VALENTINE MAGIC ON LOVE ISLAND (1980) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 7/19/15

 

A billion years from now, when they're talking about the worst of the worst made-for-TV movies of all time, VALENTINE MAGIC ON LOVE ISLAND (aka "Magic on Love Island") will still hold its own on the lips and in the hearts of junk film junkies of the far-flung future. 

If they still have lips and hearts, that is.  And even if they don't, this brain-warp of a movie will make them feel as though their lips are shriveling in disgust as their hearts break from sheer id-curdling incredulity.

A bizarre hybrid of "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island", from a time faraway back when people still flocked to watch those multi-segment, faded-star-packed chunks of 70s-schlock entertainment, this 1980 crapfest belatedly distills the worst of both and throws in the worst of just about everything else it can get its hands on for good measure. 

The show's incredibly cloying theme song, nauseatingly crooned by a guy with a fake Jamaican accent, lets us know what we're in for:

Floating like a flower in de sea
Waiting to be found by you and me
Feeding all your needed fantasy
Love Island, Love Island
Your island of love

Not on any map or any chart
Only to be found inside your heart
There to give de love in you a start
Love Island, Love Island
Your island of love

The papaya, tasty pomegran'te
Helps you do de t'ings
The t'ings you t'ink you can't [!]
T'rough de voodoo of de island chant
Love Island, Love Island
Your island of love

In de sun your body wants to play
Urging you to let it have its way
T'row your inhibitions in de quay
Love Island, Love Island
Your island of love

Janis Paige, a facelift or two past her prime, stars as a mysteriously magical matchmaker named Madge who brings unlikely couples together at her tropical island paradise resort.  She's supposed to have supernatural powers, but instead of using them for evil--intentionally, anyway--she's like a gushing, overripe Cupid making love connections between grievously mismatched souls with the help of her two bubbly teenage charges, Dominique Dunne (POLTERGEIST) and Christopher "Peter Brady" Knight. 

When things aren't going as love-positive as she'd like, Madge resorts to everything from Tarot cards and crystal balls (so to speak) to whipping up chocolate-dipped roses and other confections that put the love whammy on anyone who eats them.  This is how, heaven help us, she gets Howard Duff romantically interested in Dody Goodman, if you can entertain that thought for more than a few seconds without blacking out. 

The awkwardly-staged intro segments for each main character show us who needs a quick love pair-up on Love Island, and why.  Mary Louise Weller (ANIMAL HOUSE's "Mandy Pepperidge") is shown modeling sexy lingerie for pushy photog Stuart Pankin at his smarmiest before rebelling against the horrible grind and insisting upon an island vacation.  As she goes into freeze-frame, Fake Jamaican-Accent Dude returns to hip us to her plight:

Lady wit' de curvy frame
Sometimes she play nervy game
She needs mon, her ways to tame
Who will be de one?

The "mon" in question, horribly enough, just might be none other than Bill Daily of "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Bob Newhart Show" fame, here playing a clumsy assistant pastor with Coke-bottle glasses who's a big movie buff.  This guy is such a loss that the head church-guy himself suggests he go away--that is, "get" away--to Love Island as quickly as possible.  Bill's inevitable dating-profile-in-song goes like this:

Man who shy, he miss a lot
Don't use half of what he got
Who'll untie his tied-up knot
Who will be de one?
[The last line, in this case, is spoken dramatically for extra romantic emphasis.]

The horror continues with Bob Seagren as an injured pro quarterback who's one sack away from permanent disability ("Mistah wit de muscles so, he has also big ego..."), a cute pre-nose-job Lisa Hartman as a cornfed checkout clerk named "Crystal Kramer" smothered by her clinging mom (Dody again), and Adrienne Barbeau, God love her, as the fed-up mistress of an overbearing business executive (Duff) who flees to you-know-where.  Her lovelorn lame-erick:

Love may not be on her mind
But she seek and she will find
In de plan dat life design
Who will be de one?

Duff hires a private detective to tail Adrienne, and he turns out to be Rick Hurst, who also falls for her, and...I know what you're thinking.  "Adrienne Barbeau and Rick Hurst?  No. Please, please, just...no."  Well, I hate to say it, folks, but yes.  Just yes.  He will be "de one."  (Or...will he?  Hee hee.)  Rick gets his own verse but I couldn't make out the lyrics because they're warbled bad-Supremes style to catch us off-guard. 

