Home :: DVD :: Television :: TV Series  

A&E Home Video
BBC
Classic TV
Discovery Channel
Fox TV
General
HBO
History Channel
Miniseries
MTV
National Geographic
Nickelodeon
PBS
Star Trek
TV Series

WGBH Boston
Gilligan's Island - The Complete First Season

Gilligan's Island - The Complete First Season

List Price: $39.98
Your Price: $29.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 .. 7 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Absolutely awesome!
Review: I'm one of those many idiots (like the previous reviewer says)that laugh at these episodes of Gilligan's Island. You really need to have a sense of humor to really enjoy them (unlike other people). There's nothing better than going back and enjoying a healthy show you can watch with the entire family.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very funny show even funnier now than then.
Review: This long awaited DVD release is long overdue. Hopefully they will be quick in releasing seasons 2 and 3 and the other two movies not currently available.

This set of 3 double sided discs is a great bargin and spacesaver than if it were on 6 single sided discs.

Some of the humor is even funnier now than it was when first released. For example, Ginger mentions numerous times that she has a crush on actor Rock Hudson. (If she only knew!)

There are some good special features but one drawback. Though the first season episodes originally aired in black and white, I have seen the same first season episodes on TV in really good colorized versions. I was hoping that they would offer colorized versions also but that does not seem likely. Seasons 2 and 3 did air in color though and will certainly buy those too.

I am not a major fan of the show but will watch it if it is on. This show is a great comedy and the humor is VERY clean by today's standards.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WONDERFUL IN B&W
Review: I hear many people complain that this show is in black and white, but I LOVE it this way, it adds to the nostalgia! Ive seen many of these episodes many times on tv and am BLOWN away at the picture quality on these dvds! I own many boxed sets and find this one to be HIGHLY impressive! If youre a fan of this show this is a MUST own set! I can't wait for season 2.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's like watching Gilligan's Island for the very first time
Review: I have now been watching Gilligan's Island for the last forty years and I got the strangest feeling watching the episode "Voodoo Something To Me" from this DVD set the other day. Maybe after so many years of watching the show in syndication and even colorized, thanks to Ted Turner, I had just simply forgotten what it was like to actually see it as it was originally aired and intended. After all, everyone knows just how brutally all shows are edited, mutilated and cut by the syndication companies. Quite often, entire prologues and/or epilogues are axed to make more room for commercials. Also, as I recently discovered while watching a videotaped episode of Gilligan's Island from good old Nick-At-Nite's TV Land, that sometimes even entire scenes in the middle of a show are also missing. Not so with this wonderful 3-DVD set!! I am finding that even after forty years of reruns of the show that I don't remember many of the scenes that I am now enjoying of Gilligan's Island, all presented in their glorious and sparkling, original black-and-white formats (the last two seasons were filmed in color). I got a pleasantly eerie feeling, almost like I was in The Twilight Zone and had found a never before seen episode of Gilligan's Island!! All I can say is please now bring on "The Rest"!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best!!!!
Review: I'm going to keep this short. If you are a Gilligan's Island fan,which you probably are otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, then why haven't you already bought this set?! Just go get it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If you love Gilligan's Island, then buy these DVDs!!
Review: Any true fan of Gilligan's Island must own this three DVD set. There are even a surprising number of extras offered (unlike certain other t.v. show's DVD sets!!), including the original Lost Pilot. Also, all of the black-and-white episodes are presented as they were originally filmed and meant to be seen, in glorious black-and-white, not colorized!! They are a bargain for the money. You get 37 (including the Lost Pilot) complete, uncut and unedited (and uncolorized!!) wonderful episodes, the entire First Season, which offers many of the very best episodes of a show that is always fun and helps you forget your troubles for awhile. Gilligan's Island lives!! BUY IT NOW!! To quote part of the show's original opening theme, "and the rest..........", when will they also be available on DVD??

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kids Just Love it!
Review: I grew up on Gilligan's Island so I thought it would be fun for my three boys 8, 7 and 6 years old. They can't get enough of it. Better than the so called kid cartoons they show on T.V. these days. I don't think my kids really knew how to laugh at T.V. until now. It is silly but it was meant to be silly and that is why it works.

