I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Only a few years after "The Patty Duke Show", the comedy "Gidget", based upon the film, mines the same veins of comedy.Gidget, played by Sally Field in her first credited role, is the personification of cute. Wholesome, not hot. Cute also describes the show's humor. Any problems are fairly benign in the safe and fuzzy world where she lives with her father.Gidget provides voice-overs that describe her inner feelings and provide commentary about her life. What's worse is the laugh track. It only serves to magnify how corny the humor is.The best thing about this show is Sally Field herself. Her portrayal of the fifteen year old is expectedly cute and corny, but it also displays real acting talent. She built her early career on being cute, but there is evidence of the thoughtful woman who would later become "Norma Rae".The second best thing about "Gidget" is the theme song.

America's favorite beach girl Gidget after being played by Sandra Dee on screen came to the small screen and it gave Sally Field her first big break. But it was a double edged sword. Who but Field suspected she actually had acting chops. But this show and The Flying Nun left her type cast for years before she showed what she could do in Norma Rae and Places In The Heart.Not much difference in the big screen and small screen Gidgets. Francine 'Gidget' Lawrence is a happy go lucky teen with surfing and boys on her mind. Her family unit was her widowed father Don Porter and married sister Betty Conner, her rather dense but lovable husband Peter Deuel and what we would now call her BFF Larue, Lynette Winter.Every week Gidget would get into her usual teen troubles and get out of them after consultation with dear old Dad.One thing I liked about this show was Don Porter. If you think Hugh Beaumont or Lorne Greene was the wisest TV dad than you never saw Gidget. Always professorial for that's what he did and totally unflappable in any situation Don Porter to me was the ideal TV dad. This man never, ever lost his cool in any situation. Granted these were G rated teen situations still the man was amazing. If you were to predict Sally Field's career would boast two Oscars within the next quarter century when Gidget was on you would have been sent forthwith to the rubber room. One never knows what lies ahead.

By the time ABC filmed the 1965-1966 television version of "Gidget," Frederick Kohner's 1957 novel of that name (based on the adventures of his daughter Kathy) had already provided the basis for three motion pictures. Unlike the Gidget films, however, the television series does not focus on Gidget's romantic involvements. We rarely see her boyfriend Jeff, who is a student at Princeton; and her romantic interests are primarily limited to ill-advised infatuations that do not last beyond a single episode. The television series devotes most of its attention to Gidget's relations with her family, her peers, and her teachers. As with the movies, surfing is an underlying theme, but much of the action takes place away from the beach, and deals with such mundane subjects as school work, dating, getting a job, and learning to drive, as well as more unusual ones such as escaping from a "haunted" house, or evading a witch's "curse." In coping with life, Frances Lawrence, whose diminutive stature earned her the nickname "Gidget" (a contraction of "Girl" and "Midget"), gets advice, sought and unsought, from her father Russ (Don Porter), a UCLA English professor, her sister Anne (Betty Conner), her brother-in-law John (Pete Duel), and her best friend Larue (Lynette Winter). "Gidget" captures the different dynamic that exists in a one-parent, one-child, family--Gidget and her father are especially close. Anne is a somewhat conventional meddling older sister who is trying to make Gidget into a lady. John is an aspiring psychologist who attributes nearly everything to subliminal motives. Gidget customarily ignores their suggestions. Larue is a rather eccentric figure, who visits the beach clad in clothing that conceals everything but her face (and sometimes that as well) because she is allergic to sunlight. Gidget often gets together with Larue to consume exotic sandwiches and discuss whatever problem she is facing. Despite her eccentricities, Larue's judgment is often better than Gidget's, but she sometimes gets drawn into Gidget's misadventures against her will.Sally Field landed the role of Gidget through a summer workshop screen test. She had participated in secondary school dramatic productions, but she had had no on-screen experience apart from being a supernumerary in the forgettable 1962 film, "Moon Pilot." Although 19 when the program was filmed, Field is entirely credible as the 15-year-old Gidget. And, in mastering this role, she gave early evidence of the acting talent that was to win her many parts (from the Flying Nun to Mary Todd Lincoln) and awards. Her attitude toward the filming of "Gidget" was "absolute total glee," and her performances reflect this. Don Porter served as her mentor; and there was good chemistry between them, both on and off camera. Similarly, Field described Lynette Winter as her "best friend" in real life as well as in the show. Winter brought to her role a veritable arsenal of facial expressions, and a talent for physical comedy perhaps even greater than Field's. It is hard to imagine "Gidget" without these three. Conner and Duel successfully portray an annoying sister and brother-in-law; and Duel displays surprising aptitude for slapstick when he accidentally disconnects the water supply hose to the washing machine, drenching Anne, Gidget, and himself (we are left to wonder what the soaked cat, watching from a corner, thought of this human folly)."Gidget" is a conglomeration of 1960s artifacts--cars, clothes, hair styles, dances, record players, dial telephones, VHF/UHF television sets, and manual typewriters. In terms of its cast, subject matter and attitudes, it is also a product of its times. Occasionally, there are explicit, if not emphatic, references to sex, and to Gidget's physique. And the cast includes African-Americans playing minor, but respectable, characters. But the women are definitely not liberated. One of Gidget's male acquaintances commands her, "Go fetch food, woman!" Her father tells one of her male classmates what to do "when a woman clamors for complete equality with men," and implies that women really do not want such equality. Gidget receives a spanking in one episode, as does a visiting Swedish female student in another. (No male characters suffer this indignity.) As Gidget concludes in one postscript, "I'd set back women's rights a hundred years--exactly where they belonged." Today, some of this may grate on the nerves, even of those not sensitized to gender issues. On the other hand, in several episodes, Gidget attempts to improve the behavior of her male associates, and, more generally, her participation in surfing involved breaking into what had been a male preserve.An episode of "Gidget" typically ends with sage advice from Russ, or--better--a humorous epigram from Gidget herself, such as: "You're only young once; but if you work it right, once is enough." Or: "It's too bad you can't be born with maturity, then lose it when you don't need it anymore."

That's what I call myself. After all, I became a huge fan of the 1959 film back in the 1990s after coming across it in a local video rental outlet. I bought the Gidget Movie Collection, then the book by Frederick Kohner, who based the lead character on his own daughter, Kathy. Now I've proudly added the TV series to my nostalgia roster. While I still love the original Sandra Dee vehicle, this television show featuring a young Sally Field is entertaining and fun in its own right. Don Porter, who portrayed the Gidge's dad in "Gidget Goes To Rome" (1963) reprises his role here, sans wife, since Professor Russ Lawrence is apparently widowed. The series also introduces Gidget's elder sister Anne (Betty Conner), newly married to John Cooper (Pete Duel), and Lynette Winter (who looked so familiar, and then I realized she was from another 60s movie favorite, "The Parent Trap") is her best friend Larue. Francie Lawrence, aka Gidget, is a teen who loves surfing and runs to the Malibu beach whenever she can. She faces the now classic adolescent predicaments, laced with sweet family humor. Great 60s kitsch and what a trip down memory lane (not that I would know, it was all before my time, lol), with familiar faces like Barbara Hershey and Richard Dreyfuss. Too bad the show only lasted one season, but at least the complete series is preserved so wonderfully on four discs.The series and the films are the perfect way to pass the time and indulge in some swinging fun on a rainy afternoon.Sally Field is adorable, just before her signature TV role as "The Flying Nun".Surf is definitely up!