When we finally make it to Love Island, a ghostly Madge wanders around creeping out the new arrivals with her frozen grin as they get off the boat and start intermingling with all the grace of short-circuiting bumper cars.  This is where the true horror (there's that word again) begins, with each potential love-match seemingly more incongruous and repellent than the last and Madge presiding over it all like a sickly-sweet spectre of schmaltz.

Mary Louise Weller starts the ball rolling by strutting around in a revealing swimsuit and getting upset that people are ogling her body instead of her mind, but ends up making out with horndogger Bob Seagren all over the place while Chris Knight lusts after her from afar.  Yikes.  Weller is apparently allowed to ad-lib some of her dialogue in these scenes.  Not a good idea.

Additional laughs are generated by Bill Daily taking off his glasses to appear more attractive to the opposite sex and mistaking Lisa Hartman for Dody Goodman's 50-year-old sister.  Lisa's upset at first, but after dumping her salad in Bill's lap he sorta starts to turn her on, which is just gross.

Things get weirder when Bill and Bob end up stranded on the other side of the island by themselves, one immobilized by old injuries and the other blind as a bat without his glasses.  Madge, who planned the whole thing to force the two men to work out their differences (and "grow") materializes from out of nowhere like Glinda the Good Witch and heals Bob's knee with a laying on of the hands.  Ohhh-kay... 

Much of the "humor" in this part of the movie comes from Dody trying to fix daughter Lisa up with anything in pants, which, unfortunately, includes Rick Hurst.  This leads to Rick dressing in drag at one point in order to avoid Dody.  Watching this scene is like seeing the entire concept of comedy suddenly take a huge dump. Later, Rick actually hits on Adrienne while he's in full "mom" makeup and muu-muu, and she accepts.  Concept of reality now fully and horribly subverted, thank you very much.

Things hit rock bottom when Rick takes a comedy-relief break to bare his soul to Adrienne with one of those desperate "tears of a clown" speeches that's puppy-dog pathetic.  ("You see, I was always the class clown...the bumbler, the fumbler...girls laughed at me...")  More sensitive viewers may not survive this scene. If you do, you might actually make it to the end of the movie alive.

TV veteran Earl Bellamy, who actually did direct episodes of "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat" among many, many other things, does his best with what he has to work with here, which isn't much.  Meanwhile, the photography often renders even the genuine tropical locations murky and mundane. 

Performance-wise, Bob Seagren does his best to murder the art of "acting" but in this crime he has several accomplices.  Even the better actors in the bunch are stymied by ditzy dialogue in a story whose multiple plotlines compete to be the stupidest.  It's telling that the person who seems to fit most comfortably into this frothy concoction of crud is Dody Goodman, playing the dumbest character in the whole movie. 

Everything climaxes (I wish) with the big Valentine Costume Ball, where the couples are coupled once and for all.  Naturally, Dody shows up in a ridiculous chicken suit that she made herself.  Rick Hurst, as a wand'ring minstrel or whatever, continues to push the boundaries of unfunny right up till the bitter end. 

Naughty Dominique eats one of Madge's special love confections and gets high as a kite, leading me to believe that there's a tad more LSD than "magic" in Madge's recipe.  And just in case everybody's "fun quotient" has yet to be adequately met, Howard Duff shows up.  It's truly a magical evening!  (Ehh...)

As hard as I've tried to describe it, this movie simply defies description.  Although I will say that it's smarmy, cloying, cutesy, banal, schmaltzy, senseless, silly,  dunderheaded, inane, inept, indigestible, and incredibly stupid. The script, the acting, the casting, all technical aspects of the production--everything about it is stunningly, stupefyingly awful.  

Without a doubt, VALENTINE MAGIC ON LOVE ISLAND is one of the all-time most horrendously horrible things ever concocted for public viewing. An absolute cringe-inducing joy to watch.  Fascinatingly bad.  I love, adore, and cherish this movie.  I've seen it at least twenty times.

Watch the full movie on Youtube

Watch the original promo on Youtube

"Love Island" Theme
Music by Peter Matz/Lyrics by Norman Gimbel

VALENTINE MAGIC ON LOVE ISLAND (1980) -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE LOVE BOAT: SEASON TWO, VOLUME TWO -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 5/29/32

 

Recently I've begun to develop a perverse enjoyment of extremely cheesy 70s and 80s television shows that I wouldn't have been caught dead watching during their first run. Curious to test my newfound ability to withstand anything the likes of Aaron Spelling could launch at me, I was eager to take on one of the all-time undisputed champeens of cheese, "The Love Boat." So as soon as I got my mitts on the new four-disc, 12-episode DVD collection THE LOVE BOAT: SEASON TWO, VOLUME TWO, it was on, baby! DING!

