Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 4.19 “The Proxy Billionaire/The Experiment”

Posted on April 2, 2024 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. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.

This week, things get weird.

Episode 4.19 “The Proxy Billionaire/The Experiment”

(Dir by Richard Benedict, originally aired on March 21st, 1981)

This week’s episode is a bit of an odd one.

The first fantasy is fairly typical for the series. Playing two roles, Robert Goulet is cast as both a billionaire and as Frank Miller, a Wall Street analyst who wants to be a billionaire. The real billionaire agrees to allow Frank to live his life for the weekend. Frank soon discovers that being a billionaire is …. well, actually, it’s pretty cool. Except, of course, Phyllis Davis and Troy Donahue are plotting to poison him at a luau so that they can steal all of his money. Fortunately, Mr. Roarke shows up at the luau in time to catch the vial of poison as Davis and Donahue attempt to toss it away. Frank learns that being a billionaire is fine as long as no one wants to kill you. Still, he has to return to his normal life at the end of the weekend. Fortunately, the millionaire’s administrative assistant (Britt Ekland) has fallen in love with Frank and she decides to leave the Island with him.

As I said, this story felt pretty typical of Fantasy Island. Probably the highlight was Mr. Roarke walking in on Tattoo badgering Frank for financial advice. Roarke responded by giving Tattoo a strong glare that, if nothing else, reminded the audience that Tattoo and Roarke absolutely despise each other.

The other fantasy was …. well, it was weird. Dr. Lucas Bergmann (James Broderick) and his daughter, Lisa (hey!), come to the Island. Each has a fantasy. Lisa (played by Laurie Walters) says her fantasy is for Lucas to relax and enjoy himself and to stop obsessing over bringing the dead back to life. Lucas’s fantasy is to bring the dead back to life. Roarke sets Lucas and Lisa up in a bungalow that once belonged to another scientist who also wanted to play God. Roarke warns Lucas that the local Islanders are superstitious and they might not appreciate him tampering in God’s domain.

(If the Islanders are that superstitious, how are they handling living on a magical island that is ruled by a mercurial demigod?)

Soon, the Islanders are beating their drums and Lucas’s mute assistant (Woody Strode) is looking concerned. Lucas steps outside and discovers that Lisa has apparently drowned in a nearby lake. Lucas decides that she’ll be the subject of his experiment. Can he bring her back to life? Lucas doesn’t find out because the Islanders storm his bungalow and Lucas runs into the jungle, fleeing until he eventually runs into Roarke, Tattoo, and …. LISA!

It turns out that Lisa was only pretending to be dead in order to teach her father a lesson. And it also turns out that the Islanders were in on it and Woody Strode can speak.

WHAT!?

Seriously, was there not a simpler and perhaps less traumatic way to teach Lucas a lesson? This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to. Lucas does realize that he doesn’t need to raise the dead to be happy so that’s good. Still, this whole thing just feels weird.

Of course, weird is good when it comes to Fantasy Island. With Roarke and Tattoo barely on speaking terms, it’s even more important for the fantasies to be memorable. And I will never forget about the time Mr. Roarke tricked a scientist into believing his only child was dead. Seriously, I’m stunned Mr. Roarke was never sued.

Next week, we meet Mr. Roarke’s goddaughter!

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 4.16 “Chorus Girl/Surrogate Father”

Posted on March 12, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Mr. Roarke is almost too clever for his own good.

Episode 4.16 “Chorus Girl/Surrogate Father”

(Dir by Richard Benedict, originally aired on February 21st, 1981)

Weird episode, this week.

Our first story features John Saxon, playing the role of Evan Watkins. Evan is a compulsive gambler and his fantasy is to make one huge score. Accompanying Evan is his young daughter, Amy (Nicole Eggert). Her fantasy is for Evan to give up gambling and start acting like a real father. On the Island, Evan and Amy meet Margo (Rosemary Forsyth), a social worker whose fantasy is to really make a difference in the life of someone who is in trouble. Basically, Mr. Roarke takes all three fantasies and just crams them together.

So, Evan does win big but then some gangsters show up, searching for him. And Amy does get her wish but not before Evan nearly abandons his family. And Margo, after some initial hesitation, falls in love with Evan and leaves the Island with him and Amy. It all works out but it still seems dangerous to mix together a bunch of fantasies like that. If one thing had gone wrong, Roarke would have been left with three unhappy customers instead of just one.

