Romantic Fantasy Movies

First telecast January 14, 1977, the feature-length pilot episode of producer Aaron Spelling's Fantasy Island introduces Ricardo Montalban as the enigmatic Mr. Roarke and dwarf actor Herve Villechaize as his resourceful assistant Tattoo, along with an impressive array of guest stars playing the various vacationers who, for $50,000 a head, are permitted to fulfill their fondest wishes at the lavish and mysterious resort known as Fantasy Island. In this opening installment, an ageing WW2 correspondent (ill Bixby) gets to relive the romance he encountered during the London blitz, and confront the possibility that he once committed murder; an arrogant woman of wealth (Eleanor Parker) finds out what people really think of her by attending her own funeral; and in a twist on the old "Most Dangerous Game" formula, a big-game hunter (Hugh O'Brian) finds out what it is like to be the hunted. This two-hour extravaganza was followed on January 20, 1978 with a second pilot, Return to Fantasy Island. On this occasion, a barracudalike female executive (Adrienne Barbeau) is cut down to size by the man who has worshipped her from afar; an amnesia victim (Karen Valentine) relives a horrifying event as she searches for her true identity; and an infertile copule (Joseph Campanella, Pat Crowley) yearn for a reunion with the child they gave up for adoption a dozen years earlier. The Fantasy Island series proper began eight days later on January 28, cutting down the "fantasies" from three to two per episode in order to accommodate the weekly sixty-minute format. The series opener finds stage magician Bert Convy risking his life to pull off the most dangerous escape of his career, and drab middle-class ladies Diana Canova and Georgette Engel getting the opportunity to hobnob with high society. Subsequent episodes feature such prominent guest players as Carol Lynley (who'd appeared in the first pilot), Jane Powell, Henry Gibson, Sheree North, Christopher George, James Macarthur, Vera Miles, Don Knotts, Ray Bolger, Ken Berry and Rich Little-- also Lauren Tewes and David Doyle, respectively the costars of two other popular Aaron Spelling concoctions, The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels. One of the season's best episodes, wherein meek accountant Gary Burghoff dreams of being a baseball superstar, features sports figures Tommy Lasorda, Steve Garvey, Fred Lynn, George Brett, and Ellis Valentine in cameos as "themselves." The final brace of fantasies for Fantasy Island's first season finds gambler Richard Dawson aspiring to be "the world's luckiest man" (and suffering the consequences!), while singer Kathryn Holcomb travels back to the 1930s to find out why her mother gave up her own showbiz career. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who watch over the city of Berlin. They don't have harps or wings (well, they usually don't have wings) and they prefer overcoats to gossamer gowns. But they can travel unseen through the city, listening to people's thoughts, watching their actions and studying their lives. While they can make their presence felt in small ways, only children and other angels can see them. They spend their days serenely observing, unable to interact with people, and they feel neither pain nor joy. One day, Damiel finds his way into a circus and sees Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a high-wire artist, practicing her act; he is immediately smitten. After the owners of the circus tell the company that the show is out of money and must disband, Marion sinks into a funk, shuffling back to her trailer to ponder what to do next. As he watches her, Damiel makes a decision: he wants to be human, and he wants to be with Marion, to lift her spirits and, if need be, to share her pain. Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire is a remarkable modern fairy tale about the nature of being alive. The angels witness the gamut of human emotions, and they experience the luxury of simple pleasures (even a cup of coffee and a cigarette) as ones who've never known them. From the angels' viewpoint, Berlin is seen in gorgeous black-and-white -- strikingly beautiful but unreal; when they join the humans, the image shifts to rough but natural-looking color, and the waltz-like grace of the angels' drift through the city changes to a harsher rhythm. Peter Falk appears as himself, revealing a secret that we may not have known about the man who played Columbo, and there's also a brief but powerful appearance by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Wings of Desire hinges on the intangible and elusive, and it builds something beautiful from those qualities. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A young man who has pledged his life to helping others finds himself in a pitched battle between two gangs of supernatural villains in this blend of horror story and action thriller. Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman) is a medical student who is heading home after a long day of school and work when he unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of what appears to be a rumble between two well turned-out street gangs. What Michael doesn't know is he has witnessed a skirmish between two deadly underground communities, unknown to the mortal world, who are battling for supremacy -- the Death Dealers, a tribe of vampires, and the Lycans, a band of werewolves. