Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 4.6 “With Affection, Jack the Ripper/Gigolo”

Posted on December 26, 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 the entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube, Daily Motion, and a few other sites.

This week, Fantasy Island is full of gigolos and harlots!

Episode 4.6 “With Affection, Jack The Ripper/Gigolo”

(Dir by Michael Vejar, originally aired on November 29th, 1980)

“Here comes a real wimp!” Tattoo declares as Stanley Hocker (Ken Berry) stumbles off of the airplane.

Roarke rolls his eyes at Tattoo’s rudeness but then goes on to admit that most people would consider Stanley to be a bit of a wimp. Stanley is shy and awkward and he wears dorky clothes and he’s never had much success with romance. Stanley’s fantasy is to become a gigolo.

“Good luck!” Tattoo says.

Roarke doesn’t need luck when he can get just give Stanley a magical bracelet that once belonged to Don Juan. As soon as the bracelet appears on Stanley’s wrist, Stanley is suddenly confident, cool, and much better dressed.

“I’m not a turkey anymore!” Stanley declares, “I’m a hunk!”

Soon, every woman on the Island is attracted to Stanley. However, a trip to the Fantasy Island singles bar, leaves Stanley with a large bar tab. It turns out that Roarke may have given Stanley the bracelet but he didn’t give him any extra money. The bill is paid by another gigolo, Monty (Lyle Waggoner). In return for his help, Monty requests that Stanley seduce the wealthy Jessie De Winter (Carolyn Jones) so that Monty can make a move on Jessie’s niece, Dina (Meredith McRae).

Of course, Stanley falls in love with Dina but she’s the only woman on the Island who is not impressed with his gigolo style. Stanley finally agrees to remove the bracelet and sacrifice his fantasy so that he can approach Dina as his true self.

While this is going on, Jack the Ripper is stalking Fantasy Island! Yikes!

It’s all the fault of Lorraine Peters (Lynda Day George). Lorraine has developed a theory that Jack the Ripper was actually a surgeon named Dr. Albert Z. Fell (Victor Buono, rarely speaking but often dramatically rolling his eyes). Lorraine’s fantasy is to go back to 1880s London to find proof of her theory. Despite some reservations, Roarke gives Lorraine her fantasy. Lorraine steps through a time door and finds herself in London. She manages to find Dr. Fell’s office and a diary in which Fell has written about his hatred of “harlots.” However, Dr. Fell also finds the time door, steps through it, and is soon on Fantasy Island!

Upon discovering that history’s most infamous murderer is now stalking the Island, Roarke sends Tattoo out to let everyone know that they need to stay inside. Of all the people that Roarke could send, it’s interesting that Roarke selected the person least likely to survive if he was caught by Jack the Ripper. Seriously, there are a lot of athletic guys on Fantasy Island and any one of them could have beaten up the rather portly and middle-aged Jack the Ripper. Instead of asking one of them to look for the killer, Roarke sends Tattoo. Even in a moment of crisis, Roarke is always looking for a way to get rid of his assitant.

Fortunately, Dr. Fell is too busy trying to kill Lorraine and her boyfriend, Robert (Alex Cord), to waste any time on Tattoo. Dr. Fell chases Lorraine all across the island. Lorraine leads Fell back through the time door and Fell is promptly run over by a carriage in London. Lorraine returns to the present and tells Mr. Roarke that she’s decided not to reveal the truth about Dr. Fell because …. well, I don’t know why.

Despite some lapses in logic, the Jack the Ripper story was actually really entertaining. There was nothing subtle about Victor Buono’s performance but it was still exactly what the story needed. Lynda Day George was appearing in films like Pieces and Mortuary when she appeared in this episode and she puts that horror experience to good use. The scenes in London were atmospheric and the idea of Jack the Ripper on Fantasy Island was intriguing, even if the episode didn’t do as much with the idea as it could have. The superior Jack the Ripper fantasy and the silly but inoffensive gigolo fantasy combined to make this an enjoyable trip to Fantasy Island.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 2.5 “I Want To Get Married/The Jewel Thief”

Posted on January 17, 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. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

We learn a little bit more about Fantasy Island in this week’s episode. It’s a strange place!

Episode 2.5 “I Want To Get Married/The Jewel Thief”

(Dir by George McGowan, originally aired on October 21st, 1978)

You know what the best thing about Fantasy Island is?

The Disco Dancing!

Cindy Barker (Meredith McRae) is a big fan of the disco dancing. That’s because her fantasy is to come to the island and meet the man that she’s going to marry. In fact, she wants to marry the guy at the end of the weekend and she’s already spent $20,000 to reserve the island for her wedding. (Tattoo is excited about that.)

