verbusen This is kind of fascinating to watch if you are an old time movie fan (like me) but at the same time it's soooo fake and in the actual real scenes with the animals it is torturous to watch. Someone else reviewing this said it was made in the late 1940's and I could believe that but I will say that helicopter looks very advanced for the 40's, not that 1952 is all that much later, maybe the helicopter scenes (very staged) were added later to the ship footage? So why do I say it's fake? Errol starts the show saying I had a banana and an apple not expecting what was in store for me, (oh brother). Then he gets in a helicopter and goes whale spotting and him and the pilot(!) are all leaning out to get a "close up" of the whales, yeah whatever. Errol falls into the ocean and the pilot almost falls in with him, I mean this is kids TV folks. Most of the animal scenes are stock footage spliced in with close ups of the crew, you rarely see the animals in the same frame with the actors. The times they are together is when you probably will cringe because things like putting a rope around a large sea lion's neck looks very brutal. One can just imagine Flynn scheming, "now how can I recoup this yacht's expenses?" "Oh yeah I'll tell Mr Warner I've got some great color footage and splice in some garbage with a helicopter in!" Maybe for Flynn fans late at night, otherwise stay clear, it's boring, fake, and unpleasant.

Michael_Elliott 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the Zaca (1952) *** (out of 4) This twenty-minute short is far from ground-breaking but it remains a rather interesting historical document.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.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews A documentary of a scientific team going to look at sea-life(and since I am not an expert on the subject, I can't really judge if it's realistic or not), this is on the Two-Disc Special Edition DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938. It's put together of nicely shot nature footage and reasonably photographed stuff with real natives and the like, it seems, and features constant narration from Flynn, who stars(as himself) and also directed this. I was surprised to find that this really wasn't a drama... it's not at all about story-telling and plot, rather, it's full of info. I guess celebrities were appearing in things like this even back then. Was it a publicity thing back then, too, I wonder? A little of this is evidently staged, but other than that, it may very well be real. Expressing a genuine curiosity for the culture of the South Seas primitives(including a belly dance) and the animal life there, this actually is a fine watch for those who are interested in those(sadly, I doubt anyone else will like it much, as it has a slow pace and probably isn't up to date on facts). I recommend this to... well, aforementioned group of people. 5/10

MartinHafer 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.