Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.14 “Revenge of the Forgotten/Charo”

Posted on April 29, 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. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week epitomizes an era!

Episode 6.14 “Revenge of the Forgotten/Charo”

(Dir by Phillip Leacock, originally aired on February 19th, 1983)

Just the fact that one of this week’s fantasies is actually entitled “Charo” should tell you all you need to know about it. Charo plays Maria Diaz (her full name is much longer), who has come to Fantasy Island to meet her father. Charles Woodruff (Van Johnson) didn’t even know that he had a daughter but he takes the news surprisingly well.

The interesting thing about this fantasy is that Charles Woodruff is an American diplomat, who has a home in both New York City and Fantasy Island. As Fantasy Island has previously been established as being its own nation, you do have to wonder if perhaps Charles Woodruff is America’s ambassador to Fantasy Island. A large part of the fantasy involves him hosting a dinner for several other diplomats so I guess it’s possible that every country sends an ambassador to Fantasy Island. Perhaps Fantasy Island even sends a delegate to the United Nations. Maybe that would explain where Tattoo was during all of those season 5 episodes where Julie was suddenly Roarke’s sidekick. For that matter, maybe that’s where Julie is now. The show never has really explained what happened to her.

Anyway, how much you like this fantasy will depend on how much you like Charo. She is someone who definitely epitomizes an era and, of course, the same can be said of both The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. It’s interesting that, over the years, there have been multiple attempts to reboot both of those series and they’ve never really worked, largely because a good deal of the appeal of Love Boat and Fantasy Island is how much they really are a product of the 70s and 80s. Attempting to update them for the modern era tends to negate everything that make both of the shows so entertaining to watch today.

(The latest Fox update of Fantasy Island had a lot of gorgeous scenery but it got bogged down in all of its attempts to world build. It’s fun to speculate about how the Island works. It’s less fun to actually have the show explain it to us.)

As for the other fantasy, it involves Marjoe Gortner! As usual, Marjoe’s playing a villain. He’s cast as Loren Robertson, who framed Alan Daly (Steve Kanaly) for a crime that he didn’t commit and then tricked Alan’s girlfriend, Marion (Christine Belford), into marrying him. Recently released from prison, Alan comes to Fantasy Island to track down a fabled treasure that Alan believes he can use to restart his life. With the help of Tattoo (who dresses up like Indiana Jones), Alan finds the treasure but, when he sees Loren and Marion on the Island, Alan gets distracted by his desire for revenge.

This story was a bit of an odd one. Alan’s fantasy was to find the treasure and, after he found it, Roarke was like, “So, I guess you’ll be leaving now.” Instead, Alan decides to spend a full weekend on the Island to try to get revenge. I’ve never seen Roarke try to get a guest to leave early before but it’s even more strange to be reminded that somehow all of these fantasies occur over the course of one weekend. Some episodes have seemed like a bit much for just two or three days.

Despite the fact that this episode originally aired in 1983, it doesn’t get more 70s than Charo and Marjoe! Charo was her usual self. Marjoe was a great villain as always. This was an enjoyable trip to the Island.

The Unnominated #14: Kansas City Bomber (dir by Jerrold Freedman)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

In 1972’s Kansas City Bomber, Raquel Welch stars as KC Carr.

KC. is a star on the roller derby circuit, a tough fighter who is loved by the audience and who shows no fear when it comes to skating around the track and getting into brawls with the other team. The audience especially loves it when she fights Jackie Burdette (Helena Kallianiotes), madly cheering over every punch landed and every elbow thrown and every strand of hair pulled. It’s not glamorous work but KC loves the adulation of the crowds and the comradery of her team. She’s a single mother and putting on roller skates and getting bruised in fights allows her to support her daughter, Rita (a pre-Taxi Driver Jodie Foster).

But then KC is traded to another team, the Portland Loggers. It takes KC a while to fit in with her new team. She’s viewed with suspicion, especially when she starts to date the owner of the team, Burt Henry (Kevin McCarthy). Burt may seem charming but KC soon discovers that he has a jealous side. When KC spends too much time with her best friend and roommate, Burt trades her to another team. When a male skater named “Horrible” Hank (Norman Alden) reveals that he has a rather obvious crush on KC, Burt goes out of his way to humiliate Hank. Burt wants to start a new team in Chicago and he’s promised to make KC a star. Will KC give up her own freedom to be Burt’s well-compensated star or will she stand up for herself and show that she doesn’t belong to anyone?

You already know the answer. The wonderful thing about Raquel Welch is that she was tough. She didn’t let people push her around and, if that resulted in people in Hollywood whispering that she was difficult, so be it. Like KC Carr, Raquel Welch didn’t make any apologies. Kansas City Bomber is one of the few of Welch’s early 70s films to celebrate and show how just how tough she was. For once, Welch is given an actual character to play and she proves herself to be a strong and fierce actress. It’s fun and more than a little empowering to watch her performance here. Everyone underestimates KC Carr, just as everyone underestimated Raquel Welch. In both cases, the doubters are proven wrong.

Kansas City Bomber is not a great film. (The pacing is totally off and the supporting characters are not quite as memorable as either Welch or Kevin McCarthy.) But Raquel Welch gave a great performance. That Welch was never Oscar-nominated isn’t really a surprise. She didn’t appear in the type of movies that received Oscar attention and she was often cast in roles that didn’t give her much of an opportunity to show off what she could do. She definitely deserved a nomination for Kansas City Bomber.

Previous entries in The Unnominated:

A Movie A Day #277: Deadly Friend (1986, directed by Wes Craven)

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Things I learned from watching Deadly Friend:

Girls love nerds who build robots.

In 1986, nerds could build robots that displayed human feelings.

Angry old neighbors hate robots.

If a nerd can build a robot that displays human feelings, then he can also bring his girlfriend back to life by putting a computer chip from the robot in her brain.

Once brought back to life, the girlfriend will start to behave just like the robot.

Basketballs can be used to do anything.

Deadly Friend is best remembered for the scene where the newly revived Samantha (Kristy Swanson) throws a basketball with such force that it causes the head of her neighbor (Anne Ramsey) to explode. It is also remembered for BB, the big yellow robot that was built by Paul (Matthew Laborteaux). Deadly Friend starts out as the ultimate nerd fantasy: a beautiful girlfriend. a big robot, and a killer basketball. By the end of the movie, the fantasy has turned into a nightmare.

Deadly Friend was Wes Craven’s follow-up to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven intended for the film to be a dark love story between a teenage outcast and his zombie girlfriend, with a strong emphasis on the hypocrisy of the adults around them. Craven said that, in his version of Deadly Friend, people like Samantha’s abusive father were meant to be scarier than Zombie Samantha With A Microchip In Her Brain. Warner Bros. wanted a film that would appeal to teenage horror fans and demanded Elm Street-stlye nightmares and buckets of more blood. As a result, Craven practically disowned the finished movie and Deadly Friend is a tonally inconsistent, with sentimental first love scenes competing for space with heads exploding and necks being snapped. Despite good performances from Laborteaux and Swanson, the final film is too much of a mess to work. However, I know that I will never look at a basketball the same way again.