Actually, once you resign yourself to how silly and totally corny it all is, the show isn't that hard to like at all. If you're looking for "Playhouse 90", you're on the wrong boat. And who doesn't want to spend a little time on a cruise ship with a fun-loving crew and dozens of pop culture icons gettin' it on with each other? As one of the first and best of these "Grand Hotel"-style multi-plot, multi-guest star shows, "The Love Boat" is simply a boatload of dumb fun.

The first episode alone features none other than Abe Vigoda and Nancy Walker sharing romantic dialogue on deck with a scenic sunset in the background. Also representing the older set in later episodes are: Ray "Scarecrow" Bolger and Martha "Poli-Grip" Raye as high-school sweethearts who haven't seen each other in forty years; Arthur Godfrey and Minnie Pearl as eloping lovebirds on the run from their overprotective offspring (Elinor Donahue and Warren Berlinger); and Barry Nelson and Nanette Fabray as an empty-nest couple whose plans for a round-the-world vacation are deep-sixed by news of a surprise package.

 

One of the best of the show's December-December flings takes place when rich widow Celeste Holm winds up on the same cruise with her vacationing chauffeur, John Mills, and they discover that they're in love with each other. The awkward situation builds to a romantic crescendo (with that same sunset in the background) which actually has some pretty decent writing for a change, and a couple of seasoned actors with the talent to turn it into something substantial. The director goes in for some tight closeups in this scene because he knows that old pros Holm and Mills are working this material for all it's worth.

On the flip-side, where things are just plain goofy, we get Ron "Horshack" Palillo as a magician filling in for his brother in the ship's lounge and falling for his pretty assistant (Melinda Naud), who, incredibly, returns his affections. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara play harried parents who can't get any private time away from their gaggle of brats, including a fledgling Corey Feldman. Roddy McDowell, surely one of the most ubiquitous actors of all time, plays a constantly sneezing dweeb who discovers he's allergic to his demanding bride-to-be Tammy Grimes. We also get to witness the startling sight of "Match Game" stars Gene Rayburn and Fannie Flagg sucking face like there's no tomorrow while her yappy little dog (the specially-billed "Cricket") tries to come between them. And...omigod...Charo. 'Nuff said.

The biggest surprise is that I didn't remember how serious some of these stories could get. We're talking actual soap-opera-level melodrama here. A man (Randy Mantooth) introduces his girlfriend (Cathy Lee Crosby) to his dad (Robert Mandan)...the girlfriend and the dad fall in love...the son blows his top and dad slaps him! Elsewhere, Craig Stevens is a WWII vet wounded on Omaha Beach, suddenly reunited after all these years with the only woman he ever loved (Cyd Charisse), only to find her attached to some young French stud named Francoise. This is classic "women's picture" stuff just like all the studios were churning out back in the 40s and 50s.

 

Even when Sonny Bono guests as Deacon Dark, a ludicrous cross between Alice Cooper and Gene Simmons, it's played mainly for bathos because Sonny really wants to be a lounge singer (despite resistance from his materialistic manager, Arte Johnson). This is compounded when he meets a cute deaf girl who falls for the real Sonny and "listens" to his sensitive ivory-tinking by feeling the vibrations in his piano. Talk about laying it on with a trowel--you gotta love it!

Gavin McLeod plays Captain Stubing, the distinguished and very proper main man of the Love Boat, and it's nice to see McLeod in a successful starring role after all those years as a second banana on shows like "McHale's Navy" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Too bad he's usually the straight man for his wacky underlings here, since he was always pretty adept at comedy himself. He does get his share of dramatic subplots and sappy love affairs, as evidenced by this hair-curling exchange:

"Hey, hey...eyes as lovely as yours shouldn't be clouded with tears."
"You say the nicest things."
"Only to the nicest people."

Future four-term Iowa congressman Fred Grandy is Yeoman-Purser "Gopher" Smith, easily the biggest idiot on the ship. Gopher takes center stage in some of the silliest stories, as when his supermodel dreamgirl (the always delightful Hayley Mills) comes aboard and he retreats into a Walter Mitty-style fantasy world, or the one in which he overhears a couple of murder-mystery writers (Peter Lawford, Dana Wynter) discussing their next book and thinks they're planning to kill the Captain. Surprisingly, the season finale features Gopher in one of the most dramatic scenes of the whole set when he has an extremely emotional reconciliation with his estranged father (Bob Cummings).

