Anjanette Comer) is the alcoholic who talks too much.  Dorian (Joan Hackett) is the pill popper who lies about having a handsome husband and two beautiful children.  Joy (Denise Nicholas) is the former activist turned trashy model.  Gloria (Stefanie Powers) is bitchy and self-centered.  And Mary Grace (Julie Sommars) is the one with the mentally ill mother who refuses to speak to her.  Upon reuniting on the dock, the five women all immediately gather in a circle sing an old sorority song.  It’s going to be one of those weekends!

The private island is lovely and the women believe that they have it to themselves, with the exception of the two men who are also on the island.  Wylie (Robert Conrad) is the caretaker and he seems to be a trustworthy gentleman and exactly the type of guy who you would want to be stranded on an island with.  And then there’s Meeker (Bradford Dillman), who drove the boat to the island and who is the type of overbearing jerk who has to be specifically told not to bother the women.  While the women stay in the main house, the men stay in the nearby caretaker’s cottage.

From the start, it proves to be a stressful weekend.  All of the women have secrets and long-buried resentments that come out at the slightest provocation.  Not helping the fact is that there’s a murderer on the island, one that goes from killing a dog to strangling Dorian while the rest of the women are at the beach.  The woman, figuring that the murderer has to be either Meeker or Wylie, lock themselves into their house for the night but it turns out that it’s going to take more than a locked door to defeat a killer.

Five Desperate Women has an intriguing premise but it also has an extremely short running time.  With only 70 minutes to tell its story and 7 major characters to deal with, the film doesn’t leave much room for character development and, as a result, each woman is only given one personality trait and each actress ends up portraying that trait as broadly as possible.  As a result, it doesn’t take long for the movie to go from being Five Desperate Women to Five Annoying Women.  As for Robert Conrad and Bradford Dillman, the two of them give effective performances but anyone with a hint of genre savvy will be able to guess who the killer is going to turn out to be.  There is one unintentionally funny moment where the desperate women attempt to fight off the killer by throwing rocks at him and none of the rocks come close to reaching their target but otherwise, Five Desperate Women is not particularly memorable.

Cave-In! (1983, directed by Georg Fenady)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Sen. Kate Lassiter (Susan Sullivan) is visiting a cave in order to determine whether it’s safe to leave it open to the public.  Giving the senator and her group the grand tour is Gene Pearson (Dennis Cole), who is not only a park ranger but who is also Kate’s ex-boyfriend.  The question as to whether or not the cave is safe for the general public is answered by a sudden cave-in, which leaves Kate, Gene, and the others trapped.  Now, Gene has to lead the group across often dangerous terrain to safety.

Along with Kate, the group includes a bitter cop named Joe Johnson (Leslie Nielsen!), his wife Liz (Julie Sommars), arrogant Prof. Harrison Soames (Ray Milland), and the professor’s shy daughter, Ann (Sheila Larkin).  Joe and Liz are struggling to keep their marriage together.  Prof. Soames refuses to allow his daughter to have a life of her own.  The six of them are going to have to somehow work together if they’re going to survive this cave-in!  Of course, they’re not alone.  There’s a seventh person in the cave.  Tom Arlen (James Olson) is a dangerous convict who was in the cave hiding out from the police.  Now, he’s trapped along with everyone else.

Cave-In is a pretty standard disaster movie.  Produced by Irwin Allen, it was originally filmed in 1979 but it didn’t air on NBC until 1983.  By that time, Airplane! had pretty much reduced the disaster genre to a joke.  Ironically, Leslie Nielsen himself has a starring role in Cave-In, playing exactly the type of character that he parodied in both Airplane! and Police Squad.  At the time he filmed Cave-In, Neilsen was still a dramatic actor but by the time the movie aired, his deadpan style was firmly associated with comedy.  Even when his dialogue is serious, the natural instinct is to laugh.

Cave-In gets bogged down by flashbacks.  Even though everyone should be concentrating on making their way to safety, it instead seems that they’re too busy obsessing on their backstory.  Since no one’s backstory is that interesting, the flashbacks don’t do much to liven up the film and, unfortunately, a cave-in just isn’t as compelling as a fire in skyscraper or an upside down boat.

On the plus side, every disaster movie needs an arrogant bastard who makes escape unnecessarily difficult and, in the 70s, no one played a better arrogant bastard Ray Milland.  Otherwise, Cave-In is a forgettable entry from the final days of the disaster genre.