Hart to Hart (1979)

          Frothy romantic intrigue somewhat the vein of the old Thin Man movies, Hart to Hart was the pilot movie for a series that ran from 1979 to 1984. (Eight reunion movies came afterward, airing from 1993 to 1996.) With former 1950s matinee idol Robert Wagner in the leading role, the Hart to Hart series never aimed for hipness or relevance, instead presenting the lighthearted adventures of jet-setting millionaire and his beautiful wife as they solve crimes for a hobby. Seen today, the pilot movie is creakier than ever, so it’s actually more interesting to note behind-the-scenes trivia than to explore the onscreen content. Two of Wagner’s famous paramours appear in the telefilm. His wife at the time of filming, Natalie Wood, makes a goofy cameo as an actress in a Southern-belle costume, and his future wife, Jill St. John, plays a supporting role. The series was created by novelist Sidney Sheldon, and the pilot was cowritten and directed by the prolific Tom Mankiewicz, who scribed many of James Bond’s ’70s outings and contributed to Superman (1978). Overseeing the whole project were producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, the titans of trash TV in the ’70s and ’80s.

          Anyway, after a friend dies under mysterious circumstances, dashing businessman Jonathan Hart (Wagner) promises the friend’s widow that he will investigate. Clues connect the dead man to a pricey health farm, so Jonathan hits the road in his jaunty sports car. Along the way, he gets into a playful road race with a beautiful redhead, who leaves him in the dust when he gets pulled over by a cop. Jonathan reaches the health farm and encounters the redhead again, so they spar verbally—and yet that night, she slips into his room and his bed. Because, to the surprise of absolutely no one, she’s actually his wife, Jennifer (Stefanie Powers), recently returned from a European trip. The Harts investigate the health farm together, discovering a conspiracy to brainwash rich guests in order to steal their money. Concurrently, Jonathan flirts with yet another beautiful redhead, Sylvia (St. John), ostensibly to find more clues.

          All of this plays out in tedious fashion. The elaborate introduction to Jennifer’s character feels like a cheap attempt at a Hitchcockian flourish, and Mankiewicz’ would-be pithy dialogue is like champagne that’s lost its fizz. As for the leads, they’re both so vacuous that they seem more like gregarious party hosts than actual performers. Meanwhile, supporting players including James Noble, Michael Lerner, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, and Mankiewicz favorite Clifton James play forgettable roles with bloodless professionalism, and future series regular Lionel Stander, who portrays Jonathan’s gravel-voiced butler, Max, is underused. Judging from the longevity of the franchise, the folks behind Hart to Hart obviously did something right, but it’s hard to determine what that is by watching this thoroughly enervated pilot.

Hart to Hart: FUNKY

Fantasy Island (1977)

          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

Charlie’s Angels (1976)

          Nearly all the elements that made the glossy detective series Charlie’s Angels popular are present in the feature-length telefilm that preceded the weekly show, and yet some early ideas that were later abandoned are in evidence, as well. The pilot is just as fluffy and silly as the rest of the series, although the T&A quotient is relatively tame considering how much focus was later given to displaying the series’ leading ladies in bikinis, cheerleader costumes, low-cut gowns, and such. Rather than cleavage and legs, the caveman-mentality focus is primarily on the “novelty” of beautiful women demonstrating competence as private investigators, although the distaff detectives get even more male supervision during the pilot than they usually did in their weekly adventures.

          The pilot introduces the three original protagonists—Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett-Majors), Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), and Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson)—receiving their first assignments from mysterious employer Charles Townsend (the never-seen character whose voice is provided by John Forsythe). In a brief prologue that later became the show’s iconic opening-credits sequence, viewers are told that the women graduated from the police academy only to be given thankless jobs, and then were hired to work for Townsend. The Angels, as Townsend calls them, take instructions from their direct supervisor, Woodville (David Ogden Stiers), a character who was dropped before the first regular episode. The ladies’ other male colleague is fellow detective John Bosley (David Doyle), portrayed in the pilot as a cheerful buffoon and later reworked as stalwart coworker.

