I just bought a DVD copy of "Rescue From Gilligan's Island." Somehow that seems to be in the public domain, because you can find it out there for just a few dollars, released by one of those "generic" companies.
So in that film -- which is silly but has heart to it, thus true to the series -- Gilligan finds a small metal disk, which originated and survived intact from a foreign satellite which had been purposefully destroyed to keep the disk's data from falling into U.S. hands. The disk helps the professor create a working barometer which then tells him of a major storm and tsunami about to hit them. They bind their huts together to weather the storm, end up afloat in this makeshift craft, and are thus rescued once they are seen adrift by the Coast Guard. Their arrival in Hawaii is seen by millions on TV, including two foreign spies who spot the disc as it was being worn by Gilligan as a "good luck" pendant. They spend the rest of the film trying to subdue Gilligan and get it back. One of these two foreign spies is Vincent Schiavelli... who was in both "Taxi" and in "Man on the Moon."
So there's our connection to Bob Denver! Meanwhile, the best laugh I think I got from the film was from the Professor, settled into post-rescue life, earnestly explaining tribal courtship customs to an amorous female professor. He tells her the natives would share the milk from a coconut together by drinking through a straw-like implement known as a "watoobi."
I just read in one of those crazy militiamen-survivalist books today that one should be careful not to consume too much milk from coconuts at once (not more than three or four coconuts worth), as the milk may act as a "violent laxative".
