Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.13 “Ladies Choice/Skin Deep”

Posted on October 7, 2025 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 1984. The show is once again on Tubi!

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Episode 7.13 “Ladies Choice/Skin Deep”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on January 28th, 1984)

The highlight of this week’s episode is Mr. Roarke beating someone up.

The person on the other end of the beating is John McDowell (Lloyd Bochner), who owns a winery on the Island and who, for reasons that aren’t particularly clear, hates Mr. Roarke. When McDowell discovers that Fancy Summerfield (Kim Lankford), who grew up at the winery when it was owned by her father, is in love with Mr. Roarke, McDowell decides to manipulate her to hurt Roarke. Fancy, who is upset that Mr. Roarke doesn’t return her romantic feelings, allows herself to fall for McDowell but then realizes that McDowell is a jerk.

A party at McDowell’s mansion leads to a fist fight between Roarke and McDowell. McDowell starts it but Roarke ends it. He beats up McDowell with such ease that McDowell surrenders. Fancy realizes that McDowell is not the man for her and she also realizes that Roarke does care about her, even if he’s not in love with her. (This episode implies that Roarke does not allow himself to fall in love with mortal women. It’s understandable when you consider what happened when he got married.)

And let’s give credit where credit is due. Ricardo Montalban looked good beating up Lloyd Bochner. Admittedly, it was obvious that the majority of the fight was filmed using stunt doubles but, in those rare occasions where we saw Roarke’s face as he threw a punch, Montalban looked like he knew what he doing.

(Lawrence, needless to say, did not come to Mr. Roarke’s aid during the fight. In fact, Lawrence was barely in this episode.)

As for the other fantasy, it was pretty stupid. Joe (Michael Lembeck) comes to the Island with his loudmouth buddy, Vinnie (Fred Travalena). They are attending a sports expo. Vinnie is all about hitting on the models but Joe falls for Paula Santino (Donna Pescow), who is pretty but definitely not glamorous. The main problem with this fantasy was that both Joe and Paula were neurotic quip machines so listening to them have a conversation made me want to rupture my ear drums. Vinnie, for his part, said some pretty bad things about Paula. Roarke was too busy beating up John McDowell to do anything about it.

This episode was …. actually, not quite as bad as some of the other season seven episodes that I’ve recently watched. The second fantasy got old pretty quickly but the first fantasy featured Roarke beating someone up and there’s something to be said for that. The main problem with this episode is that none of the Island guests were particularly likable but I still appreciated that Roarke was willing to go to all of that trouble for them.

Then again, without Tattoo around, Roarke really doesn’t have any choice but to take on all the trouble himself. What else is he going to do? Depend on Lawrence?

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.6 “The Red Baron/Young At Heart”

Posted on July 18, 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. Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Tattoo gets bullied and Mr. Roarke gets psychedelic!

Episode 3.6 “The Red Baron/Young At Heart”

(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired on October 27th, 1979)

This week, Tattoo greets Mr. Roarke while disguised as Frankenstein’s Monster.

Tattoo explains to Mr. Roarke that he’s trying to look scary because there’s a bully that’s picking on him “because of my size.” OH MY GOD, POOR TATTOO! Seriously, my heart broke for him when he explained the reason behind his disguise. As usual, Mr. Roarke was far less sympathetic and ordered Tattoo to put on his usual white tux so that they could greet their guests.

This week’s fantasies ….. well, let’s just get straight to the point. Neither one is particularly memorable. In the first one, Cornelius Wiselfarber (Don Adams) is an expert on World War I whose fantasy is to experience the real thing. From the start, this storyline has two huge flaws. Number one, it makes the mistake of assuming that a character is automatically funny just because he has a silly name. Secondly, what expert on World War I would seriously want to experience it firsthand? There’s a reason why World War I was called the Great War. It was one of the most destructive and wasteful conflicts ever fought, one that will be forever identified with the horrors of trench warfare and mustard gas. Thousands died, many more were wounded both physically and psychologically. Even those who survived with their bodies and their minds intact still ran the risk of catching the Spanish Flu. This is one of those fantasies that just doesn’t make any sense.

That said, Cornelius gets his chance to experience what it was like to be a World War I flying ace. He even meets the Red Baron (Ron Ely)! The majority of the fantasy is played for laughs, with Mr. Roarke continually mispronouncing Cornelius’s last name and Cornelius himself getting recruited, by the Resistance, to pretend to be a German officer behind enemy lines. It falls flat, mostly because Don Adams himself doesn’t seem to know whether he wants to play his character straight or as a variation of his bumbling secret agent, Maxwell Smart. By the end of the fantasy, Cornelius says that he now understands how terrible World War I truly was but, seeing as how he didn’t see much combat and spent most of his fantasy trading one liners with Monique of the Resistance (Martine Beswick), you have to wonder how that could be.