          Written by series creators Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts—veteran screenwriters whose collaborative record stretches all the way back to the James Cagney classic White Heat (1949)—the mystery that the Angels explore in the pilot isn’t really a mystery. Undoubtedly bearing the fingerprints of producer Aaron Spelling, who made a fortune playing to the lowest common denominator of the American viewing audience, the narrative is spoon-fed to viewers, with every complication explained in a condescending manner. The daughter of a wealthy California vintner disappeared years ago, and now that the vintner has also disappeared, his estate may fall into the hands of his unscrupulous widow. It’s up to the Angels to determine whether anything shady is happening, thus prompting the usual cycle of Jill, Kelly, and Sabrina masquerading as various people in order to find information.

          The supporting cast features solid players Bo Hopkins and Diana Muldaur, as well as a young Tommy Lee Jones, and the whole thing drags a bit, not just because the thin story is stretched to almost 80 minutes but because composer Jack Elliot uses the series’ signature twinkling musical sting so many times the cue becomes annoying. Seeing as how Fawcett-Majors was the first season’s breakout star thanks to her dazzling barrage of big hair, erect nipples, and shiny teeth, it’s interesting to note that Smith gets the most screen time in this initial outing. As always, she’s lovely but vapid. In any event, Charlie’s Angels the pilot movie is exactly as disposable as any episode of Charlie’s Angels the series, so the appeal of watching the piece (besides eye candy) is the opportunity to examine the unremarkable beginnings of an enduring pop-culture franchise.

Charlie’s Angels: FUNKY

Carter’s Army (1970)

          Formulaic, predictable, and shot on a meager budget, the made-for-TV war picture Carter’s Army, often marketed by the alternate title Black Brigade, is nothing special from a cinematic perspective. However, because the movie features several noteworthy black actors, including future box-office heavyweights Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams, Carter’s Army is enjoyable as a sort of all-star African-American riff on The Dirty Dozen. Set in 1944 Germany, the exceedingly simplistic movie revolves around U.S. Army Captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racist southerner given the thankless task of capturing a heavily guarded dam from the Nazis. Unfortunately for Carter, the only squad available to assist him is an all-black unit that’s never seen combat. Working reluctantly with the squad’s formidable commander, African-American Lieutenant Edward Wallace (Robert Hooks), Carter leads six enlisted men on the mission even though it’s likely to end in tragic failure. Along the way, the born-and-bred cracker learns to respect black people because of the bravery the soldiers demonstrate and because he witnesses the everyday humiliation the men suffer at the hands of fellow Americans.

          Not a single frame of Carter’s Army will catch viewers by surprise, and in fact, some scenes are a bit hard to take seriously because the forests of Germany look suspiciously like the high-desert woods above Palm Springs. (One could never accuse TV kingpin Aaron Spelling, who cowrote and coproduced this project, of overspending on location photography.) In lieu of a novel story, what keeps Carter’s Army lively is the cast.

          Moses Gunn appears as a professor suffering wartime indignities with grace, Pryor plays a soldier so afraid of fighting that he attempts desertion, Glynn Turman portrays a young man keeping a journal of the action-packed war that he wishes he could tell the folks back home he’s fighting, and Williams plays a tough guy from Harlem whose racial anger matches the intensity of Carter’s bigotry. Also in the mix are gentle giant Rosie Grier, the NFL star-turned-actor, and the stalwart Hooks (Trouble Man), who lends gravitas to the role of the squad’s leader. This being a Hollywood movie of a certain time, of course, the title character is a white guy whose journey to enlightenment is portrayed as having more narrative value than the lives of the black men around him. Veteran big-screen stud Boyd delivers adequate work as Carter, complete with a litany of disgusted facial expressions and an amusingly soupy accent.

Carter’s Army: FUNKY

How Awful About Allan (1970)

          Ten years after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), actor Anthony Perkins was still trying to avoid typecasting—even though he occasionally backslid to the realm of psychological horror. In this competent but underdeveloped made-for-TV thriller, Perkins plays a man who returns home after spending eight months in an asylum. Prior to his institutionalization, Allan (Perkins) started a fire that killed his parents and permanently scarred his sister, Katherine (Julie Harris). The trauma also left Allan partially blind, though doctors insist his condition is psychosomatic. Written by Henry Farrell, who adapted his novel of the same name, How Awful About Allan feels a bit like a play, since nearly the whole thing takes place in the large house Allan shares with his sister. Allan, who may or may not have fully recovered his mental health, keeps “seeing” a mystery figure roaming around the house, although Katherine insists she and Allan are alone. Meanwhile, Allan tries to recover normalcy by interacting with doctors and with a family friend, Olive (Joan Hackett). The central question, therefore, is whether Allan has discovered the activities of a home invader with malicious intent, or whether Allan has simply gone crazy.