The DVD is of excellent quality. I do hope the next two seasons come out!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: About Time!
Review: I'm so glad they released this set! These shows have been badly chopped up for syndication, and if you remember watching the show on TV before squeezing in commercials was more important than the show itself, you'll love this set. If you've watched the great black and white episodes on TV recently, you'll be surprised at how chopped they are. Cool extras too!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A DVD set not up to standards
Review: Everyone has heard of Gilligan's Island since it first set sail in America's living rooms in September 1964. Such fans of the show have been waiting for complete season sets for many, many years. I must say that I, too was thrilled to learn, in September 2003 that Warner-Brothers were planning to release the First Season of Gilligan's Island. One of their promises, I shall never forget: "We assure that fans will be happy with this set." I beg to differ. Below is a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of this DVD set.

Pros:
1. All the episodes are here, in their entire uncut and B&W form, and in the order of original airdate.
2. The rare pilot episode is here, complete with commentary by the creator Sherwood Schwartz.
3. The quality is moderate, although some episodes have a high volume of grain.
4. There is a "play all" for the marathon lovers.
5. Subtitles: In English, French, and Spanish.
6. The price is right.

Cons:
1. Lack of Scene Selections
2. Ridiculous Bonus Features: the pilot with commentary is nice and the trivia is nice, but the rest of the bonus features are stupid. Also, why the tropical tidbits trivia is only on one episode, I will never know. Producers could have put different trivia tracks on at least one episode on each side of the disk.
Another thing is the lack of commentaries by any one of the original castaways. Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson could have done a few commentaries on a few of the episodes. Two possible bonus features that should be considered for the remaining two seasons might be the episode where five of the original castaways guest star on Family Feud, and some of the original commercials used to support the show.
3. Lack of good packaging. The slipcase and the package itself seems very flimsy to me. The DVD set does not even come with a booklet that might include actor biographies.

In my opinion, Gilligan's Island fans would have appreciated a better set like those of The Dick Van Dyke Show, even of it meant raising the price to fifty or sixty dollars. Hopefully, producers can do a better job on the second and third season sets. If money restrains the elaborate bonus features, such as actor commentaries, then please, raise the price! It would be better for fans to have to pay ten to twenty dollars more for a set that would have actor commentaries, than it would for a cheap set with weak bonus features. Also, may I suggest releasing "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island" and "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island" on DVD?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Awesome episodes; lame extras
Review: Gilligan's Island is one of the television shows I watched as a child and never grew tired of. At one level, the story is pedestrian: Seven people on a deserted island who, time after time, just never manage to get rescued. Included are a first mate who would never meet the most relaxed of maritime codes for capability; a billionaire couple who just happen to bring suitcases of cash with them on a three-hour tour and enough completely different outfits to wear for a month; an actress who wears a dress and heels day and night every day; and three others.

But if you are able to get past the above, the show can take on a charming attraction. Each character on the show played his/her role superbly. Added is the fact that they are each extremes in their personalities: There is no goofier first mate, no smarter professor, no more sultry of an actress, no more innocent of a farm girl, no more eccentric a wealthy couple, etc. than the people on this island.

In the first season, you get a taste of both the castaways continued efforts to get rescued and their acceptance of the necessity to adjust to an indefinite duration of stay on the island.

I recently bought the Complete First Season and watched all 37 episodes in three days. I have seen all of them (except the pilot) many times in syndication. Still, I never get bored of this stuff.

The only reason I gave the product four stars instead of five was because of the awful omission of any worthwhile extras. The "Before the 3 Hour Tour - profiles on your favorite castaways" was nothing but a couple of minutes of information about each character. The worst was the "Gilligan's Island Survival Guide - a funny look at how not to survive on an island". I found absolutely nothing funny about it. The guy (Buck Thomas?) who hosted it was a moron. He makes Gilligan seem
capable enough to run for office.

It would have been much better had a documentary been included that chronicled everything from how the show came about, to what sorts of things happened during filming, to the fact that the show has stayed in syndication for 40 years.

In fairness, I have not yet listened to the commentary by creator Sherwood Schwartz that is included with the "lost pilot episode" or the Tropical Trivia Tidbits.

My hope is that the remaining two season of the show will eventually be released on DVD. If so, hopefully there will be better extras and that idiot Buck Thomas will have been expelled from the society of intelligent life forms.


<< 1 2 3 4 5 .. 7 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates