This is another of the fluffier variety of Fantasy Island, and it stars many veteran actors including Ray Bolger, Foster Brooks(not drunk here), Phil Foster(Laverne & Shirley), Tom Ewell, Barbi Benton(1st of 8 episodes), and Herb Edelman, who was a hoot as a studio head. Without going into much detail about either segment(would take too long), I would have to say I preferred the one with the old gang getting back together again to foil a blackmailing scheme around Spencer's(Bolger)wealthy wife Winnie, played by Harriet Nelson. The old guys had decent chemistry and offered a few funny moments, and I especially enjoyed the performance of a sober Brooks. This segment also had a decent atmosphere around a very large house for which the gang has to break in to steal a file in order to thwart the blackmail. The other segment stars Fantasy Island veteran Barbi Benton, and her fantasy is the usual one to gain popularity as a movie star, although she soon discovers that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Joanna Barnes(Liz)is solid as Shirley's(Benton)agent, and warns her that it's tough to be in show business, and as I said above, Edelman is delightful as Arthur Gantman, as he basically insists Shirley perform a nude scene. At first she seems receptive to the idea, but after thinking about it, she refuses and thus ends her acting career, even though in real life, Benton has posed nude several times. Neither story is very strong, but it's always good to see old faces that once graced our screens many years ago.
Fantasy Island (TV Series)
The Over-the-Hill Caper/Poof, You're a Movie Star (1978)
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Ironic !
elshikh410 September 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Who can hate Fantasy Island?! I'll tell you; whether the unromantic or the ungrateful!
Here's a show from the good old days, that used to give us simple 2 dramas in one, with absolute elegance, charm and mildness. However, this episode made me wonder a bit.
At the story of (Poof! You're a Movie Star), Barbi Benton plays a girl who wants desperately to be a movie star. And when the producer, one unforgettable creep!, requests that she must appear nude, she refuses, declaring that she can be put in swimsuits, but not in the nude. It fits the American TV at the time, until you think about it. Benton, whose originally a model and former girlfriend of Playboy Magazine's founder Hugh M. Hefner (lived with him for 7 years), did appear on some covers and in various pictorials nude. So, this speech of decency sounds pretty hard to believe when it comes from someone like her. Maybe, in 1978, it was something about Benton, talking about her career as an actress not a model anymore, especially post-Hefner (they broke up in 1976, then she'd get married, to else man, in 1979), or maybe it was a trick to make the audience complete the episode to know would she do it or not!
Then, the matter of how tormenting the life of the actor is. It's another irony, coming from the industry people themselves. I mean it shows a hateful image for such a life, so it's bad enough to fantasize about being a cinema actor. It forthrightly says "Don't be an actress, it's awful, and unethical too!", as a behest pointed towards kids to leave their dreams of acting, and search for other ones! Even the climax; the lead dispenses with her possible career, because it's too dirty for her (not too exhausting, notice well), therefore she'll sleep with just her lover, not with others, as her final line refers to, as if acting is nothing but adultery in front of the camera and behind it as well! Which makes many viewers ask, according to this very story's moral, how Benton got the job of this?!
Furthermore, in the story of (The Over the Hill Caper), the one who plays the lead is less fun, less charismatic than Tom Ewell, who plays a member of an old, very old, gang. Ewell, who I adore his performance in movies like The Seven Year Itch (1955) and The Girl Can't Help It (1956), looked so feeble. Maybe that's why he was selected to play the chronically sleepy Burt 'Fingers' Lonegan, not the lead role. Well, it was both happy and sad to meet him here.
The best of it remains in: Ewell's moments, not for mere nostalgia though, but for being the only comic thing about this episode. And - without a doubt - the presence of Mr. Roarke; Ricardo Montalban was always magic. In fact, this series showed that clearly and purely.
Ironic or not, it's better than most of today's shows. One look to today's TV and you'll grasp easily that it has become a Fantasy Island, but with the devil as Mr. Roarke!
Here's a show from the good old days, that used to give us simple 2 dramas in one, with absolute elegance, charm and mildness. However, this episode made me wonder a bit.
At the story of (Poof! You're a Movie Star), Barbi Benton plays a girl who wants desperately to be a movie star. And when the producer, one unforgettable creep!, requests that she must appear nude, she refuses, declaring that she can be put in swimsuits, but not in the nude. It fits the American TV at the time, until you think about it. Benton, whose originally a model and former girlfriend of Playboy Magazine's founder Hugh M. Hefner (lived with him for 7 years), did appear on some covers and in various pictorials nude. So, this speech of decency sounds pretty hard to believe when it comes from someone like her. Maybe, in 1978, it was something about Benton, talking about her career as an actress not a model anymore, especially post-Hefner (they broke up in 1976, then she'd get married, to else man, in 1979), or maybe it was a trick to make the audience complete the episode to know would she do it or not!
Then, the matter of how tormenting the life of the actor is. It's another irony, coming from the industry people themselves. I mean it shows a hateful image for such a life, so it's bad enough to fantasize about being a cinema actor. It forthrightly says "Don't be an actress, it's awful, and unethical too!", as a behest pointed towards kids to leave their dreams of acting, and search for other ones! Even the climax; the lead dispenses with her possible career, because it's too dirty for her (not too exhausting, notice well), therefore she'll sleep with just her lover, not with others, as her final line refers to, as if acting is nothing but adultery in front of the camera and behind it as well! Which makes many viewers ask, according to this very story's moral, how Benton got the job of this?!
Furthermore, in the story of (The Over the Hill Caper), the one who plays the lead is less fun, less charismatic than Tom Ewell, who plays a member of an old, very old, gang. Ewell, who I adore his performance in movies like The Seven Year Itch (1955) and The Girl Can't Help It (1956), looked so feeble. Maybe that's why he was selected to play the chronically sleepy Burt 'Fingers' Lonegan, not the lead role. Well, it was both happy and sad to meet him here.
The best of it remains in: Ewell's moments, not for mere nostalgia though, but for being the only comic thing about this episode. And - without a doubt - the presence of Mr. Roarke; Ricardo Montalban was always magic. In fact, this series showed that clearly and purely.
Ironic or not, it's better than most of today's shows. One look to today's TV and you'll grasp easily that it has become a Fantasy Island, but with the devil as Mr. Roarke!
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