          Director Curtis Harrington, who helmed a fair number of spooky projects during a long career that included everything from documentary work to episodic television, does what he can to jack up the mood and style of How Awful About Allan, but his hands are tied by the internal nature of Farrell’s story. Since the real drama takes place inside Allan’s head, very little action occurs, so the movie includes many repetitive scenes of Perkins walking around the house and calling out to people who don’t answer. Quick flashbacks to the traumatic fire and a mildly violent finale add some oomph, though for many viewers this will represent a case of too little, too late. Still, Perkins is interesting to watch in nearly any circumstance, with his intense expressions and lanky physique cutting a memorable figure—especially when he zeroes in on his Norman Bates sweet spot. It’s also worth noting that How Awful About Allan was produced by small-screen schlockmeister Aaron Spelling, whose other horror-themed projects for television were, generally speaking, less subtle than this one. So, even if How Awful About Allan is fairly limp by normal standards, it’s the equivalent of a prestige project by Spelling standards.

How Awful About Allan: FUNKY

The Great American Beauty Contest (1973)

          Like so many things bearing the Aaron Spelling brand name, this brisk TV movie about backstage intrigue at a fictional beauty contest is the equivalent of junk food—it tastes good at first, but regret kicks in almost immediately. The Great American Beauty Contest is very much a product of the producer who later subjected the world to Charlie’s Angels, because the movie comprises one scene after another showcasing vapidly attractive young women. On the plus side, the picture isn’t as sleazy as one might think, since there’s only one fleeting sequence of the contest’s swimsuit competition, and the lovelies in the cast represent an appealing collection of ’70s actresses. Spelling regular Farrah Fawcett is present and accounted for, as are Kathy Baumann (a buxom starlet in various B-movies), Susan Damante (of the Wilderness Family pictures), and Joanna Cameron (of the Saturday-morning superhero show Isis), among others. (Watch for a brief, wordless appearance by glamazon actress/singer Susan Anton in the final scene.)

          Although each of the aforementioned startlets gets plenty of screen time, the actual star of The Great American Beauty Contest is the elegant Eleanor Parker, best known as the Baroness in the classic family film The Sound of Music (1965). She plays Peggy, a onetime pageant winner who now runs the contest. When the picture begins, Peggy and her handlers greet various contestants, including Angelique (Damante), an innocent who believes in the fairy-tale myth of pageants; Gloria (Cameron), a quasi-militant feminist hoping to win so she can deliver an anti-pageant speech during her coronation; Pamela (Tracy Reed), an African-American upset about being treated as a “token”; and T.L. (Fawcett), a wild girl who enters the contest on a lark. Also in the mix are movie producer Ralph (Louis Jourdan), who serves as a judge and expects sexual favors from wannabes, and Joe (Larry Wilcox, later of C.H.i.P.S.), T.L.’s rambunctious boyfriend.

          Considering that The Great American Beauty Contest runs only 74 minutes (the standard length for early-’70s TV movies), Spelling and his collaborators include an abundance of “plot,” making up for in quantity what the project lacks in quality. Rest assured, however, that not a single frame of The Great American Beauty Contest will amuse, delight, or surprise. Instead, the picture functions like the broadcast of a real beauty contest—it invites the male gaze with a steady procession of bright teeth, lustrous hair, sexy curves, and twinkly eyes. And it’s hard to get too strident about a movie that not only features Fawcett doing an atrocious harem-girl dance, but also features characters commenting on the awfulness of said dance. In other words, The Great American Beauty Contest may not be an experience in truly guilt-free ogling, but it’s close.

