Video & Audio

On this release, picture quality is front-and-center. The first season of Gilligan's Island was in black and white, and visually had all the drabness of a Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim picture (though the DVD was excellent). In its second year, however, Gilligan's Island, along with just about everything else in primetime, switched to "living" color. In syndication color episodes of Gilligan's Island looked pretty ordinary, but on Warner's new DVD these episodes are richly saturated and positively pop off the screen. Never have they looked so good. Episodes are in excellent condition, with almost zero perceptible damage and age-related wear and fading. Gilligan (Bob Denver) and the Skipper's (Alan Hale, Jr.) primary red and blue shirts, Mr. Howell's (Jim Backus) bright yellow cardigans, etc., all jump off the screen, as does the bright green foliage and blue lagoon.

Creator Sherwood Schwartz is quite right when he says the show cried out for color, and it definitely adds to its reassuredly unreal, cartoon look (as opposed to, say, the Tom Hanks Cast Away). Though film stock of the period necessitated odd make-up and lighting problems, sometimes rendering strange results -- Mary-Ann's (Dawn Wells) bare midriff at times is purplish-black, as if movie star Ginger (Tina Louise) had punched the wholesome girl from Kansas in the stomach -- mostly these shows look sensational. The mono sound is crisp and clear, serving its function well enough.

One complaint with both seasons is the incessant repetition of the show's theme song ("Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...") on the menu screens, over and over and over and over. Do we really need to be reminded of the lyrics? Another problem is the labeling of the three double-sided discs themselves: disc and side numbers aren't identified, except via Warner's internal product coding, in print so tiny you'll need a magnifying glass to read it.

As for the 32 second season episodes, they're a mix of formula stories and inspired buffoonery. There are lots of "dream episodes" like "The Sweepstakes," in which the cast hams it up on sets and in costumes from Gunsmoke, another CBS show shot in Studio City. Shows often deviated far from the original premise of seven castaways stranded on a south seas island without " a single luxury" (this season has everything from runaway robots to magic seeds), but "Quick Before It Sinks" is a good episode faithful to the original concept, with the castaways struggling to build a giant ark when they think their tiny island is about to go under. The Wellingtons, who sang the first season's title song, appearing here as The Mosquitoes in "Don't Bug the Mosquitoes," a Beatles spoof that seemed required of every sitcom in 1965, while "Ghost-a-Go-Go," featuring big Richard Kiel, really scared the pants off this reviewer when he was a tyke.

Extra Features

Supplements are on the stingy side, and limited to Side 1 of the first disc. Season 2 Introduction runs just six minutes and isn't terribly enlightening. Sherwood Schwartz and especially Russell Johnson make welcome appearances, but where are Bob Denver, Tina Louise, and Dawn Wells? And surely Warners could lay its hands on archival interviews with Hale, Backus, and Natalie Schafer, somewhere?

The only other extra is an Audio Commentary with Sherwood Schwartz on the episode "The Little Dictator," which the writer-producer describes as "the most important episode we ever did." Featuring Nehemiah Persoff as an exiled despot from "Equarico," this is the episode with the dream sequence where Gilligan becomes El Presidente, and the castaways all sing, "G-I-double L-I-G-A-N spells Gilligan!"** The show is in the tradition of broad but biting satires like The Great Dictator and You Natzy Spy, with Persoff giving a pretty funny performance. Such episodes were infrequent but Gilligan's Island did sometimes belie its moronic reputation, sneaking in shows with surprising sophistication (such as a famous third season episode featuring a musical version of Hamlet).

Parting Thoughts

The longevity of Gilligan's Island can partly be attributed to its familiarity. The shows were so frequently shown in syndication that they became part of our cultural consciousness whether we wanted it to or not. But its game cast (well, mostly game cast) of seasoned actors all proved very adept at the broad, old-fashioned slapstick whose appeal has proved enduring.

** Reader Mark notes, "[the song is] refering to a very early 1960's show called Harrigan and Son, a comedy about a lawyer and his son working at Dad's law firm (at least thats how I remember it). "H-A-double R-I-G-A-N spells Harrigan," went the show's theme song, which ended with "Harrigan, that's Harrigan, That's Harrigan and Son!" And, Mark adds, "the song was written in 1907 by George M. Cohan."

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. His new book, Cinema Nippon will be published by Taschen in 2005.