Buy a hula skirt. Take Ukelele lessons. Learn to like Poi. Then you will be ready for a Cinerama South Seas Adventure / Not rated but would be G for General Audiences except for scenes of people jumping from a hundred feet up and landing on their heads on purpose. Do not try this at home.

CSSA is the 4th Cinerama feature to be released to home video. It was preceded by This is Cinerama, Windjammer, and Cinerama Holiday. Unlike TIC and WJ but like CH, this film went through a better re-mastering process which included scanning by Image Trends in Austin, Texas wherein they digitally reprocess every cell of all three reels of film that make up each single three screen image. Now that you are confused lets clear up the fog. What it means is that both Cinerama Holiday and Cinerama South Seas Adventure look a lot better than the 1st two films mentioned above. The color is spectacular and more of the inherent problems in combining three screens into one have been corrected.

This time out the Cinerama production team visit Hawaii, New Zealand, Tonga, Australia, Tahiti, Fiji and The New Hebrides. They skip the Old Hebrides completely. Some of the Old Hebrides were among my favorite Hebrides. Since the film came out in 1958 not much can be done about it now.

They use fictional story lines to make it look like real people are involved in the various story lines to add human interest to the travelogue. In 1958 much of the scenery in CSSA was never before seen by the public. None that I know of anyway. Seeing Hawaii just before statehood is a treat. Not a single Honolulu skyscraper was in existence. Lots of surfing, boat rides and singing. A long scene at the famous restaurant Don the Beachcombers, including most of the floorshow, is lots of fun to watch.

Tahiti harkens back the time of Paul Gauguin (he was a painter but not of houses) and was very famous. I think I had a 1981 calendar and one of his paintings was March. Not sure. Could have been April. Very pretty. Lots more dancing and local customs are shown.

The New Zealand visit is the most spectacular in that it includes the Southern Alps on the South Island. Skiing, but not on water, is one of the surprise sights of the show. Also great film of the ski planes landing and taking off from the Cook Glacier is spectacular. Other scenes in New Zealand include the same type of geyser’s you see in Yellowstone National Park. Except these are further South.
The Australian scenes show a lot of Sydney and the harbor, before the Opera House was built. Lots of time is spent showing the quaintness of life in the outback where there is not much to see but long stretches of dirt. And some kangaroos.

Composer Alex North has provided a spectacular score to accompany the scenery and fill in where the local native music is not being demonstrated. AN was a master of music in all things relating to cinema. His bouncy theme from the scene where the kangaroos are running from potential trappers is a highlight. He would reuse that theme in the 1975 Richard Brooks Western Bite the Bullet. Worked well in both scenarios.

Like Cinerama Holiday this renewed film was previewed in the LA/Hollywood Pacific Cinerama Dome in the summer of 2013. On hand were the two principle actresses and the beautiful Tahitian dancer Ramine playing the dancer Turia. She was beautiful in 1958 and now 55 years later only the color of her hair has changed. You can see these ladies in a slide show of images about the film and it’s re-premiere as one of the 7 extra’s on the BluRay or DVD. A 28 page booklet is included to go over everything I missed. My favorite credits in the film continues to be Walter Gibbons-Fly as Oley, the Engineer and Eddie Titki as himself. Really?

The film is again presented in the Smilebox format. Look it up. It includes the Overture, Intermission and Exit Music. Aloha.

Rated 3.9 out of 4.0 Hawaii 5.0s. Look it up.