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  Established in 1998, Nostalgia Central is your one stop reference guide through five decades of music, movies, television, pop culture and social history


THE CAST

Brooke Shields
Christopher Atkins
Leo McKern
William Daniels
Elva Josephson
Glenn Kohan

Director
Randal Kleiser

 

The Blue Lagoon (1980)


In 1949 Jean Simmons and David Houston starred in The Blue Lagoon as the victims of a shipwreck who grow up in each other's company on a romantic desert island. 

Thirty One years later producer-director Randal Kleiser remade their story, but with Brooke Shields and handsome newcomer Christopher Atkins as the children of nature.

The result was a visually stunning commercial for the natural life in which, taking full advantage of the cinema's new permissiveness, there was a great deal of sex talk and nudity. 

The fact that Shields insisted on a double to take her place whenever the script called for her to appear naked (usually underwater) was of no consequence.

Managing to be both explicit and coy at the same time, the film concerned itself with the young couple's sexual awakening and the inevitable consequences thereof.

 

It couldn't be taken seriously, and was probably never meant to be. Its chief virtues were the attractiveness of its two young players, the gorgeous Fiji-based photography, and the underwater sequences (photographed by famous Australian husband and wife diving team, Ron and Valerie Taylor).

Audiences responded to the film to the hearty tune of $43.6 million at the box office.