Have Cheetah,Will View #474 – “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” (1978)

Its 1:00 pm
sunny

I was in the house this week and decided to have a go at a cabinet door that was really stuck. It was so stuck I was wondering if somehow it managed to get glued shut. I kept working on it and after about 15 minutes I managed to pry it open without damaging the door.
But it was what I found inside that surprised me. Inside the cabinet were about 30 movies that I had bought for Lori. I hadn’t seen these movies in over 7 years but I had gotten them for her for various special days and even a few when the Blockbuster was still open right down the street.
I think she must have brought them up at one point to have them closer to her.
Now she wasn’t the biggest solo movie watcher,we always watched them together.
As I was glancing through the stack,I saw a movie I had gotten for Lori as a joke for a buck at Walmart. It became somewhat of a running joke if we wanted to watch “Gilligan’s Island” which we never did but would have if we were trapped in our house by a massive snowstorm…..which translates to never. I was going to sell it at a yard sale but Lori asked me not to,so we held on to it.
Looking at the DVD and seeing how it was in the high 60s,I decided to finally watch “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island”.

The castways have been trapped on that island for 15 years as the film opens.
Gilligan (Bob Denver) is bothering the Skipper (Alan Hale,Jr.) as his snoring is keeping the Skipper wide awake. Finally the Skipper’s had enough and he wakes Gilligan who wakes up yelling about a nightmare he just had,he has dreamed that the island is going to be completely covered in water.
The rest of the castways, Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus),his wife Lovely Howell (Natalie Schafer),the Professor (Russell Johnson),Ginger (Judith Baldwin) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) all rush into Gilligan and Skipper’s hut all wanting to know about Gilligan’s nightmare.

The Professor calms all of them down and they slowly return to their own huts.
Meanwhile a Russian satellite is shown going way off course and the Russian space control center is forced to destroy it but some sort of disk manages to survive and falls into the lagoon of the island which of course is found by Gilligan.
He gives it to the Professor who has never seen the type of alloy before but discovers it can fix his barometer….and forecast that massive storm that Gilligan had dreamed about. The island is going to be completely flooded by a storm within 3-4 days.

The Professor suggests that they make one massive boat by lashing all of the huts together and riding out the storm and hopefully they’ll be pushed into a shipping lane.
Sure enough,they do just that and after some silly hijinks,they are rescued when the Coast Guard spots smoke coming from their makeshift raft….Gilligan had the bright idea to cook and using part of the huts to start a cooking fire. Lucky for the castaways,the smoke alerted the Coast Guard….

News of the rescue hits Hawaii and there is a huge turn out as the castaways sail their raft to the harbor and a massive amount of people celebrate their rescue. Gilligan says to a reporter that the disk that he is wearing saved their lives and its now his good luck necklace and he is never taking it off. The sighting of the disk by two Russian KGB agents while watching the news soon has them after Gilligan.
Soon the seven friends start to go their separate ways but not after agreeing to meet for Christmas on the Skipper’s new boat.
While the Skipper and Gilligan are fixing up their new boat and awaiting the insurance check for the old Minnow,the two agents make their first move but are foiled which leaves them in the water.
Soon the Skipper gets a letter from the insurance company,they’re not going to pay off unless everyone signs off that the accident wasn’t the Skipper’s fault.
With the two KGB agents close behind,Gilligan and the Skipper head out to see their old friends a little earlier then expected….not only to sign the insurance paper but to see how they’re adjusting to life after 15 years from being away from it….

  Now I don’t know if there isn’t anyone alive who doesn’t know about “Gilligan’s Island”. The story of the seven castaways stranded on a uncharted island ran for 3 short years fron 1964 to 1967 on CBS. While the series became immortalized through constant reruns,it also pretty much ruined the careers of the 7 actors because of the typecasting that followed. The seven cast members found themselves struggling to break free from “Gilligan’s Island”and establish themselves in other projects. While some cast members later on embraced their leagacy,Tina Louise pretty much shunned everything “Gilligan’s Island” and refused to anything else related to it outside a very small reunion special.
Was “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” any good? Of course not,it was cheaply made,the plot was toilet paper thin and the ending was just stupid if not a little sadistic but America got to see their favorite castaway finally get off the island.

Two more made-for-TV movies followed this one which getting more inane then the last and eventually the public quit watching them. Only two original cast members are still with us,Dawn Wells and the object of my first boyhood crush,the lovely Tina Louise. (always have loved redheads ever since).
“Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” has a runtime of 90 minutes and my DVD had no special features.

What are your memories of “Gilligan’s Island”? Did you have a favorite character? If so,drop us a comment below and share it with us.