I Saw A Film!

It’s a famous one this time, full of the objectionable terror pretty nude young people stir in us as we find them attractive and nature winds up triggering our shame. Let’s face it, it’s just a good time watching the adorable Brooke Shields in all her underwater gracefulness. But the eye candy isn’t just for cis men!

The story, a popular one, is the old Robinson Crusoe / Swiss Family Robinson / Wilson!!! / Gilligan’s Island / Survivor reality show fantasy of growing up in a tropical near-paradise totally separated from the modern world. Of course these two kiddos are expert fishermen and seafood collectors, presumably trained by the one surviving elder of the ship fire they paddled away from on their way to San Francisco (which remained difficult for the kids to say). At one point we’re introduced to the blood-thristy tribe of dark-skinned natives who inhabit the “other side” of paradise, but the kids never really have to deal with them despite the menace of the threat. When the kids are still young their adult protector appears to drink himself into oblivion having taught the kids how to make a fire and not eat certain berries and to never go to the other side of the isle.

This little story was well spoofed in the terrific Val Kilmer introduction Top Secret! When we realize the kiddos don’t just build simple lean-tos but elaborate multistory complexes. Well if you’re gonna dream, dream big. It isn’t long before we’re looking at the kids in more teenage form, and they don’t get to enjoy themselves long before they produce a baby. Not too much trouble thankfully, all natural birthing. So much for paradise. Despite being raised like siblings our worries of incest are alleviated early on when we’re told of the origins of the children–separate parents.

One good guffaw comes from the pop of one of the kids spotting them covered in mud from a late 19th century ship deck. He dismisses the idea that they’re the kids he’s looking for, hilariously convinced after years of searching that people with mud on them couldn’t be his. He eventually spots them again adrift in a boat after their baby accidentally eats the berries they were warned about, and then they too eat the berries in a kind of suicide pact! Yikes!

This is running free on Prime (usa), and is a kind of cult classic mostly for the nudity, but it’s a pretty hokey tale as are most of these Lord of the Flies style castaway fantasies.