*Get "Rescue from Gilligan's Island" on Amazon here*
*Get Gilligan's Island: The Complete Series Collection on Amazon here*
*Watch "The Gilligan Manifesto" on Amazon Prime Video here*
*Get Gilligan's Island clothing and merchandise on Amazon here*
I admit it. When I was a kid, I thought the television series "Gilligan's Island" was a laugh riot. When this film, the first of three chronicling what happened to the castaways, came out in 1978, ten year old me was giddy with anticipation. Watching this, as a grown man, was one of the worst experiences of my life, little buddy.
You remember the show- seven people are stranded on an uncharted island after a storm wrecks their boat. You have Gilligan (Bob Denver), the lovable, bumbling klutz. His boss is the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.). The Howells (Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer) are richer than God. Ginger (Judith Baldwin, after original TV cast member Tina Louise said no) is a famous movie star. The Professor (Russell Johnson) kept the group alive with his weird inventions and expertise turning jungle items into food and shelter. Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) was the farm girl with a heart as big as the great outdoors.
When the film opens, the group has been stranded on the island for fifteen years. A Russian spy satellite has been destroyed in space, and a strange disc drops out of it right into the island's lagoon. The Professor figures out a way to turn the strange disc into a barometer, and forecasts a giant storm and tsunami will wipe out the island. The group lashes their huts together, the storm comes, and the Coast Guard finds the castaways and brings them to Hawaii, and they resettle back in the continental United States. The Skipper's insurance company won't pay for a second boat until he can collect everyone's signature on an affidavit saying the initial shipwreck was not his fault. Two Russian spies (Art LaFleur, Vincent Schiavelli) follow the Skipper and Gilligan as they visit their old friends. The spies need to get the disc back, and Gilligan is wearing it around his neck. The late 1970's is a scary place, as Gilligan and the Skipper find out, and none of the other castaways seem to be doing very well.
I know, I know. I'm not the audience for this gunk, I'm not a kid anymore, and the original show is an icon to sitcom lovers everywhere. I know all that. I also know that it took four people to write this, it runs a little over an hour and a half, and I did not laugh once. I smiled when the Howells would make a remark about being rich, but other than that, nothing. I didn't want a heavy drama about the castaways readjusting to life on their return, but wow, this is so badly written and shot. I won't go into how the cast or crew does, because it's all inept. Don't go into this expecting to feel a wave of nostalgia wash over you, I was distracted by the awful public domain picture and waves of nausea.
I found myself pondering the question asked by other children of the '70's and '80's, and unoriginal stand-up comedians everywhere: how did Gilligan survive for so long? How was he not strangled to death within a week of the shipwreck by the other cast members? Stage your own rescue- don't watch this. Followed by "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island" and "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island," which sound terrible.
Stats:
(1978) 95 min. (1/10)
-Directed by Leslie H. Martinson
-Written by Sherwood Schwartz & Elroy Schwartz & Al Schwartz & David P. Harmon, Created by Sherwood Schwartz
-Cast: Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Russell Johnson, Dawn Wells, Judith Baldwin, Vincent Schiavelli, Art LaFleur, Norman Bartold, Barbara Mallory, June Whitley Taylor, Martin Rudy
-(Not Rated)
-Media Viewed: VHS