This fantasy was pretty predictable but it did give Herve Villechaize a chance to actually do something more than just stand around and ask Mr. Roarke questions. The scene where Tattoo comforts Amy by explaining that her father may be a man on the outside but is still just a scared child on the inside was wonderfully acted by Villechaize and rather sweet. Villechaize was notoriously difficult on the set of Fantasy Island and was reportedly always on the verge of being fired for his behavior but, in this scene, he demonstrates why he was so important to the show. Mr. Roarke may be the owner of Fantasy Island but Tattoo is the heart.

The second fantasy is kind of creepy. Sheila Richards (Lisa Hartman) has been deaf since birth. She was raised by Franklin Adams (Stuart Whitman), who taught her how to dance. Unfortunately, Sheila can only dance by watching Franklin’s hand signals. Franklin’s fantasy is for Sheila to be able to hear for a weekend so she can audition for a world-famous choreographer. Franklin also wants to tell Sheila that he’s in love with her.

There’s a few problems here. Franklin is in his 50s while Sheila is in her 20s and has basically been dependent on him for her entire life. Franklin wants Sheila to hear him when he says, “I love you!” but he also goes to the Island with the knowledge that, at the end of the weekend, Sheila will again lose her hearing. It seems a bit cruel on Franklin’s part to put Sheila through all that when 1) he knows sign language and 2) Sheila can read lips. There’s nothing stopping Franklin from telling her how he feels.

The other problem is that the episode doesn’t seem to understand that there are many dancers who are hearing-impaired. Because they learn the choreography and can feel the vibrations of the music, they are fully capable of dancing without being dependent on someone signing to the them from the audience. One does not need to hear the music to be able to dance to it. Instead, one just has to be able to keep time and remember the choreography.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, Sheila falls in love with the world-famous choreographer, leaving Franklin heart-broken. However, at the end of the episode, Mr. Roarke introduces Franklin to a teenage girl who lives on the Island. Roarke explains that she’s deaf and asks Franklin to look after her while she goes to school in New York. Franklin agrees with a quickness that is a bit …. icky.

This whole fantasy felt like a mess, from Franklin’s oddly-conceived fantasy to the fact that Lisa Hartman was in no way convincing as someone who can’t hear. Whether Sheila can hear or not, the one thing that remains consistent is Hartman’s overacting. Even the usually reliable Ricardo Montalban seems to be annoyed by the whole fantasy.

This was a weird trip to the Island. What will next week’s journey reveal?

Horror Film Review: Beginning of the End (dir by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1957 film, Beginning of the End, is perhaps the ultimate horror film for people who dislike Illinois.

Because it’s a Bert I. Gordon film and Gordon took his “Mr. Big” nickname seriously, it deals with giant monsters. In this case, the monsters are a bunch of locust who ate all of this radioactive grain that was being stored in a silo. The locusts grew to giant size and then they went on a rampage.

Fortunately, the rampage appears to be localized to Illinois. Apparently, the locusts have enough respect for state boundaries that they know better than to hop into Indiana, Missouri, or Wisconsin. Instead, the locusts take out the farming community of Ludlow and then start making their way to Chicago, perhaps hoping to battle the Chicago Outfit for control of the city’s politics. Do they seriously think Mayor Daley is just going to sit back while a bunch of locusts overrun his city?

The government wants to cover up the locust rampage because they don’t want to risk a mass panic in the 47 states that they actually care about. (This film came out before Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union.) However, when enterprising reporter Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) comes across the remains of Ludlow and discovers that the U.S. military has taken over the area, she is determined to discover what happened. She hooks up with Dr. Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves), whose work in making food bigger led to the giant locust attacks in the first place. In most movies, Ed would shoulder most of the blame for the locust attack but Beginning of the End seems to understand that these things happen when you’re dousing food with radiation and then keeping the food in a poorly secured silo.

Of course, the main reason why it’s not Ed’s fault is that Ed is played by Peter Graves and seriously, who could blame anything on Peter Graves? Graves was one of those actors who could deliver even the silliest of dialogue with a straight face and he certainly gets to do that in Beginning of the End. He seems to be taking the situation seriously, even if no one else is.

