THE premiere of a deeper, darker "Fantasy Island" may shock a few viewers who were expecting to see the harmless goofiness of the original. Islands are backdrop
for old flicksBut the new television show should remind us that just about everything ever filmed in Hawaii was a fantasy, and sometimes almost hallucinatory.
It's not just that Hollywood-based writers and producers have a delightful way of muddling cultural details, it's that sometimes they don't even try to get it right.
I recently flipped through a wonderful anthology of movies and television shows that were filmed in or about Hawaii. The name of the book is "Made In Paradise" by Luis I. Reyes and someone ought to make a film about it one day.
Here's a sampling of some of the kookier films covered in the book:
Title: "Kona Coast"
Year: 1968
Stars: Richard Boone and Vera Miles
Storyline: "Captain Moran (Boone) is caught in the world of wild beachfront luau after his teenage daughter falls victim to a rough crowd getting its kicks from drugs. Moran runs into a band of toughs who plague him from island to island until the film's explosive conclusion." I've never been to a wild beachfront luau but this must have been a doozy. I also like the idea of the main character getting off on each island to find the same gang of toughs after him. Maybe they were the flight crew?Title: "Waikiki Wedding"
Year: 1937
Stars: Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, (an extremely young and skinny) Anthony Quinn
Storyline: Crosby plays a "singing press agent for a Hawaiian pineapple cannery." You never think about all those singing press agents who lost their jobs when the pineapple industry collapsed.Title: "Hawaiian Buckaroo"
Year: 1938
Star: Smith Ballew
Storyline: "A cowboy buys a pineapple plantation which turns out to be worthless land located on the corner of a lava bed." Plus, I suppose, he had no singing press agent. The cowboy meets the daughter of a big cattle ranch and "rescues her from bad men," (no doubt the same gang of toughs who bothered Richard Boone.)Title: "Honolulu Lu"
Year: 1941
Star: Lupe Velez
Storyline: A "silly little comedy" released a few days after Pearl Harbor attack. Needless to say, it bombed. People just weren't in the mood for a comedy. Too bad they didn't try a sequel anyway, something along the lines of "Honolulu Lu meets the Hawaiian Buckaroo to Make Hoochie-coo in Kahaluu."Title: "Voodoo Island"
Year: 1957
Star: Boris Karloff
Storyline: "A hotel chain interested in building a resort on a Pacific island sends delegates to scout possible locations. The delegates disappear and the native islanders are discovered to use voodoo and carnivorous woman-eating plants to keep outsiders at bay." You know, you just don't see enough woman-eating plants in film these days. This movie was filmed on Kauai in seven days, and, presumably, six nights. Or maybe it was six days, seven nights. Anyway, they hung around and filmed a completely different film called "Jungle Heat" in the next eight days. Eat your heart out, Harrison Ford.Title: "She Gods of Shark Reef"
Year: 1958
Stars: Don Durant, Lisa Montell
Storyline: Two brothers find themselves shipwrecked on an island inhabited by beautiful pearl-diving maidens and ruled by "a hideous stone god." Sounds kind of like Bishop Estate.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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