If only because his
company also made The Love Boat, the
campy dramatic series Fantasy Island
cannot be deemed the worst television show for which producer Aaron Spelling
was responsible. That faint praise being offered, the massive success of the
show—which ran for 152 episodes from 1977 to 1984—underscores that much of
Spelling’s career was spent manufacturing the audiovisual equivalent of junk
food. From week to week, Fantasy Island
served up C-list actors in ridiculous scenarios against the backdrop of a
semi-supernatural vacation destination. Sentimentality, superficiality, and
sexuality powered the show, together with the odd coupling of series stars
Ricardo Montalban, as godlike host Mr. Rourke, and Hervé Villechaize, as Mr.
Rourke’s diminutive assistant, Tattoo. Throughout its run, Fantasy Island presented escapism about escapism. That’s why it’s
amusing to revisit the TV movie that served as the series’ pilot episode,
because the first installment of Fantasy
Island is quite dark.
Naturally, the picture begins with Tattoo climbing to
the bell tower of the main building on Fantasy Island and yelling in his
French-accented English, “Ze plane! Ze plane!” Once the seaplane to which
Tattoo referred lands at the main dock, Rourke gives introductory voiceover to
explain the wishes of new guests to Tattoo (and the audience). In the pilot,
businessman Eunice Baines (Eleanor Parker) fakes her own funeral to determine
which of her associates she can trust; World War II veteran Arnold Greenwood
(Bill Bixby) revisits wartime France so he can see a lost love once again; and
big-game hunter Paul Henley (Hugh O’Brian) asks to be hunted, ostensibly to
test his virility. The Eunice storyline generates only bland soap opera, but
the Arnold and Paul storylines are grim. It turns out that Arnold suffers from
PTSD because he killed his wartime lover in a jealous rage, and that Paul is
suicidal. As for Rourke, he’s like a capricious deity manipulating people’s
lives for amusement. After casually describing his guests as being “so mortal”
(implying that he’s the opposite), Rourke later proclaims: “There are no rules
on Fantasy Island except as I make them!” In addition to magically re-creating
Arnold’s horrific murder scenario, Rourke hires a shapely hooker named Michelle
(Victoria Principal) to sleep with Paul, and then he handcuffs Michelle to Paul
so she’ll share his fate. At one point, Rourke callously dismisses a husband’s
rage at being cuckolded: “Your wife was used many times by many men.” Ouch.
Fantasy Island has all the hallmarks of
a typical Spelling production, such as shallow storytelling and tacky
production values (in most of the scenes, Burbank subs for the tropics), but
the nastiness of the piece is striking. Things got more family-friendly once Fantasy Island went to
series—notwithstanding the strange episodes in which Rourke duels with Satan,
played by Roddy McDowall--so it’s possible to watch the pilot as a glimpse at an
alternate version of the series that could have been. In fact, something akin
to that alternate version materialized when Fantasy
Island was briefly revived, with Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Rourke, in 1998.
Produced by feature-film guy Barry Sonnenfeld, the ‘90s Fantasy Island went for paranormal black comedy and fizzled after
just 13 episodes.
Fantasy Island: FUNKY
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