Cruise of the Zaca (1952)

Sadly Over-hyped

Captivating movie !

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The acting in this movie is really good.

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.

Like contemporaries Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, Errol Flynn did have a real love of the sea. I'm sure this was a project of love for him when he did Cruise Of The Zaca the schooner that he owned and kept primarily at his Jamaica home.Although this is a compilation of film of many voyages, Flynn got to work with his father a noted marine biologist. And the work showing some of the strange marine life on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was very interesting.One thing that was really interesting was the fact that the cameras went off as the Zaca went through the Panama Canal. Reasons of national security, this was the early Fifties. I wonder if those same regulations are still in place.I'm thinking this chance to share his father's work was something Flynn could not pass up. Especially after the rape trial, Flynn's image as the eternal debaucher was fixed in the public mind. I'm sure he welcomed a chance to show a serious side to him.Incidentally the Zaca which Flynn may have loved more than anything else in the world was sold to pay Errol's many debts incurred after his debacle with the financing of his planned William Tell film that never was completed. An ironic end indeed.

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.