Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, Lisa will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, we have an anemic adaptation of a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story.

Episode #14: Rappaccini’s Daughter

(Dir by Deszo Magyar, originally aired in 1980)

This week’s episode is an adaptation of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s more intriguing short stories.  Giovanni (Kristoffer Tabori) is a young scholar who, in 18th Century Italy, falls in love with the beautiful and mysterious Beatrice (Kathleen Beller).  Beatrice has been raised in a garden that is full of poisonous plants that have been developed by her father, Dr. Rappaccini (Leonardo Cimino).  As a result, Beatrice is immune to the plants but she herself is poisonous.  Giovanni falls in love with her and is willing to become poisonous himself but it ultimately turns out that everything comes with a price.

Hawthorne’s short story was not only an early example of gothic literature but it was also a well-deserved parody of the nature-loving, self-righteous transcendentalists.  (The story came out at the same time as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.)  Unfortunately, this particular adaptation really doesn’t do the story justice.  It moves extremely slowly and the performances are not particularly memorable.  Kristoffer Tabori and Kathleen Beller have very little chemistry and, in the end, the adaptation misses the satirical nature of the story altogether.  There’s a reason why Vincent Price made for an excellent Dr. Rappaccini in 1963’s Twice Told Tales.