The concept of Bob Cummings and a Godzilla-like Ethel Merman playing Gopher's parents is almost too much to bear, as is the big finale with father and son crooning a comedy version of "Sonny Boy" to each other during the crew's "Talent Night" show. And yet, like everything else that happens on this series, I feel compelled to watch. I guess it's just one of the mysteries of life.

 

As Isaac, the ship's bartender with the chipper attitude and big kid smile, Ted Lange is one of the brightest performers on the show. Isaac is always there to help the passengers get sloppy drunk and to dole out helpful advice when they unload their sob stories on him. I like the episode where Isaac's old friend Reggie Jackson books passage to get away from all the constant fan adoration, only to have his ego crushed when nobody on board recognizes him. But even Isaac has his serious side, which we see when he tries to help a troubled young girl who's a convicted shoplifter by getting her a job in the gift shop. Sure enough, a pair of expensive pearl earrings turn up missing.

Bernie Kopell as ship's medic "Doc" Bricker is another TV veteran who excels at light comedy while also handling some pretty bleak material, such as the episode in which his old surgeon friend (Richard Anderson) is dealing with the loss of an arm in a car crash while his wife (Diana Muldaur), stricken with guilt for having caused the accident, suffers an addiction to prescription drugs. Less turgid and a lot more fun is the time one of Doc's several ex-wives (Tina Louise) hires narcissistic pretty-boy Lyle Waggoner to pose as her new fiance to make Doc jealous.

Lauren Tewes, who, sadly, would later have to leave the show due to her own real-life drug problems, is all winsome and chipper as cruise director Julie McCoy. Her character comes to the fore in one of the set's two feature-length episodes, in which Julie's high-school graduating class has its ten-year reunion on board the ship. This episode is loaded with guest stars and subplots, including a self-destructing alcoholic teacher (Raymond Burr), a wheelchair-bound Viet Nam vet (Michael Cole), his best friend who is wracked with guilt for evading the draft (John Rubinstein), and a heavy-set gal (Conchata Ferrell) who has a fling with Doc until she suspects him of ridiculing her behind her back. Also appearing in this one are Christopher George as a famous TV star and Bob "Gilligan" Denver as the class dork.

Looking cuter than I've ever seen her in anything else, Kim Darby (TRUE GRIT) plays a classmate trying to uncover the identity of a secret admirer within the group's ranks, which gives her an excuse to get romantic with just about all the male guest stars. Julie, meanwhile, shows her ruthless side as she tries to steal handsome disco instructor Michael Lembeck away from a pre-nosejob Lisa Hartman. Much of the episode's later scenes take place during a big disco party, which is typical of the show's obsession with this much-reviled dance craze. There's nothing like seeing a ballroom full of people with absolutely no sense of rhythm boogeying down like a bunch of brain-damaged storks.

In addition to those already mentioned, this collection's incredible roster of guest stars includes Phyllis Davis, "Hollywood Squares" host Peter Marshall, Barbara Rush, Elaine Joyce, Bobby Van, Carol Lynley, Hans Conried, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Ben Murphy, Donna Pescow, David Hedison, Juliet Mills, Telma Hopkins, Debbie Allen, Maren Jensen, Dennis Cole, Samantha Eggar, Paul Burke, Arlene Dahl, James Dobson, Leslie Nielsen, Jill St. John, and Charlie Callas. Ken Berry and Beth Howland star in one of the show's most moving segments about a woman who is trying in vain to be accepted by the daughters of the widower she's just married. Howland, of TV's "Alice", is particularly good here.

Aside from the opening titles and some of the stock footage used on the show, the picture quality here is pretty good. The DVD image is 4.3 full-screen with Dolby Digital sound. English and Spanish subtitles and closed-captioning are available. Each episode comes with its original promo, which is the set's sole bonus feature.

By the time I got to the final episodes of THE LOVE BOAT: SEASON TWO, VOLUME TWO, I was actually looking forward to the next sappy romantic adventures aboard the Pacific Princess. Not only that, but I caught myself singing along with the theme song! Aaron Spelling strikes again, and another hapless TV junkie winds up with a Gopher on his back.

THE LOVE BOAT: SEASON TWO, VOLUME TWO -- DVD Review by Porfle