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a leading member of the Death Dealers who hears through the grapevine that the Lycans have plans to capture the aspiring doctor who witnessed their battle. Certain something is in the air, Selene begins following Michael around the city, and she finds herself growing emotionally attached to him. As Selene becomes more attracted to Michael, she becomes more convinced that the Lycans are planning a major attack against the Death Dealers, although vampire kingpin Kraven (Shane Brolly) is certain she's crediting the Lycans with more intelligence than they can muster. As Selene shadows Michael, she finds herself wanting to protect him, but her longing becomes a handicap when he's attacked by Lucian (Michael Sheen), the leader of the werewolf community, and the man she wants to save has now become a sworn enemy. Underworld was the first feature film from music video director Len Wiseman. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Cinematic poet Jean Cocteau explored the myth of Orpheus on no fewer than three occasions: Le Sang d'Un Poete (Blood of a Poet, 1930), Orphee (Orpheus, 1949) and Le Testament d'Orphee (1960). This second of his "Orpheus" trilogy stars Jean Marais in the title role. Updated to contemporary Paris (albeit a Paris never seen before or since), the story concerns a sensitive young poet named Orpheus, who is married to the lovely Eurydice (Marie Dea). Orpheus' friend Cegeste (Edouard Dermit) is killed in a traffic accident. In the hospital morgue, Cegeste's patroness, The Princess of Death (Maria Casares), revives the young man; then, both Cegeste and Princess pass into the Underworld. Back on earth, Orpheus receives cryptic messages from Cegeste's spirit, as well as nocturnal visitations from the Princess. Meanwhile, Orpheus' wife enters into an affair with Heurtebise (Francois Perier). After seeking advice on her mixed-up love life, Eurydice is herself struck down and killed by the same cyclist who snuffed out Cegeste's life. It appears to Heurtebise that the ghostly Princess has claimed Eurydice so that she, the Princess, can be free to love Orpheus. Heurtebise persuades Orpheus to accompany him into the Underworld in hopes of returning Eurydice to life. By now, however, Orpheus cares little for his wife; he is completely under the Princess' spell. Offered her own liberation from the Underworld by the powers-that-be, the Princess dolefullly agrees to restore Eurydice to life, and to never have anything to do with Orpheus again. Orpheus has weathered much controversy to take its place among the director's most acclaimed works. Originally released at 112 minutes, the film was whittled down to 95 minutes for its American release. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When an earth woman discovers she is carrying an alien's child, tensions between humans and the out-worlders rapidly escalate towards all-out war. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

For all its state-of-the-art special effects, Always is essentially a remake of the 1943 Spencer Tracy-Irene Dunne fantasy vehicle A Guy Named Joe--minus the wartime context. Richard Dreyfuss stars as a reckless fire-fighting pilot who is killed in what was to have been his final mission. Ascending to Heaven, Dreyfuss is introduced to businesslike angel Audrey Hepburn (playing the equivalent of the Lionel Barrymore role in A Guy Named Joe). Hepburn instructs the spectral Dreyfuss to pass on his aviation knowhow to his young successor, Brad Johnson. Our ghostly hero also smoothes the course of romance for his earthly girl friend Holly Hunter, who after several months' worth of grieving has fallen in love with Johnson. John Goodman injects a dose of comedy relief as Dreyfuss' faithful buddy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) is literally what its title suggests: a retelling of the "Orpheus and Eurydice" legend enacted by black performers. This time the setting is the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Orpheus (Breno Mello) is a streetcar conductor; Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) has just jilted her lover and is attempting to escape his wrath. Orpheus himself falls in love with Eurydice, whereupon her ex-lover, disguised as the Angel of Death shows up and kills Eurydice. To reclaim his lost love, Orpheus enters "Hell" (the Rio morgue) and uses supernatural methods to revive the dead girl. A multi-award winner on the international film scene, Black Orpheus features a samba musical score by Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Carousel was adapted from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical of the same name--which, in turn, was based on Liliom, a play by Ferenc Molnar. Gordon MacRae stars as carnival barker Billy Bigelow, who much against his will falls in love with Maine factory girl Julie Jordan (Shirley Jones). Billy proves an improvident and unreliable husband, but Julie stands by him. Upon discovering that Julie is pregnant, the unemployed Billy sees an opportunity for some quick money by joining his unsavory pal Jigger (Cameron Mitchell). The scheme goes awry, and Billy dies. Standing before the Pearly Gates, Billy is given a chance to redeem himself by the kindly Starkeeper (Gene Lockhart). He is allowed to return to Earth to try to brighten the life of his unhappy 15-year-old daughter Louise (Susan Luckey). Billy offers Louise a star that he has stolen from the sky; when Louise backs off in fear, Billy slaps her. He feels like a failure until he and his Heavenly Friend (William LeManessa) attend Louise's school graduation ceremony. There the invisible Billy watches as the principal (Gene Lockhart again) inspires Louise (and, by extension, Julie) by assuring her that so long as she has hope in her heart, she'll never walk alone. Frank Sinatra, the film's original Billy Bigelow, dropped out of the production due to laryngitis. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A man undergoes a scientific experiment that causes him to wake up after 50 years without aging a day in this romantic science-fiction tale. In 1939, Daniel (Mel Gibson) is a test pilot who is brave in the air but lacks the nerve to ask his girlfriend Helen (Isabel Glasser) to marry him, even though he loves her deeply. When Helen is hit by a truck and is taken to the hospital in a coma, Daniel is despondent, and he approaches his best friend Harry (George Wendt). Harry is a scientific researcher working with the military who has been experimenting with cryogenic suspension; Daniel asks Harry to have him frozen for a year rather than go through the hell of waiting to see if Helen lives or dies. Harry reluctantly agrees, but after the pilot is put on ice, Harry's experiments are shut down, and Daniel is forgotten. In 1992, two young boys, Nat (Elijah Wood) and Felix (Robert Hy Gorman) are playing in an abandoned military warehouse and find a freezing unit. They open it and find Daniel, who before long is all thawed out and physically not much worse for wear. However, the world is a very different place than it was in 1939; the boys bring their discovery home, where their single mother Claire (Jamie Lee Curtis) looks after Daniel and helps him adjust to his new world. A friendship between them begins to grow into something deeper, until Daniel discovers that his beloved Helen is still alive. Forever Young also features Joe Morton, Rob Morrow, and Vanessa Williams. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Bill Murray plays Phil, a TV weatherman working for a local station in Pennsylvania but convinced that national news stardom is in his grasp. Phil displays a charm and wit on camera that evaporates the moment the red light goes off; he is bitter, appallingly self-centered, and treats his co-workers with contempt, especially his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot). On February 2, 1992, Phil, Rita, and Larry are sent on an assignment that Phil especially loathes: the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA, where the citizens await the appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who will supposedly determine the length of winter by his ability to see his own shadow. Phil is eager to beat a hasty retreat, but when a freak snowstorm strands him in Punxsutawney, he wakes up the next morning with the strangest sense of déjà vu: he seems to be living the same day over again. The next morning it happens again, and then again. Soon, no matter what he does, he's stuck in February 2, 1992; not imprisonment nor attempted suicide nor kidnapping the groundhog gets him out of the loop. But the more Phil relives the same day, the more he's forced to look at other people's lives, and something unusual happens: he begins to care about others. He starts to respect people, he tries to save the life of a homeless man, and he discovers that he's falling in love with Rita and therefore wants to be someone that she could love in return. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A longtime pet project of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute was finally brought to the screen in 1973. While the opera itself is offered in a highly stylized and theatrical fashion, the fluidity of the camerawork turns the affair into a purely cinematic experience. Sung in Swedish, the libretto remains as ever a gentle parody of the initiation ceremonies of the Masons, offered as an other-worldly fantasy involving a kidnapped princess (Irma Urrila), a vengeful Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin), and a carefree wanderer who periodically plays the titular flute. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Christopher Reeve got away from Superman and related costume roles in this dramatic fantasy film, adapted from Richard Matheson's 1960s vintage novel Bid Time Return. A young playwright, Richard Collier (Reeve), is approached by an elderly woman on the occasion of his first triumph in 1972 -- all she says to him is "Come back to me" and leaves him with a watch that contains a picture of a ravishing young woman. Eight years later, he visits the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and comes upon a photograph of the same woman, whom he discovers was an actress who made an appearance at the hotel in 1912. He becomes obsessed with the image and what the woman -- who died the night she approached him in 1972 -- meant by what she said. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of the film Laura, he falls in love with her and her image as he learns more about her life and career. Then he comes upon the suggestion of a professor at his former college that time travel may, in fact, be possible, using an extreme form of self-hypnosis to free the person from the place they occupy in the time-stream. Collier's feelings for the woman are so strong that he succeeds, bringing himself back to the hotel in 1912 on the eve of her triumph. He meets the actress, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), and the two fall in love despite the machinations of her obsessive, autocratic manager (Christopher Plummer), who feels threatened by Collier's presence. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi