Remember Flipper?  The series ran for just three years, from 1964 - 1966 for a total of 88 episodes.  Flipper was one of my all-time favorite shows as a kid growing up in South Florida.  No, I?m not that old --  I saw the show in syndication years later, thank you.  Man, I remember wanting to be just like Sandy Ricks (Luke Halpin).  He had it made.  In the TV series, Sandy lived in a fictitious Florida nature preserve called Coral Key Park, and he swam all day in the clear blue ocean and snorkeled (and occasionally dove) with his bud Flipper.  How cool is that? 

So recently I decided to see if I could get the series on DVD to relive it all again.  But alas, after a few Google searches I discovered that the TV Series has not (yet?) made it to DVD.  I did however find that the original movie that kicked off the TV series has, and I quickly added it to the top of my Netflix queue. 

The movie arrived today.  Remember the simple round diving face masks?  And swimming with cut-offs?  The one diving scene in the movie was classic -- no weight belt, no BCD, and no wetsuit or skin.  Now that's diving! 

The underwater scenes were pretty good, although I laughed when I noticed that some were obviously filmed in California, while others were filmed in Florida.  There's a pretty ridiculous scene where Sandy is being chased by sharks, and Flipper saves him by darting into the sharks nose first.  I say ridiculous because Sandy somehow manages to hold his own for a short period by seemingly out-swimming the sharks!  And the shots of Flipper barreling into the sharks seem odd.  The sharks look drugged or fake. 

A great movie nonetheless!  Rent it.

Footnote: Mitzie, the Atlantic bottlenose that played Flipper in the movie, died in 1972.  Bebe ("B-B"), a dolphin that played Flipper in the TV series, died at the Miami Seaquarium in 1997.  She was 40 years old.  Most bottlenose live an average of 30 to 35 years.

Comments:

	Posted by jlpf, Aug-14-2005 @ 07:46 AM CDT Chuck Connors has a great line in that movie. A hurricane is approaching and they're preparing to evacuate their home. As he looks around the house, his wife asks, "Do you think it will be here when we get back?" He says, "The boat is safe. We can always build another home." Spoken like a true boat owner!
	Post a Comment