Of course, one possible problem with Cindy’s fantasy is that she already has a boyfriend. She’s been dating Eddie (Ken Berry) for a while now. However, Eddie refuses to get married. Every time that they schedule a wedding ceremony, Eddie finds an excuse to cancel. He can’t even say the word “married” without sneezing. Still, Eddie is in love with Cindy and he comes to the Island to try to convince her to give him another chance. He also tells all of her potential suitors that Cindy is actually a prostitute.

Now, to be honest, that’s not the sort of thing that I could forgive. I don’t care who you are or how much you love me, that’s just not something that I’m going to be able to overlook. However, this somehow convinces Cindy that Eddie really does love her so she decides to teach him a lesson by putting on a slit leather skirt and hanging out on a street corner in Fantasy Island’s red light district.

At this point, I said to myself, “Since when has Fantasy Island had a red light district?” Seriously, last week revealed that the island has a desert where the Egyptians buried their pharaohs. This week, we learn that the island has a red light district. Fantasy Island is a strange place. Stranger still, Eddie lying about Cindy and then Cindy pretending to be a prostitute leads to Eddie and Cindy getting married.

While that’s going on, Jordan Montgomery (Steve Forrest) is living out his fantasy of being an international jewel thief and …. wait, what? What type of fantasy is this? You can commit crimes in your fantasies? This island gets stranger and stranger! Anyway, Jordan steals a necklace from Leslie Tarleton (Leigh Taylor-Young), just to discover that the necklace didn’t actually belong to her and his thievery is going to cause her to lose her job. When Jordan attempts to retrieve the necklace so that he can return it, he discovers that it’s been stolen yet again! This time, crime lord Carl Dekker (Peter Mark Richman) has stolen the necklace and is keeping it on his boat, which is heavily guarded and which is also floating off the coast of the island.

So, for those keeping track, Fantasy Island has a desert, a pharaoh’s tomb, a red light district, and a Mafia. It seems like the island’s kind of gone downhill since the end of season one!

Anyway, this was actually a fun episode. Neither story was particularly deep but the action moved quickly and Steve Forrest made for a properly dashing jewel thief. I still don’t think that Cindy should have forgiven Eddie, let alone married him. But it was 1978 and I guess times were different back then.

Finally, Tattoo tried to start his own greeting card company. He was looking to corner the market on sarcastic and downbeat greeting cards. He was just a few decades too early!

Norwood (1970, directed by Jack Haley, Jr.)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Norwood Pratt (played by country singer Glenn Campbell) is a just a good old boy who has just returned home from serving in the Marines over in Vietnam. After saying goodbye to his Marine buddy, Joe William Reese (played by quarterback Joe Namath), Norwood heads to his hometown of Ralph, Texas. Norwood discovers this his sister (Leigh French) has married an idiot named Bill (Dom DeLuise!)

Norwood gets a job working at the local garage but he’s got his guitar and he’s got his dreams. All he wants to do is play his music on the Louisiana Hayride radio program. But with no money and no connections, how is he going to make it there? When a shady businessman (Pat Hingles) offers to pay him fifty bucks to drive a car and prostitute (Carol Lynley) to New York City, Norwood agrees. When Norwood discovers the car is stolen, he abandons both the vehicle and the girl but he still heads up to New York City.

Norwood has plenty of adventures and he meets plenty of people, like a hippie (Tisha Stirling) who invites him to open mike night at a coffee house in the Village. Later, she invites him to join her in a bathtub by asking him if his guitar plays underwater. “No, ma’m,” Norwood says, “but I do.” He also meets a pregnant teenager (Kim Darby, Campbell’s co-star from True Grit) and a little person (Billy Curtis) who is traveling with a super intelligent chicken.

There have been a lot of very good films made about the struggle of military veterans to transition back to civilian life after their tour of duty comes to an end. Unfortunately, Norwood is not one of those films. Both Norwood and Joe have just returned from Vietnam but neither one of them seems to carry any lingering effects from their time overseas. Neither of them shares any war stories or any thoughts on war in general. (Someone does point out that Norwood has a scar. Norwood says it’s a war wound that he got when he accidentally fell off a water truck.) There’s no hint that the war itself was not going well for the United States in 1970 or that it wasn’t a popular war and that returning veterans often felt as if they had been rejected by the same country that asked (or forced) them to serve. Even when Norwood meets the hippies in the Village, there’s no mention of protests. Instead, Norwood presents 1970 as a time with no real conflicts, which is the perfect era for someone as forgettable as Norwood Pratt to become a star.

