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Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) This is "Cruise of the Zaca", an American documentary short film directed by and starring Errol Flynn, who is mostly known today for his Robin Hood film and was a big star back in the day. This film here is from the last decade of his life and the writer is Owen Crump, an Oscar nominee. Here Flynn tells us about an expedition by sea and all he encountered during the journey, be it humans, animals or just the nature in general. But I must say this film, which is a bit shorter than 20 minutes, had little to offer in terms of nature documentary value and this is the only area of the film I was somewhat interested in. It may be a good watch for Flynn fans to see one of his rare works behind the camera, but everybody else can definitely skip it. Nothing memorable to see here and I give it a thumbs down. Actually the scene where they were jumping around the animal on one occasions was pretty embarrassing.

bkoganbing 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.

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