Gene Levitt Movies

With the departure of Herve Villechaize as Tattoo at the end of Fantasy Island's sixth season, enigmatic entrepreneur Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) finds himself with a brand new assistant as Season Seven gets under way: Christopher Hewitt as the veddy British, veddy proper Lawrence, who is just as expert in helping Roarke pull off his wish-fulfillment miracles as Tattoo had been. Lawrence is introduced in the season's opening episode, which guest stars which guest-stars Juliet Prowse as a lonely middle-aged widow desirous of a romance with a younger man, and Jamie Rose as a disgruntled bride-to-be who unexpectedly becomes emotionally involved with the traditionally noncommittal Roarke. Several of the guest actors this season are returnees from previous years, including Peter Graves, Mary Ann Mobley, Markie Post, Carol Lynley, Lynda Day George, Barbara Rush and Vic Tayback. Also on hand are such intriguing guest performers as country singer Tanya Tucker, "Mr. Television" Milton Berle, theatrical "renaissance man" Jose Ferrer. . .and Victoria Spelling, the daughter of series producer Aaron Spelling. Fantasy Island's concluding episode, the dual-plotted "Surrogate Mother/Ideal Woman", features Juliet Mills as the title character in the first storyline, and John Saxon as the man looking for the woman referenced in the second half of the title. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize are still on hand as the mysterious Mr. Roarke and his sensitive dwarf assistant Tattoo, still ushering guests onto Roarke's lavish tropical resort where for $50,000 per customer dreams can literally come true, as Fantasy Island enters its fifth season. Wendy Schaal, who'd appeared in several fourth-season episodes as Roarke's resourceful goddaughter Julie, is no longer part of the regular cast, though she figures prominently in the first of Season Five's two 90-minute episodes, wherein the mysterical Roarke has his final confrontation with the demonic Mephistopholes (Roddy McDowell). For the record, the second 90-minuter offers three separate plotlines, with Bob Denver as an ambitious freelance photographer who gets his mitts on a fortune-telling camera, Michelle Phillips as the granddaughter of Mata Hari, and George Chakiris as a geologist in search of his long-lost lover. Other guest stars appearing this season include Charo, Sherman Hemsley, Britt Ekland], Peter Graves, Gene Barry, Tom Smothers, Linda Blair, Vicki Lawrence, Helen Reddy, Jill St. John, and Wanda Villechaize, then the wife of guess who. The season finale features erstwhile "Charlie's Angel" Tanya Roberts as an amateur occulist who summons up a bashful ghost, and Bo Hopkins as a bounty hunter anxious to collect the reward on the only fugitive who has ever gotten away from him. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Entering its third season as America's 22nd most popular series (not bad for an hour-long semi-anthology in a year dominated by sitcoms!), Fantasy Island indulges its fondness for the bizarre and offbeat with an opening episode wherein David Doyle plays an impoverished chap whose "fantasy" is to be murdered by a hit man so that his family can collect his insurance! While the enigmatic Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) and his diminutive sidekick Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) are for the most part noncommittal "stage managers" while fulfilling the innermost wishes of their clients, from time to time this season the viewer is afforded intensely personal glimpses of the two main characters. For example, after many impassioned requests, Tattoo is granted his own fantasy of being a "chick magnet"; and in a later episode, Tattoo develops a serious crush on one the Island's guests, aspiring country singer Audrey Landers. And in the rare single-plotline episode "The Wedding", it looks as though Mr. Roarke will finally tie the knot with the great love of his life, Helen Marsh (Samantha Eggar)--a story development that ,alas, ends in shattering tragedy. Other guest stars this season are a fascinating mixture indeed, including Adrienne Barbeau (who'd been seen in the second feature-length Fantasy Island pilot episode back in 1978), Dale Robertson, Doris Roberts, Barbi Benton, Donna Mills, Don Adams, David Cassidy, Robert Goulet, Annette Funicello, Joan Collins and Sugar Ray Robinson. The finale, "The Eagleman/The Children of Menta", finds single dad Bob Denver aspiring to bond with his young son by becoming a comic-book superhero, and journalism student Vernee Watson being afforded the opportunity to expose the most shocking news story of the century. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Magee and the Lady was filmed for Australian TV, where it was shown as She'll Be Sweet. Steamer captain Tony Lo Bianco, with nary a penny to his name, is about to lose his vessel. He tries to stave off foreclosure by kidnapping the daughter (Sally Kellerman) of the man holding the mortgage. From here, the film veers off into a quasi-African Queen direction, with both captain and captive learning to respect, and then love, each other. Acceptable in 1978, The Magee and the Lady might run into trouble from the Political Correctness Brigade these days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

