"Fantasy Island" The Stripper/The Boxer (TV Episode 1979) Poster

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5/10
No need to know anything about strip teases or boxing
mikeholmes-4801227 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Found this one on my DVR. apparently i watched it before and barely remembered it it was that good. Starts off with Tattoo wand a Monocyle bit. I wrote last night a lot on his growing a Hitler-ish mustache but my story was too long and i had to cut it. You all really missed out. Anyhow not an eventful episode, i got 20 minutes in and remembered is should be taking notes ( an excellent use for my iphone, i take notes of fantasy island so i can go to my computer with its easy keyboard and write reviews, still trying to think of how to admit this to people i know)

Anyhow, Marsha Brady looked really hot in this episode. I really liked how she was talking to the boxing manager. he wore a blue , short sleeved collered shirt, with a kerchief tied around his neck. I draw the line at someone suggesting i wear a short sleeve button up shirt, let alone something i would never think of , a kerchief around my neck. And this guy gets boxers to respect him? Cheesy story line, boxer can die if he hit too much and will die in 3 years most likely. Then Marsha Brady his old flame tries to seduce him on the bed which i was all into but it was so lame. shes like "i can seduce you" and it ended there. Her acting was like watching one of those TGIF Friday shows were the Mrs WInslow is auditioning for a play and practicing at home and it seems so fake. "I was always lousy at wakes Billy" . "You know what bothers me Billy...." etc etc etc. overly dramatic acting. So at the end Mr Rourke suggested that in a few years, medical advancements could solve his problem. That would have been a good 1983 episode, (with MR Belvedere, did i ever mention hes so much better than tattoo)

the other story line was so stupid, some rich chic wants to go to fantasy island to be a strip show chic. I found the overly excited strip show girls she met to be really annoying. they threw out all the papers she was on the front cover of and kept smiling and saying it was cause they were all girls. the one looked really about to gray and that was 1979 , so i wonder what she looks like now, or 1982 ( last night i did a review on a hot chic from another episode who looks old as dirt now)But they were all practicing and all the friends did was go "yeah that s it" over and over an over. annoying. then she confronts her dad who finds out shes doing a strip tease and says "try me if I'm bluffing

and pulls off her robe which shows her in what i assume ins 1950s lingerie, one step from those 1800 swimsuits. Then the guy was her manager, speaking of 1950's , couldn't be more 1950 James Cagney like. It ends up she goes on with her strip tease, with a crowd of barely anyone (much like hte above boxing match, fantasy island events seem crappy) and her dad is in the audience, behind that pervert Tattoo.

so thats that. as usual, i saw a few commercials that made me say, "maybe I'm not the right age group focus for this program," as i watched Dorthy Hammill on her exer bike and the Bosley Hair group (as in Tom?)

so OK episode, predictable though. and before i go, this is the only site, where if i write "teh" instead of "the" it has no clue or offers me the suggestion of "The". stewpid.
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7/10
Solid Fantasy Island episode
Flubber696 November 2021
Does what this series did best: forced collisions between different worlds and magic was the result. This time it's Marcia Brady + Sgt. O'Rourke. Thank you Mr. Roarke.
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6/10
Ben Murphy is as wasted here as Bill Bixby & David Birney were in their episodes. Nothing to sneeze at, here!
imdb-252884 December 2022
I don't know what to tell you about this episode, except that I'm all Fantasy Islanded out, and the 3 previous assessments here are pretty lame ones. (I doubt I'll fare much better!) Marcia Brady (or whatever) I can't stand! (Sorry folks: never saw her Bunch show: that was before my time!) And this is the 3rd time I'm seeing her on F. I. and I've had it up to here with her and Carol Lynley, the same! (They missed the opportunity to cast them together in Charlie's Cherubs, rounding them out with Lynda Day George for a specially annoying episode!)

It was nice to see the new invisible man, Ben Murphy, except his story was wasted. (Pretty sure like the other TV A-listers with a lame storyline, namely Bill Bixby and David Birney, he never returned to the island, whereas the annoying actors, sadly, can't seem to keep away from its fantastic shores!) Who as a little kid has had a dream to get his face smashed in, in a boxing match?! I don't get it. I have 0 interest in anything to do with boxing and this revolved around that. Brat Brady was annoying as can be. At some point she reveals to Ben that she's earned a living as a hooker (I truly did think she was gonna be the stripper before the show started!) and Murphy walks out on her. I thought that was it, never to return. Why did he? He walks out on her, proving he's the kind of man not to be into her kind of woman, but then he goes back for more? Why? There was nothing written to reconcile them, at that point; so, that he ends up with the floozy is just too sad a fantasy, and another who needs to get a refund from Roarke, STAT!

The other story didn't fare much better. Rich heiress ends up in a burlesque show after taking the wrong bus to escape her father's detective. There was a lot of butt close ups to titillate the male audiences, and it was boring as can be. There really was no better story, both equally dull, but at least they kept the pace, so props to the editors for that!

Highlights of the show? Yawn. Maybe the first time we see the local newspaper is called Fantasy Island Daily Chronicle, and that's it. Oh, and the Anne Francis clone (Laraine Stephens) really did keep her "striptease" classy, so there's that.

Roarke seemed extra exasperated with Tattoo in the intro banter, and I suspect this might have been the beginning of the downfall between the 2 amigos, on and off-screen. What else? There was a poster on the wall announcing Angela Lansbury for the play Mame. 6 years after F. I.'s "The Last Whodunnit" (1978), she would go on to imitate the lead character (Celeste Holm) in Murder She Wrote. Weird, no?

This episode was nothing to sneeze at. But we get to hear to the cool intro theme music, and hang out with Roarke and Tattoo, even when they, themselves, are unremarkable, it's still better than the garbage that's been on TV since the early 2000s. And for that, I give this a 6/10, even though it probably deserves much lower a rating. Better luck with next episode!
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Marcia Brady, part 3
stones7820 July 2015
Nothing too extraordinary happens in this episode, as it's also the 3rd out of 6 appearances for Maureen McCormick, and the other familiar faces include Forrest Tucker, Michael Callan, Chuck McCann, Laraine Stephens(I never heard or saw her), Stacy Keach Sr., and Ben Murphy. The lesser story has a wealthy woman(Stephens)flee to the island in order to escape a marriage arranged by her influential father(Keach Sr.), only because she loves some guy named Barnaby(Barnaby?), who her father dislikes. My biggest problem is that this woman goes out of her way to try and marry Barnaby, played by an unimpressive Willam Beckley, that she ends up leaving him for Russ(Callan), who is basically mean to her. Fail. The better story, although not THAT much better, has a boxer(Murphy)wanting to fight a champion one more time before he(Murphy)dies. Somewhere along the way, he meets up with old flame Jennie(McCormick), who's an employee on the island now, but she wants nothing to do with him at first. There's a scene where she's angrily teasing Billy on the bed, and she mentions something about her past, but it was never looked into or mentioned again, and I think the writers missed a chance to make this story more interesting than it was. This story did end on a good note, although it was slightly predictable.
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8/10
Mamie Van Doren's appearance on FI!
bnelso-2379328 December 2018
Warning: Spoilers
This is the appearance by blonde Hollywood bombshell #3 -after Monroe and Mansfield- Mamie Van Doren. Although attractive she only has a non-distinctive supporting player role as a stripper. The lead actress in the stripper storyline is beauty Lorraine Stephens --irregardless how she spells her first name. Stephens, as a grown spoiled heiress,begins her role wearing a hat and sometimes dark glasses trying to hide from bring recognized as her picture is in the headline of the local FI paper. Eventually, though she had no prior experience, she learns how to strut like a stripper in the most enjoyable scenes in the whole episode. The stripper storyline is the best episode of the episode and thanks to Stephens it's a true winner.
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