And yet two other very good made for TV films from that same year of 1979 - "Like Ordinary People" and "Murder By Natural Causes" seem to be lost to the ages.CBS TV movie thriller from director Joseph Pevney.
I do not know where to start with what is wrong wit with this movie, so I will start with what is right: Rosalind Chao (Flower), who somehow gives a good performance. Every other performance is either wooden or invisible.
In an attempt to escape revolutionary troops during the war in French Indo-China, a Catholic nun and a small number of young female children board a plane in an attempt to escape to safety. Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean the airplane flies into a severe thunderstorm and crash lands on a deserted tropical island.
The plot of this tv movie is just rubbish. I mean the beautiful women are easily the films only asset.
Blown off course during a storm, a plane-load of big, hairy men (including Clint "Killdozer" Walker, and Peter Lawford) lands on the MYSTERIOUS ISLAND OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN (including: Jayne Kennedy, Rosalind Chao, and Deborah Shelton)! Said females are a semi-savage group of supermodel cultists, led by the goggle-eyed zealot, Lizabeth (Jaime Lyn Bauer).
In the more or less lead character Peter Lawford is obviously rather drunk and very full of himself as former Rat Pack member and former Kennedy brother-in-law. The actions his character does, like getting feral girl Flower to count to 10 and trying to swap goods to the feral women, seem extremely scripted and highly unlike the probably real him.
I have to believe that someone thought this movie was good 40 years ago, but I'd need to go in a time machine to find out.And to say this movie is sexist is beyond an understatement.
Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women is an utterly predictable deserted island story with a number of television movie-of-the-week types and Hollywood has-beens. The plot: A group of young Catholic school girls are evacuated during the Indo-China War.
