Natividad Vacio | 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. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week …. hey, where’s Tattoo!?

Episode 5.19 “Face of Love/Image of Celeste”

(Dir by Don Chaffey, originally aired on March 20th, 1982)

Once again, as I did with Miami Vice and CHiPs, I am going to save time by doing this review bullet-point style. It’s the holidays, after all.

After two (or was it three) weeks of just Roarke and Tattoo, this episode features only Julie as Roarke’s assistant. Apparently, Tattoo has been busy helping a guest fulfill a “Cinderella fantasy” but things have gone wrong. The carriage turned back into a pumpkin. The horses turned back into mice and are now running all over the Island. Tattoo is not seen in this episode, which is a shame because the last few episodes (featuring only him and Roarke) really did feel like a throw-back to the first two seasons of the show.
It’s been kind of weird during this season, continually hearing that various fantasies are going wrong. That’s not the Fantasy Island that we all know. Fantasy Island has previously been portrayed as a place where Roarke would never allow anything to truly go wrong.
Julie doesn’t really do anything as Roarke’s assistant in this episode. Roarke tells her who each guest is and gives her the details of their fantasy but that’s pretty much it.
Laura Jensen (Erin Gray) has spent her life with a face that was scarred during a housefire. She’s grown up to be bitter and angry. She’s just gotten out of prison and she’s brought to the Island by her parole officer, Ron (Monte Markham). Ron’s fantasy is for Laura’s scars to go away so that Laura can let go of her anger and live a norma;l life.
Though initially weary, Laura is amazed when Roarke gives her a magical cream that causes her scars to temporarily vanish. In fact, Laura appears to be ready to get on with her life and accept that she and Ron are in love. But then Laura’s sleazy ex (Larry Manetti) shows up and tempts her back to her old ways. Don’t worry. It all works out in the end and Ron and Laura leave as a couple. However, I get the feeling that Ron’s going to lose his job as a parole officer. Falling in love with a parolee and taking a tropical vacation with her seems like something that would go against every rule in the book.
The other fantasy was slightly more interesting, if just because it featured Paul Gauguin. When Celeste Vallon (Joanne Pettet) discovers that Roarke owns a Gauguin portrait of a woman who looks just like her, Celeste requests to go back to the past and be that woman. Roarke agrees, even though he warns her that she will also have to make a very serious decision, one that could change history.
Right away, this fantasy ran into a major stumbling block. The Gauguin painting looked absolutely nothing like something that Gauguin, one of the great post-impressionists, would have painted. Instead, it’s a very conventional painting.
The second stumbling block is that the legendary and charismatic Gauguin is played by the handsome but mild-mannered Robert Goulet.
What Celeste discovers is that she is directly descended from the woman in Gauguin’s painting. The woman was Gauguin’s mistress and was engaged, against her will, to marry a soldier (Christopher Stone). If Celeste agrees to remain with Gauguin, then Gauguin will never paint another painting. If Celeste agrees to return to France, her ancestor will lose the love of her life but Gauguin will continue to paint.
Celeste chooses not to change history. Good for her! Of course, that’s kind of an easy decision to make when Celeste isn’t the one who is actually going to have to live the rest of her life in Paris, dreaming of returning to Tahiti and Gauguin.
I wanted to like this episode more than I did. The parole officer bringing one of his parolees to the Island felt strange to me and the Gauguin story would have worked if the painter had been anyone other than the Paul Gauguin. If they had come up with a fictional painter, perhaps Goulet would have seemed more appropriate in the role. As it was, this episode felt bland and miscast.
Herve Villechaize was an accomplished painter so it’s a shame he wasn’t present for the Gauguin story. It’s previously been established that Tattoo is quite a painter himself so this episode definitely feels like a missed opportunity.

The intense 1953 film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, begins with news of a murderer at large.

His name is Emmett Myers (William Talman). He’s the rough-looking man who you might occasionally see standing by the side of the road, asking for a ride with his thumb outstretched. For me, it only takes one look at Myers’s unfriendly face and his shifty eyes to know that I would never slow down to give him a ride. However, The Hitch-Hiker takes place in a more innocent era, at a time when everyone wanted to be of help. Anyone who gives Emmett a ride ends up dead. He steals their cars and then drives across country, abandoning the car only when he learns that his previous murder has been discovered. Emmett has hitchhiked from Illinois to Southern California and he’s left a trail of dead bodies behind him.

Roy Collins (Edmond O’Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) don’t know who Emmett is. They’ve missed all of the reports about Emmett’s killing spree. They haven’t read the newspapers, all of which feature a picture of Emmett on the front page and a warning to never pick him up. Roy and Gilbert have been too busy getting ready for a long-planned fishing trip in Baja California. When they see Emmett hitchhiking in Mexico, they pull over and offer him a ride.

Unlike other movie hitchhikers, Emmett doesn’t waste any time before revealing who he is. As soon as he gets in the car, he pulls a gun and tells the two men that they’re going to drive him deeper into Baja California. He’s got a boat to catch and he says that all the two men have to do is follow orders. Of course, both Roy and Gilbert know better. They know that Emmett’s planning on killing them as soon as they arrive at their destination. In fact, if Emmett learns that the police are looking for the two men, he’ll kill them sooner. Roy and Gilbert not only have to keep Emmett from flying off the handle but they also have to keep him from discovering that both of them have been reported as being missing.

As the three men drive across California, Emmett continues to taunt his prisoners. Repeatedly, he points out that the only reason they’re in this situation is because of their loyalty to each other. As Emmett explains it, if the two men tried to run in opposite directions, Emmett would probably only be able to kill one of them. If the two men both attacked him, Emmett would again probably only have time to kill one before the survivor subdued him. Will Roy and Gilbert remains loyal to each other or will they finally embrace Emmett’s philosophy of every man for himself?

Oh, how you’ll hate Emmett Myers! As played by William Talman, Emmett is not just a criminal but a bully as well. The enjoyment that he gets out of taunting Roy and Gilbert will make your skin crawl. Emmett is hardly the type of witty or charming master criminal who often shows up in movies today. Instead, The Hitch-Hiker emphasizes that Emmett’s an idiot but, because he has the gun, he has the power. Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy are also well-cast as the two friends who are forced to choose between survival and loyalty.

The Hitch-Hiker was one of the few films to be directed by a woman in the 1950s. (It’s generally considered to be the only film noir to have been directed by a woman.) Ida Lupino was not only an actress but also the only female director in the old Hollywood system and she made several hard-hitting films, the majority of which dealt with the type of issues that mainstream Hollywood was still too scared to handle. With The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino emphasizes not only Emmett’s cruelty but also the bonds of friendship between Emmett’s two hostages. Visually, she makes the wide open desert appears as menacing and as dangerous as any shadowy city street. If urban noirs often suggested that threats could be hiding anywhere, The Hitch-Hiker takes the opposite approach. The threat is in the back seat of the car and there’s literally no place to hide.

The Hitch-Hiker is an intense film that holds up well today. Watch it below and never again make the mistake of helping out a stranger.