One reason why it is a little bit difficult to take the situation seriously is because it’s about giant locusts. Now, make no mistake about it. I’m enough a country girl that I know how destructive locusts can be. The problem is that locusts may be destructive but they don’t look all that menacing. Even giant locusts just look like really ugly grasshoppers. This film uses a lot of rear projection and still photography to create the idea of giant locusts crawling over buildings and threatening the soldiers who have been sent to fight them. As is so often the case with Bert I. Gordon’s film, there’s a definite charm to the cheap special effects. But still, locusts are locusts.

Chicago haters will love the scene where General Hanson (Morris Ankrum) announces that the locusts have only left him with one option, the drop an atomic bomb and wipe the city off the face of the Earth. Fortunately, Ed is there to suggest another solution. Good old Peter Graves. I don’t know what we would have done without him.

As a final note, I’ll just mention that the poster for this film is actually more exciting than the film itself:

TV Review: Night Gallery 1.5 “Pamela’s Voice/Lone Survivor/The Doll”

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The fifth episode of Night Gallery originally aired on January 13th, 1971. It featured three stories, each one of which was introduced by Rod Serling walking through a darkened museum.

Pamela’s Voice (dir by Richard Benedict, written by Rod Serling)

Jonathan (John Astin) kills his wife, Pamela (Phyllis Diller), because he’s sick of listening to her shrill voice. However, it turns out that not even death can stop Pamela. While Jonathan is staring at a coffin, he starts to hear Pamela’s voice.

At first, you might think that this is going to be one of those stories where it’s going to turn out that the murderer has been driven made by his crimes and he’s imagining being taunted by his victim. But then Pamela makes an post-death appearance herself and the story reveals it’s final twist.

For the most part, Pamela’s Voice is entertaining. Both John Astin and Phyllis Diller give such eccentric performances that their fun to watch even if the majority of the audience will be able to guess this segment’s big twist.

Lone Survivor (dir by Gene Levitt, written by Rod Serling)

This wonderfully atmospheric story opens in 1915, with the crew of the Lusitania discovering a man (John Colicos) floating in a lifeboat. The lifeboat is from the Titanic and the man, who claims to be a crewmember of that doomed ship, is wearing a dress, leading the ship’s doctor to assume that the man survived the sinking of the Titanic by pretending to be a woman and stealing someone else’s rightful spot in the lifeboat.

At first, his rescuers are skeptical. If the man was indeed a survivor of the Titanic, that would mean that he had spent the past three years floating in that lifeboat? How could the man have survived? And, assuming that he is telling the truth about the ship that he came from, what has now brought him to the Lusitania? Could the man possibly be a German spy? After all, World War I has just broken out and the sea is no longer as safe as it once was….

Lone Survivor is an example of this often uneven show at its best. It’s a genuinely creepy short film, one that ends on a frightening and rather sad note. Lone Survivor is the tale of man trying to escape both his own guilt and the whims of fate and discovering that neither can be easily conquered. In the main role, John Colicos gives a wonderfully intense and haunted performance.

The Doll (dir by Rudi Dorn, written by Rod Serling)

“Our painting is called The Doll,” Rod Serling says as he introduces this one, “and it’s one that you better not play with.” Truer words were never spoken!

In this one, British Col. Hymber Masters (John Williams) returns home from India and discovers that his niece (Jewel Branch) has a new doll. Someone mailed the doll to her. Everyone assumed that Col. Masters sent the doll but he actually had nothing to do with it. Masters is not happy to see his niece carrying around that doll and it makes sense when you consider just how ugly the doll is. I mean, this is one creepy doll!

It turns out that the Masters was correct to be concerned because the doll was sent by Pandit Chola (Henry Silva), who holds Masters responsible for the death of his brother. The doll has been sent to take revenge….

The Doll is another triumph, largely because the doll itself is so creepy that it looks like something that sprung straight out of a nightmare. John Williams does a good job playing the well-meaning if somewhat stuffy colonel and Henry Silva is well-cast as the villain of the piece. This segment deserves a lot of credit for taking a fanciful story and playing it totally straight.

The fifth episode of Night Gallery is a triumph. After a run of uneven episodes, this episode is consistently creepy and entertaining. For this episode, at least, Night Gallery lived up to its potential.