The Great American Beauty Contest: FUNKY

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976)

          A sentimental favorite of many ’70s kids, this made-for-TV bummer fictionalizes the real-life experiences of two young men who were born without functioning immune systems, and were thus forced to spend their lives inside containment chambers. (The storyline features a single composite character.) Much of the picture’s appeal can be attributed to the participation of leading man John Travlota, who was already a small-screen heartthrob thanks to Welcome Back, Kotter; in fact, just a year after this movie was broadcast, Travolta made the leap to big-screen stardom with Saturday Night Fever. Seeing the virile Travolta reduced to emasculating captivity amplifies the movie’s themes of frustration and isolation, and it’s a safe bet millions of young ’70s girls wept during scenes of Travolta’s character suffering anguish because of his unique condition.

          The movie begins with a middle-class couple, Johnny Lubitch (Robert Reed) and Mickey Lubitch (Diana Hyland), celebrating the birth of a son—only to be told by their kindhearted physician, Dr. Gunther (Ralph Bellamy), that young Tod can’t leave his “plastic bubble” until a cure for his ailment is found. After some maudlin scenes of the Lubitches learning to connect with their child, plus a choking incident in which the infant nearly dies, the film cuts to Tod’s adolescence, when Travolta takes over the role. Living in an elaborate enclosure that’s akin to a Habitrail, Tod longs to be with other kids, especially his pretty next-door neighbor, Gina (Glynis O’Connor). He gets his wish, sort of, when he’s supplied with an airtight spacesuit that allows Tod to attend high school. Alas, his desire to breathe free air remains unsatisfied, so the question of how long Tod can suppress life-threatening urges creates a blunt sort of dramatic tension.

          Produced by prolific hacks Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, and directed by crowd-pleaser Randal Kleiser, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble is absurdly manipulative, a low-budget weepie built around a character who demonstrates saintly personal character. Yes, Tod talks about masturbating and he’s a wiseass during homeroom, but he’s essentially a lonely soul desperate for human contact. As a result, only the anger in Travolta’s performance keeps the piece from being totally saccharine—yet once the movie reaches its fanciful ending, any pretense to dramatic credibility gives way to melodramatic excess. Beyond its iffy virtues as a narrative, however, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble is beloved for its ’70s kitsch factor, from Travolta’s meticulously blowdried hairstyle to the casting of Brady Bunch dad Reed as Tod’s papa. Trivia buffs also note the significance of this project in Travolta’s life—Bubble helmer Kleiser subsequently directed Travolta in Grease (1978), and Travolta embarked on a love affair with costar Hyland, several years his senior, until her death from cancer in 1977.

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble: FUNKY

Murder on Flight 502 (1975)

Although he’s best known for overseeing such vapidly entertaining series as Charlie’s Angels and Starsky & Hutch, crapmeister Aaron Spelling also produced dozens of TV movies, most of which were justifiably banished to obscurity after their original broadcast runs. Encountered today, these telefilms are amusing artifacts from a bygone era, cinematic catnip for ’70s junkies who relish watching semi-famous actors swathed in head-to-toe polyester. Murder on Flight 502 is a prime example, because the mystery/thriller is disposable junk noteworthy only for its potluck cast. (Have Farrah, will travel!) The story begins when a commercial flight leaves New York for Europe and airline staffers discover that one of the passengers plans to murder someone on the plane. This standard catch-a-killer premise powered innumerable episodes of Spelling’s TV shows, because the set-up justifies cutting back and forth between various melodramas as viewers try to guess the villain’s identity. In lieu of actual thrills, the movie offers the kitschy spectacle of random actors grinding through the machinations of a trite plot: Ralph Bellamy as a surgeon who becomes a target because he once failed to save a patient; Polly Bergen as a drunken crime author savoring the proximity of real homicide; Danny Bonaduce as a wiseass kid prone to elaborate practical jokes; Sonny Bono as a sensitive singer-songwriter itching for a comeback after years out of the spotlight; Lorenzo Lamas as an international criminal afraid that he’s going to pay for his past crimes; Farrah Fawcett-Majors, her gleaming helmet of golden hair firmly in place, as a stewardess; Robert Stack as the sort of absurdly square-jawed pilot he satirized a few years later in Airplane! (1980); and so on. In short, watching Murder on Flight 502 is like watching a greatest-hits reel culled from various interchangeable ’70s detective shows, meaning the experience is either awful or awesome, depending on your degree of ’70s-TV masochism.

Murder on Flight 502: FUNKY