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Highly Overrated But Still Good

Brilliant and touching

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Short film starring and directed by Errol Flynn that should be a treat for his fans. Filmed in 1946 but not released for six years (!), the short basically follows Flynn on his yacht, the Zaca, as he takes his father and some scientists from the Scripps Institute out sailing, looking for specimens of marine life. It's all in color, shot on 16mm, and looks very nice despite not having been restored (at least not the version I saw on TCM). There's nice travelogue-type footage and footage of ocean wildlife, but I think the parts that are likely to appeal to most fans are the personal elements. There are some corny staged scenes, such as Flynn falling from a helicopter into the ocean trying to get a picture of a whale, but this type of stuff is harmless and even funny to me so I didn't mind. The entertainment value something like this will have today is limited to how much appeal Flynn has for you, I think. I'm a fan so I liked it. Seeing Flynn outside of a movie set, in his own element and interacting with "regular" people is interesting to me. It's not often you get to see Errol Flynn and his dad, after all.

Cruise of the Zaca (1952) *** (out of 4) This twenty-minute short is far from ground-breaking but it remains a rather interesting historical document. This film features Errol Flynn and his friends on his yacht Zaca and we see him going to various locations and seeing numerous bits of wildlife. This includes whale, rare fish and some seals, which leads to a pretty funny scene. The footage is made to seem that this entire voyage was done in a day but all of the footage was actually shot between 1946-47. This leads to some interesting things including the fact that Flynn can be seen with his then wife but when the film was finally released in 1952 he had not only divorced her but was already remarried. You can also see Flynn's father here as well as famous archer Howard Hill who had known Flynn since their THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD days. Again, there's certainly nothing special here and technically it's not in the same league as something you'd see from MGM's TravelTalks series but at the same time there's no question that it's interesting seeing Flynn outside the Hollywood system. He also does the narration here and does a good job and you can hear the joy in his voice just talking about this stuff.

This short was included with the DVD for Errol Flynn's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Apparently, Flynn starred in, narrated and directed this short film about his adventures on his yacht, the Zaca. However, according to the nice more recent introduction that was included with the disk, while the short film appears to be based on one of Flynn's adventurous journeys on his yacht, it actually was pieced together from many trips--the first occurring just after WWII.Unfortunately, the first thing you'll probably notice is how faded the color print is. While it's not in horrible shape, I agree with the other reviewer who suggested that this short needs to have restoration work done to it in order to bring out the colors. Plus, in a shot of sea lions, the print is a bit messy and there are a couple grainy places as well.The film consists of color camera shots done without sound--sounds were added later and Flynn narrated it throughout. His delivery and script was very good--not the rambling and rather poor narration Flynn did in his last film, a terribly made documentary extolling the virtues of Fidel Castro (CUBAN STORY, 1959). In this film, it's a film about sea life and is done in a rather scientific fashion--as Flynn's father (a professor) examines and identifies each species.In addition to seeing Flynn and his father, among some of the others you'll see in this film are Howard Hill (a master archer who acted and supervised the archery in ROBIN HOOD) and one of Flynn's wives, Nora (who, by the time this was released, was an ex-wife).Overall, it's a tad dry but also interesting--especially to Errol Flynn fans. Seeing him in his travels was nice, as all most know about Flynn off-camera is sex and drinking. It's nice to see he had some more depth and personality to him. Not great but well worth watching.

Filmed in 1946-47 with more than one "cruise", this two-reeler's great Pacific and Caribbean scenery apes anything seen in other contemporary travelogues. Errol Flynn and marine biologist Pop obviously enjoyed all of this traveling and critter-collecting, highlighted with Flynn splashing with the California gray whales. Humorously, the love 'em & leave 'em Errol was separated from Nora Eddington by the time this short was released, so she appears on screen mostly as a "friend", with the study of smelly fish and crabs preventing any on-screen "romance" and a Garden Of Eden tour very chaste.There's little question that Warner Bros. put more gusto into their docu-shorts than most other studios. (Quick history lesson: Since about 1935, the popular success of MGM's Traveltalks and Paramount's Popular Science launched a boom in Hollywood "educational shorts". These were SO much cheaper to crank out than even the jazz band musicals, the only "entertainment" shorts Universal and Fox were making by this time, and could be shot in any color process for practically peanuts.) Warner's "Sports Parades" were often less "sports" and more National Geographic sight-seeing; this studio also made plenty of animal titles like "Smart As A Fox". Fittingly, after the "live-action short subjects" were phased out in 1957, this same studio took over four installments of the ever popular Bell Science series with Dr. Frank Baxter. Unfortunately, little was done with the print shown on THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD DVD. Hopefully, Warner Home Video is gradually working on its impressive short subject collection and a "restored" Zaca will be made available, along with other hard-to-see travelogue curios like "Jungle Terror" and "Charlie McCarthy And Mortimer Snerd In Sweden".