As for the second fantasy, Helen Phillips (Diana Canova) is a 40-something nurse who wants to be young again. Mr. Roarke gives her a magic potion to drink. Drinking the potion leads to Helen having a psychedelic vision of Mr. Roarke explaining that that the potion wears off after 12 hours so she’ll have to keep drinking it if she’s going to remain young.

No longer having to wear glasses and without a touch of gray in her hair, Helen meets and falls for a handsome young named David Hanks (David Ladd) but she worries about what will happen when she runs out of the potion and he discovers that she’s old enough to be his mother. Fear not! It turns out that David has been drinking the potion as well! He’s actually in his 50s and his fantasy was to be reunited with the nurse who looked after him when he injured himself as a young man! To be honest, the twist felt a little bit too convenient and the old-age makeup worn by both Canova and Ladd was not particularly convincing. There was also an oddly played scene in which Helen’s ex-fiancé (played by Dave Madden) came to the Island searching for her but then promptly left when he discovered that Helen and David were in love. On the plus side, I did like the psychedelic Mr. Roarke scene.

As for Tattoo, he resorts to disguising himself as a vampire in his attempt to scare off his bully.

Later, when it is time to bid farewell to this week’s guests, Tattoo shows up wearing dark glasses because his bully gave him a black eye. Mr. Roarke finally shows some concern about the fact that someone is harassing his assistant manager. However, when Tattoo reveals that his bully is a chimpanzee wearing boxing gloves, Mr. Roarke laughs and laughs.

Seriously, Mr. Roarke really hates his second-in-command.

TV Review: Night Gallery 1.6 “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar/The Last Laurel)

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The first season of Night Gallery came to a conclusion on January 20th, 1971. Though the first season was undoubtedly uneven, it did end on a high point. The first segment in the 6th episode, They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar, is widely considered to be the best episode of Night Gallery and one of Rod Serling’s best teleplays. It also brought Night Gallery one of it’s few Emmy nominations when it was nominated for Outstanding Single Program of the year. (It lost to The Andersonville Trial, a theatrical adaptation that was produced for PBS.)

They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar (dir by Don Taylor, written by Rod Serling)

They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar tells the story of Randy Lane (William Windom). In 1945, Sgt. Randy Lane returned home from serving in World War II, a war hero who had a wonderful future ahead of him. He had just gotten married. He had just gotten a good job at an up-and-coming company called Pritzker Plastics. When he came home, the first place he went was Tim Riley’s Bar, where his father and the other bar patrons toasted him and told him to look forward to the future.

Twenty-five years later, the middle-aged Randy Lane is looking at his life and asking, “Is this as good as it gets?” He’s now a sales director at Pritzker Plastics but his boss (John Randolph) doesn’t appreciate him, his assistant (Bert Convy) is plotting to steal his job, and the only person who seems to care about him is his sympathetic secretary (Diane Baker). Randy’s wife died in 1952, while Randy was out of a sales call. Randy now lives alone. Even his neighborhood bar — Tim Riley’s Bar — has closed and been abandoned. With the bar schedule to be torn down, Randy wonder what happened to all of the promise and happiness of the past.

When Randy goes by the deserted bar and looks through the front window, he’s shocked to see all of his old friends and his father waving at him. But when Randy rushes into the bar to join them, he discovers the bar is deserted. Later, Randy is at work when suddenly, he sees Pritzker Plastics the way it was back in 1948. Even later, when he enters his house, he finds himself standing in a hospital hallway in 1952, once again getting the news that his wife has died.

In many ways, They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar is an atypical Night Gallery segment. Though there are hints of the supernatural throughout the story, it’s hardly a work of horror. Instead, it’s a rather melancholy meditation on aging, disappointment, and regret. Is the past forever lost? Can things ever be as good as they once were? These are the questions that are raised in this well-directed and well-acted segment.

The Last Laurel (dir by Daryl Duke, written by Rod Serling)

Clocking in at 8 minutes, The Last Laurel is yet another segment about a bitter man (in this case, Jack Cassidy) who suspects that his wife (in the case, Martine Beswick) is cheating on him with his doctor (in this case, Martin E. Brooks) so he teaches himself a supernatural skill in order to get revenge. In this case, it involves astral projection. Not surprisingly, it ends with a twist that’s pretty much dependent on one of the characters doing something extremely stupid.