In this thriller, an enigmatic phantom lives in the dank tunnels running beneath the ramshackle back lot of a former movie lot. When prospective buyers endeavor to purchase the property, the furious phantom goes on the rampage. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

First telecast January 5, 1971, Alias Smith and Jones was the pilot for the popular TV series of the same name. This genial rip-off of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Kid Curry, two notorious Western bandits who have become folk heroes because of their refusal to kill anyone. Heyes and Curry would like to go straight; the governor offers them that opportunity, provided they can stay out of trouble for one year. Assuming the aliases of Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones, Heyes and Curry begin their "retribution" process as tellers in a very tempting, very unguarded bank. Perennial guest star Susan Saint James provides the feminine angle in this tongue-and-cheek effort. Alias Smith and Jones ran until January 1973, by which time Roger Davis had replaced Pete Duel, who committed suicide on the last day of 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, Run a Crooked Mile is an kaleidoscopic espionager filmed in Britain. Louis Jourdan plays a schoolteacher on holiday who is injured in an serious auto accident. When he awakens, Jourdan discovers that two years have elapsed, during which time he has lived the life of a wealthy wastrel. He also learns that his alter ego has become mixed up in a plot to undermine the economy of Europe. Run a Crooked Mile is distinguished by imaginative photography, and by offbeat performance of leading lady Mary Tyler Moore, whose allegiances and honesty are in doubt until the final scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Vic Powers (Lloyd Bridges) leads a specialized rescue unit known as the Flying Fish. When an American economics professor is kidnapped by a malevolent Latin American dictator, the call goes out to recover the victim. The unit is equally adept in or out of the water. Ricardo (Nico Minardos) is the resident beachcomber recruited to provide the team with valuable information vital to recovering the missing professor. The specialized unit travels by air, land and sea to meet their objective and races against time to avoid an international incident that could tip the balance of power in favor of the dictator. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Sylviane Margolle is cast as Claudine, a wide-eyed French teenager who wants more than anything to be a nurse for the Americans. When King Company arrives in her village, Claudine insists upon helping every solider whom she thinks needs help. Most of the guys find the girl to be a harmless nuisance, but Sgt. Saunders (Vic Morrow) is a little more forceful in his attitude, rudely rebuffing Claudine and telling her to get lost. This serves only to convince the girl that Saunders needs her help most of all--and accordingly, she redoubles her efforts to win him over. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eddie Albert guest stars in this episode, playing--of all things--a middle-aged American farmer with a foreign-accented wife. But this is Combat, not Green Acres: Albert's character, a WW1 veteran named Phil, has been living in France with his French-born wife Marie (played by Alida Valli of The Third Man fame) ever since the Armistice. Unhinged by the ceaseless gunfire of WW2, Phil begins to imagine that he is still fighting The Great War--and so he dons his old uniform, marches into the countryside, and captures Sgt. Saunders (Vince Morrow), whom he believes to be a "Heinie" spy! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With King Company suffering heavy losses, Saunders (Vic Morrow) and Hanley (Rick Jason) are happy to see the arrival of three replacements: Gainsborough (Stephen Coit), Temple (John Considine) and Crown (John Considine). They are less happy to learn that none of the three men has ever seen combat, nor that the trio's civilian jobs hardly prepared them for Army life (one of the replacements is a former ballet dancer). Even so, Saunders must take this raw material along on an extremely dangerous reconnaissance mission. This episode is based on a story by Richard Tregaskis, the author of the classic WW2 memoir Guadalcanal Diary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Saunders (Vic Morrow) an his men are assigned to smuggle valuable French partisan Bresson (Eugene Borden) past enemy lines. En route, Bresson is shot in the back, and is in dire and immediate need of medical attention. Thanks to a series of tragic mishaps, the only doctor available to operate on Bresson is a German (Gunnar Hellstrom). This episode is full of characteristic Robert Altman touches, from the excellent use of mood lighting to the almost casual death of a familiar supporting character. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide