MovieChat Forums > Fantasy Island (1977) Discussion > Anyone Remember This .... Or Am I Halluc...

Anyone Remember This .... Or Am I Hallucinating??

posted 14 years ago by theluckdog
7 replies | jump to latest

I was VERY young when this show was popular, but I always liked Montalban on ANYTHING he worked, so it became a favorite of mine. I have had relapses back to "something" I saw, or THINK I saw, for 30 years or more. And that "something" seems to be related to Fantasy Island, but I have never been able to confirm it, i.e. find the exact show again.

I was so young that I can only give vague references to what I saw. I feel relatively secure that it was F.I., maybe 60% or so sure. It was a T.V. show, I THINK a 2-hour long one ... like they sometimes do for the very first premier of a new soon-to-be series. Seems like it was on an island, and seems like it was an island where fantasies happen. But it seems like, unlike the "normal" F.I. episodes, this one took a group of visitors of some sort down below ground on the island. There they were introduced to a bunch of high-tech and/or mysterious machinery. My vague memory of this tells me that machinery was the explanation of why & how fantasies come to life on the island.

But that's where it sorta differs from F.I., as I'm relatively sure that the general consensus is that Mr. Roark himself is the one who causes the fantasies, not some type of strange, almost-alien machine. So that would point to the show I saw NOT being connected to F.I. However, I seem to remember that Montalban/Roark was a star on this movie/show, and/or possibly the one giving the group tours of the machinery. So THAT would almost certainly point to what I saw being F.I.

I can't remember even an approximate year I saw this, only that it was from 1-2 years prior to F.I. first starting up, all the way to several years after it had already ended. So the show I saw could have been a premier before the actual episodes .... or a "back-story" about the show made after it had ended .... or a re-run shown during or after the episodes were being made.

That's all the info I can give, all I can remember. Does this trigger some "Yeah, I remember that too!!" feelings in anyone else? Or does anyone remember a completely unrelated-to-Fantasy-Island movie which sounds like my description? Or does absolutely no one but myself remember a show like this, which would pretty much guarentee that I'm just hallucinating about a show like this?

I welcome any info on it. Although I have lost interest in the F.I. series enough that I don't watch re-runs any longer, I'd LOVE to be able to watch this movie I am remembering, even if it's NOT related to Fantasy Island.

Anyone have any clues? Thanks in advance.

[–] spaseebah 14 years ago

Hmmm - I have a vague memory of something along those lines happening but if I recall it was all a sham for the sake of satisfying the visitor's question / theories.

I remember someone trying to do an expose and their fantasy was to tell the world about the secret of Fantasy Island.

At the end Tattoo says something like, hey Boss ... how come I never saw any of those machines before. And Mr. Roarke says something like, my friend ... sometimes people are unable to accept reality unless it matches their expectations.

In otherwords, he satisfied the visitor's fantasy by pretending the island itself was a huge machine with props and windows (very much like Westworld).

[–] theluckdog 13 years ago

Hummm .... thanks. That sure SOUNDS like it could be my show. It was just so long ago, I can't remember what the machines were for, so I just assumed it was something which helped Roark to generate the fantasies. All I DO remember was that I was highly intriqued by that specific episode, being a "mechanical" type person. And I remember always wanting to see this one again from just 6 months - 1 year after it aired, all the way to the present.

I've searched some, & I've watched some re-runs which had a title-name that sounded like it might relate to mysterious machines on the island. But all of my research into this came out negative. But I'll do some more searching, using the info you gave ..... see if I have better luck. I'm really not enthused enough about this to buy a complete DVD set of the episodes, then watch every single one of them in search of my machines. :) :)

[–] sarock 12 years ago

I agree that this sounds like Westworld or the sequel, Futureworld. More likely Futureworld. I'd check both of those out if you haven't already.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] libby2130 9 years ago

theluckdog... did we jog your memory???

[–] mikeflw1 9 years ago

That episode of Star Trek (the Original Series) was the first thing that came to mind. Dr. McCoy's giant white rabbit (of Alice in Wonderland) is the clearest character I remember, and there was the knight in armor riding a white charger for his nurse, Christine(?). The crew members who dreamt/fantasized about good things got that, and the ones that didn't think of good things, like Sulu's gunslinger(or was it a WWII fighter plane, making a "strafing run"?) got those too, and some of the crew was actually killed. One of the crew eventually saw a device rise out of the ground and scan someone who was asleep at the time. Eventually the caretaker appeared, distressed that "you people" were not properly using the resort... and was surprised they knew nothing about it before they landed, causing the problems they had.
(i.e. read the owner's manual before operating 'the device'. **smile**)

I may not be remembering this entirely completely, but I sort of remember similar things in each of the Star Trek variations...

One, Voyager, had several of the crew members with memory alterations so they worked underground operating furnaces to keep out the ice-age cold on the surface that would kill them all if they stopped, or even slowed down - In the actual circumstances, they were generating power to run the luxury city above, and had been 'modified' to behave as motivated slaves. (And gradually began to recover their real memories...)
Another had the crew members get joined with a virtual reality environment, intended to keep the planet's surviving population alive and mentally functioning while in some state of suspended animation. That caretaker had kept the other people in the virtual world long beyond the time the planet recovered from the war that nearly killed everyone. He was planting gardens on the surface...

The Next Generation (Piccard) landed on a seemingly deserted rocky planet, and got attacked by stronger and stronger weapons each time they were attacked. It was an underground automated weapons manufacturing facility. It seemed all the population of multiple worlds had been wiped out by the the increasingly more powerful weapons. Piccard realized the purpose of the automated terminal describing the weapons was a "salesman", and the attacks were only supposed to be demonstrations, and he stopped that cycle by saying he would buy that weapon! So simple...

Noah... How long, can you tread water?

[–] xenaguy 9 years ago

This brings to mind the 1956 movie, Forbidden Planet. The 'guide' was Walter Pidgeon who, I guess could be mistaken for Ricardo Montalban.

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XenaGuy