Norwood has the same basic and episodic structure as an Elvis movie, except that Elvis could actually act when he wanted to. No one can deny Glenn Campbell’s talent as a singer but as an actor, he had very little screen presence. In True Grit and this movie, the best that he could come up with was an amiable dullness. In True Grit, it didn’t matter because John Wayne was in the movie. But in Norwood, Campbell had to carry the story and his acting limitations were much more obvious. Campbell even managed to get outacted by Joe Namath, who, as far as pro football player-turned-actors were concerned, was no Alex Karras. Wisely, Campbell didn’t further pursue a career as an actor and instead concentrated on singing. When Campbell died in 2017, he was praised for both his musical legacy and his honesty and courage while facing Alzheimer’s. He may not have made it as an actor but he still touched a lot of lives.

Life Is A Beach #1: Beach Party (dir by William Asher)

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It seems a little bit strange that today was, for many people, the first day of Spring Break.

First off, it was cold and rainy today and, whenever I found myself glancing out a window and being confronted by the gray weather, it was very hard for me to imagine having any fun on a beach.

Secondly, for reasons that I never quite understood, the University of North Texas’s Spring Break was always a week after everyone else’s. As a result, I’ve been conditioned to think of Spring Break as starting during the third week of March.

I always looked forward to Spring Break, despite the fact that we always got out a week late. In fact, it was kind of nice to know that, when my friends and I got down to that year’s beach, the most obnoxious of the alcoholic frat boys would already be back in Oklahoma. I’ve always loved the beach, which is odd because I’m scared of drowning. Fortunately, you don’t have to swim to look good in a bikini.

Now, of course, I’m an adult and I don’t get a Spring Break. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t relive the fun of it all by spending the next few days watching and reviewing beach movies!

For instance, earlier today, I discovered that the 1963 film Beach Party was available on Netflix. I watched the first 40 minutes during my lunch and then, as the day progressed, I watched the rest of it in bits and pieces until finally, nearly 8 hours after starting the film, I finished it. Needless to say, this is absolutely the worst way to watch a film like Beach Party. Beach Party was designed to be a film to be enjoyed but not thought about. It’s the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Watching Beach Party in increments of 2 or 3 minutes at a time is a bit like buying a Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger and not eating it until the next day.

(Or so I assume. I would never do that because, seriously, Wendy’s makes the best bacon cheeseburgers!)

It feels kind of silly to try to describe the plot of something like Beach Party but here goes: Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and Delores (Annette Funicello) are two teenagers in love. Or, at the very least, Delores is in love. Frankie, however, has a hard time saying it. Frankie and Delores are planning on spending the weekend at a beach house where, Frankie tells her, it will be just like they’re married. Though it’s never explicitly stated (like many films from the early 60s, Beach Party is all about the euphemisms), Frankie is obviously expecting that he and Delores will finally be having sex in that beach house. However, Delores had the same idea so she invited all of their friends to stay at the beach house as well, specifically to keep her from giving in during a moment of weakness.

Meanwhile, Prof. Robert Sutwell (Robert Cummings) is also hanging out on the beach. He’s an anthropologist who has a rather prominent beard. He’s studying the sex lives of teenagers. Since they’re adults, Robert and his assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone) are actually allowed to say the word “sex.”

Speaking of which, that’s one thing that nobody on the beach seems to be doing. Robert is too obsessed with his work, Marianne is too frustrated with his lack of interest, Frankie is too busy surfing and singing, and Delores says she’s not interesting in “being a woman” until she’s married. There’s constant flirting going on, of course but, for the most part, these teenagers make the spring breakers from From Justin To Kelly look wild. (One can only guess what would happen if any of them ever ran into the spring breakers from Spring Breakers….)

That said, I do think that I did spot Frankie and his friends passing around a joint during one scene. According to some comments at the imdb, it was probably meant to be a cigarette that Frankie was sharing with his friends Ken (John Ashley) and Deadhead (Jody McCrea) but it sure looked like a joint to me. Plus, Frankie was listening to beatnik poetry at the time and we all know those crazy kids loved the poetry and loved the marijuana.

Oh! And did I mention that there’s a motorcycle gang in this film? Because there so totally is. The Rat Pack is led by a guy named Erich Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and they pretty much show up whenever the film starts to run out of ideas…

Now, it may sound like I’m being pretty critical of Beach Party but actually, I thought it was fun in a time capsule sort of way. This is one of those films that is so obviously a product of the time in which it was made that watching it is a bit like getting to take a ride in a time machine. Everything about this film — from the dialogue to the cultural attitudes to the clean-cut teenagers to the music to the bizarrely modest bikinis — practically screams 1963. As a secret history nerd, I loved the part of Beach Party.

Add to that, Vincent Price has a cameo! That’s always fun.

Anyway, Beach Party is currently available to be watched on Netflix and Hulu. If you can’t get to the beach this year, you can always watch Frankie Avalon getting high in Beach Party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkhGmZPJIHY