The Blue Lagoon (1980 film)
Encyclopedia
The Blue Lagoon is a 1980 American romance
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...

 and adventure film
Adventure film
Adventure films are a genre of film.Unlike pure, low-budget action films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way....

 directed by Randal Kleiser
Randal Kleiser
John Randal Kleiser is an American film director and producer, perhaps best known for directing the 1978 musical film Grease.-Life and career:...

. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Douglas Day Stewart
Douglas Day Stewart
Douglas Day Stewart is an American screenwriter. He graduated from Claremont McKenna College.-Writer:*Bonanza *Cannon *The Man Who Could Talk to Kids *Murder or Mercy...

 was based on the novel The Blue Lagoon
The Blue Lagoon (novel)
The Blue Lagoon is a romance novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, first published in 1908. The novel is the first of the Blue Lagoon trilogy, the second being The Garden of God and the third being The Gates of Morning ....

by Henry De Vere Stacpoole
Henry De Vere Stacpoole
Henry De Vere Stacpoole was an Irish author, born in Kingstown . His best known work is the 1908 romance novel The Blue Lagoon, which has been adapted into feature films on three occasions...

. The film stars Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields
Brooke Christa Shields is an American actress and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle....

 and Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins is an American actor, who became famous with his costarring debut role in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon.-Early life:...

. The original music score was composed by Basil Poledouris
Basil Poledouris
Vassilis Konstantinos "Basil" Poledouris was a Greek-American music composer who concentrated on the scores for films and television shows...

 and the cinematography was by Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros, ASC was an Oscar winning Spanish cinematographer. One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute...

.

The film tells the story of two young children marooned on a tropical island paradise
Desert island
A desert island or uninhabited island is an island that has yet to be populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often used in movies or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves and...

 in the South Pacific
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

. With neither the guidance nor the restrictions of society, emotional feelings and physical changes arise as they reach puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...

 and fall in love.

Plot

In the Victorian period
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

, two young cousins, Richard and Emmeline Lestrange, and a galley cook, Paddy Button (Leo McKern
Leo McKern
Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian-born British actor who appeared in numerous British and Australian television programmes and movies, and more than 200 stage roles.-Early life:...

) survive a shipwreck in the South Pacific and reach a lush tropical island. Paddy cares for the small children and forbids them by "law" from going to the other side of the island, as he found evidence of bloody human sacrifices. He tells them the bogeyman
Bogeyman
A bogeyman is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behaviour...

 lives there. He also warns them against eating a certain scarlet berry that Emmeline finds.

Paddy soon dies after a drunken binge. Now alone, the children go to another part of the island and rebuild their home. They survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise.

Years pass and they both grow into tall, strong and beautiful teenagers. They live in their hut, spending their days together fishing, swimming, and diving for pearls. Richard and Emmeline (now portrayed by Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins is an American actor, who became famous with his costarring debut role in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon.-Early life:...

 and Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields
Brooke Christa Shields is an American actress and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle....

) begin to fall in love, although this is emotionally stressful for them because of their lack of education on human sexuality, and are unable to express their physical attraction for one another. Emmeline is frightened after she begins her first menstrual period
Menstrual cycle
The menstrual cycle is the scientific term for the physiological changes that can occur in fertile women for the purpose of sexual reproduction. This article focuses on the human menstrual cycle....

, and is nervous when Richard wants to inspect her for a cut. Richard himself has many questions about what is happening to them, but has no means of getting answers. He wishes to hold and kiss her, but when she rejects him he goes off and masturbates
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...

.

Emmeline, ever curious, goes to the other side of the island and discovers an impressive, Moai
Moai
Moai , or mo‘ai, are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the...

-like idol there. Instinctively recognizing that this is a holy place, she prays. Later she tells Richard that she thinks Paddy was wrong and the "bogeyman", who bleeds like Jesus, is actually God. However, Richard berates her for disobeying the "law".

Sometime later, their relationship suffers a major blow when a ship appears for the first time in years. Richard's desire to leave comes into conflict with Emmeline's desire to stay, and she does not light the signal fire. As a result, the ship passes by without noticing them. Richard's fury leads him to kick her out of their hut. They make up for this fight after Emmeline is nearly killed upon stepping on a stonefish
Stonefish
Synanceia verrucosa is a fish species, sometimes lethal to humans, which is known as the reef stonefish or simply stonefish. They are carnivorous ray-finned fish with venomous spines that lives on reef bottoms, camouflaged as a rock...

 and Richard admits to his fear of losing her. Emmeline eventually recovers. After she regains her ability to walk, they go skinny dipping
Skinny dipping
Nude swimming, colloquially called skinny dipping, is a term used to describe swimming naked.-Etymology:The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked...

 in the lagoon and then swim to shore. Still naked, Richard and Emmeline share some fruit in the vegetation overlooking the idol, and discover sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

, and then passionate love
Intimate relationship
An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment, or sexual activity. The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual...

. Casting all their unease aside, they regularly make love from then on while occasionally spending their time together in the nude. Due to their regular sexual encounters though, Emmeline soon falls pregnant. Although this is clear to the viewer, Richard and Emmeline themselves do not know about the truth of childbirth and simply assume that the physical changes in Emmeline's body are her getting fat.

One night Emmeline goes missing. While Richard looks for her in the forest, he witnesses a human sacrifice committed by the natives of another island at the idol shrine where they sacrifice some enemy natives. As he flees, Richard hears Emmeline cry out and follows the sound just in time to help her give birth to a baby boy, whom they name Paddy. Later on, frustrated at not knowing how to feed the baby, Emmeline holds him on her arms to appease his crying, and learns how to feed him as the baby instinctively starts sucking on her breast. The young parents spend their time playing with Paddy as he grows, teaching him how to swim, fish and build things.

As the family plays, a ship led by Richard's father Arthur (William Daniels
William Daniels
William David Daniels is an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild . He is known for his performance as Dustin Hoffman's father in The Graduate , as John Adams in 1776, as Carter Nash in Captain Nice, as Mr. George Feeny in ABC's Boy Meets World, as the voice of KITT in...

), approaches the island, and sees the family playing on the shore. As they are completely covered in mud, Arthur assumes these are natives, not the young couple they have been searching for all these years. Richard, having lost all of his desire to leave the island, agrees with Emmeline with an exchange of glances, and they let the ship pass.

One day, the young family takes the lifeboat to visit their original homesite. While waiting for Richard, Emmeline and Paddy remain in the boat. Emmeline falls asleep and does not notice when Paddy brings a branch of the scarlet berries into the boat. She awakes as Paddy tosses one of the oars out. The tide was sweeping the boat out into the lagoon and Richard, hearing her calling, swims to her, followed closely by a shark
Shark
Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

. Emmeline throws the other oar at the shark, striking it and giving Richard just enough time to get in the boat. Though close to shore, they are unable to return or retrieve the oars without risking a shark attack. They paddle with their hands, but to no avail; the boat is caught in the current and drifts out to sea.

After drifting for days, Richard and Emmeline awake in the boat to find Paddy eating the berries he picked. Realizing that these are the same type of berry Paddy warned them about, they try to stop him, but he had already swallowed some. Hopeless, Richard and Emmeline eat the berries as well, lying down to await death. A few hours later, Arthur's ship finds them floating in the boat. Arthur asks, "Are they dead?" and the ship's captain (Alan Hopgood
Alan Hopgood
Alan Hopgood is an Australian actor and writer.He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne. Hopgood's first very successful play was And the Big Men Fly in 1963. It was adapted for TV by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1973...

) answers, "No, sir. They are asleep."

Cast

  • Brooke Shields
    Brooke Shields
    Brooke Christa Shields is an American actress and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle....

     as Emmeline Lestrange
  • Christopher Atkins
    Christopher Atkins
    Christopher Atkins is an American actor, who became famous with his costarring debut role in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon.-Early life:...

     as Richard Lestrange
  • Leo McKern
    Leo McKern
    Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian-born British actor who appeared in numerous British and Australian television programmes and movies, and more than 200 stage roles.-Early life:...

     as Paddy Button
  • William Daniels
    William Daniels
    William David Daniels is an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild . He is known for his performance as Dustin Hoffman's father in The Graduate , as John Adams in 1776, as Carter Nash in Captain Nice, as Mr. George Feeny in ABC's Boy Meets World, as the voice of KITT in...

     as Arthur Lestrange
  • Elva Josephson as Young Emmeline
  • Glenn Kohan as Young Richard
  • Alan Hopgood
    Alan Hopgood
    Alan Hopgood is an Australian actor and writer.He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne. Hopgood's first very successful play was And the Big Men Fly in 1963. It was adapted for TV by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1973...

     as Captain
  • Gus Mercurio
    Gus Mercurio
    Augustino Eugenio "Gus" Mercurio was an American-born Australian character actor who appeared on both film and television.-Early life :...

     as Officer
  • Bradley Pryce as Little Paddy
  • Chad Timmermans as Infant Paddy

Production

The film was shot in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 and Nanuya Levu
Nanuya Levu
Nanuya Levu is a privately owned island of the Yasawa Group in Fiji and the site of the Turtle Island Resort, a sustainable luxury resort and also a locale for the romance adventure film The Blue Lagoon ....

, a privately-owned island in Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

, whilst the blue lagoon scenes were shot in Champagne Bay, Vanuatu
Vanuatu
Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...

. The flora and fauna featured in the film includes an array of animals from multiple continents. As it turned out, the iguanas filmed on Fiji were a species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 hitherto unknown to science; this was noted by the herpetologist John Gibbons when he watched the film, and after traveling to the island where the iguanas were filmed, he described the Fiji Crested Iguana
Fiji Crested Iguana
The Fiji crested iguana is a critically endangered species of iguana native to some of the northwestern islands of the Fijiian archipelago, where it is found in dry forest.-Taxonomy and etymology:...

 (Brachylophus vitiensis) in 1981.

In the DVD version of this film, it was stated that many of Brooke Shields' nude scenes were in fact done by older body double
Body double
A body double is a general term for someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character in any recorded visual medium, in shots where the character's body is shown but the face is either not visible or shown indistinctly, or in shots where the image of the credited actor's face is joined,...

s. In addition, the film's stunt coordinator Kathy Troutt was one of the body doubles as well as the dolphin trainer. It was also stated that Brooke Shields had done many of her topless
Toplessness
Toplessness is the state in which a female's breasts are uncovered, with the areolae and nipples visible, usually in a public space. It can also refer to a female not wearing any clothing above the waist, which is the female equivalent to a male barechestedness.The history and even the present-day...

 scenes with her hair glued to her breasts.

Box office

The film was the ninth biggest box office hit of 1980 in North America according to Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...

, grossing US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

58,853,106 in the United States and Canada.

Awards and nominations

Nominee: Academy Award for Best Cinematography
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...

 - Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros, ASC was an Oscar winning Spanish cinematographer. One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute...

Nominee: Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...

 - Best Fantasy Film
Nominee: Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...

, New Star of the Year - Christopher Atkins
  • 1st Golden Raspberry Award
Won: Worst Actress (Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields
Brooke Christa Shields is an American actress and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle....

)
  • Young Artist Award
    Young Artist Award
    The Young Artist Award is an accolade bestowed by the Young Artist Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1978 to recognize and award excellence of youth performers, and to provide scholarships for young artists who may be physically and/or financially challenged.The Young Artist...

    s
Nominee: Best Major Motion Picture - Family Entertainment
Nominee: Best Young Motion Picture Actor - Christopher Atkins
Nominee: Best Young Motion Picture Actress - Brooke Shields

Home media

The Special Edition DVD, with both wide screen and full screen versions, was released on October 5, 1999. Its special features include the theatrical trailer, the original featurette, a personal photo album by Brooke Shields, audio commentary by Randal Kleiser and Christopher Atkins, and another commentary by Randal Kleiser, Douglas Day Stewart, and Brooke Shields. , the feature has not been released on Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...

.

The film was re-released in 2005 as part of a two pack with its sequel, Return to the Blue Lagoon
Return to the Blue Lagoon
Return to the Blue Lagoon is a 1991 American romance and adventure film starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause, produced and directed by William A. Graham. The screenplay by Leslie Stevens was based on the novel The Garden of God by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed...

.

Sequel

The story is eventually continued in the 1991 sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon
Return to the Blue Lagoon
Return to the Blue Lagoon is a 1991 American romance and adventure film starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause, produced and directed by William A. Graham. The screenplay by Leslie Stevens was based on the novel The Garden of God by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed...

. This film loosely picks up where The Blue Lagoon left off, except that Richard and Emmeline are found dead in the boat. Their son is rescued. As Paddy's name is unknown to his rescuers, he is renamed Richard after his father. He ultimately ends up back on the island in a story similar to that of the first film. This is based very loosely on Henry De Vere Stacpoole's actual sequel The Garden of God
The Garden of God
The Garden of God is a romance novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, first published in 1923. It is the first sequel to his best-selling novel The Blue Lagoon , and continued with The Gates of Morning .-Plot summary:...

.

See also

  • The Blue Lagoon
    The Blue Lagoon (1949 film)
    The Blue Lagoon is a 1949 British romance and adventure film produced and directed by Frank Launder, starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. The screenplay was adapted by John Baines, Michael Hogan and Frank Launder from the novel The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole...

    , 1949 version
  • Return to the Blue Lagoon
    Return to the Blue Lagoon
    Return to the Blue Lagoon is a 1991 American romance and adventure film starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause, produced and directed by William A. Graham. The screenplay by Leslie Stevens was based on the novel The Garden of God by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed...

  • Paradise
    Paradise (1982 film)
    Paradise is a 1982 English language romance and adventure film starring Phoebe Cates and Willie Aames, written and directed by Stuart Gillard. The original music score was composed by Paul Hoffert with the theme song sung by Phoebe Cates....


External links

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