The Last Laurel is well-acted but predictable. It’s not bad but, especially when compared to something like They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar, it feels rather insubstantial. It feels like filler.

The first season of Night Gallery came to an end with an excellent episode. Starting tomorrow — season 2!

Previous Night Gallery Reviews:

Bond Goes Deep!: THUNDERBALL (United Artists 1965)

Posted on May 19, 2018 by gary loggins

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THUNDERBALL, the fourth 007 adventure, will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s the first James Bond movie I saw at the theater, released at the height of the Secret Agent/Spy craze, and I was totally hooked! I even had all the toys that went with the movie, including Emilio Largo’s two-part boat the Disco Volante, with which I engaged in mighty battles in the bathtub against VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA’s Seaview (hey, I was only seven!).

SPECTRE is at it again, this time hijacking a NATO jet loaded with two nuclear bombs, and holding the world hostage. Bond, sent to recuperate at a health spa, stumbles on to trouble related to the crisis, and is sent by MI6 to investigate Domino Derval, sister of the NATO pilot. This leads 007 to Domino’s “guardian” Emilio Largo, a rich and powerful man who’s Number Two…

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Bond Is Back!: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (United Artists 1963)

Posted on May 17, 2018 by gary loggins

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The Cold War got really hot when James Bond returned to the screen in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, second in the film series starring Sean Connery as Ian Fleming’s Secret Agent 007. Picking up where DR. NO left off, the film is popular with Bond fans for its more realistic depiction of the spy game, though there’s still plenty of action, romance, and quick quips, along with the introduction of several elements soon to be integral to the series.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE has Bond falling for Soviet defector Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), who’s willing to help steal a Russian Lektor decoding machine for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But both she and Bond are just pawns in a larger game, with the international crime cartel SPECTRE making all the moves. Their goal is to not only posses the decoder and ransom it back to the Russians, but to eliminate 007…

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A Halloween Film Review: Seizure (1974, directed by Oliver Stone)

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

seizure1 Everyone had to start somewhere and, long before he became one of the leading political provocateurs of American cinema, Oliver Stone was just another struggling film school grad who was looking for a chance to make a name for himself. Like many aspiring filmmakers, Stone made his directorial debut with a low-budget horror film.

Filmed in Quebec and featuring an eclectic cast that included a soap opera star, a former Warhol superstar, a faded teen idol, a past Bond girl, and a future Bond villain, Seizure stars Jonathan Frid (of Dark Shadows fame) as Edmund Blackstone. Edmund is a horror novelist who is described as being “a modern-day Edgar Allan Poe.” When Edmund’s rich friends get together for the weekend, they are terrorized by three maniacs: the Queen of Evil (Martine Beswick), a mute giant called the Jackal (Henry Judd Baker), and a psychotic dwarf named The Spider (Hervé Villechaize).

All of Edmund’s guests face the inevitability of death in a different way. Playboy Mark Frost (Troy Donahue) is too concerned with pursuing pleasure to realize that he’s in danger. Businessman Charlie Hughes (Joseph Sirola) gets out his wallet and tries to buy his way out of trouble. Mikki (Mary Woronov), Charlie’s much younger wife, strips down to her underwear and runs away. Eunice Kahn (Anne Meachem) jumps out of a window after the Spider ticks her into using an aging cream. Eunice’s husband, philosopher Serge (Roger de Koven), faces death with stoicism. Edmund’s brother-in-law, Gerald (Richard Cox), is a long-haired hippie who accidentally gets shot in the head by Edmund and dies saying, “You bastard!” Edmund’s wife (Christina Pickles) tries to protect her son (Timothy Ousey) and Edmund reveals himself to be the first of the many flawed father figures who would appear in Stone’s films.

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If not for the identity of its director, Seizure would be a forgotten film. In fact, it seems to be a film that Stone wishes was forgotten. He rarely mentions it in interviews and usually describes Seizure as being a “learning experience” and there’s really nothing about Seizure that would make you think the director would go on to win three Oscars. It’s a slow and talky movie that is just occasionally weird enough to be interesting. Seizure‘s philosophical digressions are pure Stone but otherwise, it’s hard to see any sign of the director that Stone would become in Seizure.

Still, what other movie features Jonathan Frid and Mary Woronov having a knife fight while Martine Beswick and Hervé Villechaize watch?

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