Sandy the Seal

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Movie
Original title Sandy the Seal
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1965
length 70, 73 minutes
Rod
Director Robert Lynn
script Harry Alan Towers
production Harry Alan Rowers
music Malcolm Lockyer
camera Stephen Dade
occupation

Sandy the Seal (in German: Sandy the Seal ) is a British animal and family film from 1965 with Heinz Drache and Marianne Koch in the leading roles.

action

South Africa, mid-1960s. Lighthouse keeper Jan van Heerden is on duty on an island in front of a remote coastal strip. He is busy repairing his radio system when he hears a shot from outside. Jan immediately leaves his lighthouse and climbs over the cliffs to a point on the water, from where a boat with two armed poachers has just left. There he finds a howler left behind . He takes the animal home to the mainland, where his wife Karen and their two children David and Anne are already waiting for him. It is a wonderful family happiness that is perfected by the new "family member", whom the children call Sandy and who immediately fall in love with them. From then on David and Anne take care of Sandy, entertain him and teach the black seal a few tricks, which they even present in front of a delighted audience.

In the meantime, however, the two seal fur hunters report back and return to van Heerden's remote stretch of beach to poach again and shoot even better skins. The bearded lighthouse keeper is seriously injured by a gunshot by the crooks. It is precisely at this point in time that Jan's children are also on the seal island. They find their father and first bring him back to the lighthouse in order to be able to treat him there. Jan temporarily loses consciousness. The poachers had previously destroyed the radio system there so that no one could call the coast guard and the police would not get in their way. But now Sandy comes on the scene. He swims the 18 miles back to the mainland, crawls to the van Heerdens house, and there he can alert Karen and a colleague of Jans. Immediately you cross over to the seal island in a coast guard boat and at the last moment you can arrest the poachers.

Production notes

Sandy the Seal was made in all likelihood in the second half of 1964, immediately following the shooting of the adventure film Sanders and the Ship of Death, also shot in South Africa . The central torsion bar - director Robert Lynn , leading actor Drache und Koch and head cameraman Stephen Dade - is identical in both films. “Sanders” producer Towers wanted to take the opportunity to shoot another, relatively inexpensive film with the two German actors on location, for which he had already written a script. The dragon - unusually with a full beard - looks exactly like his character from Sanders and the ship of death . Most of the shooting took place on Seal Island (South Africa) near Cape Town , known for its rich seal population .

An exact premiere date cannot be determined at the moment, but it is likely that Sandy the Seal was shown for the first time in South Africa in 1965. A showing in Mexico, where the film was called Sandy la foca , was shown on October 24, 1968 ; in Great Britain, the family and children's film was released in cinemas much late in December 1969. In Germany, Sandy the Seal was never released despite the prominent German cast.

reception

"... harmless-nice story about a baby seal ..."

- Kay Less : The large personal lexicon of film , Volume 2, page 449, Berlin 2001

"Poetic, tender, human, touching ... this seal will take hold of you like the whole family!"

- Advertiser on the Mexican movie poster

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