Surf II (1984).
“This place is a fuckin’ zoo.”
Directed by Randall M. Badat
Written by Randall M. Badat
Starring Eddie Deezen, Linda Kerridge, Eric Stoltz, and lots and lots of surfboards.
The Stage.
“Those little surfer fucks.”
A nerd named Menlo has created a soda called Buzz Cola that turns surfers into mindless zombies that have been ravaging a California beach.
The Review.
Where do I start with Surf II? If you’d like to know what happens in the first one, there is no first one. That’s right, this is the first film, although the word crawl that kicks the film off could have easily been the plot of a part 1. With that context, get ready for this bonkers story. A nerd with an abnormal grudge against surfers has created a multi-million dollar underwater lab that he somehow sucks surfers down into and then forces them to drink this soft drink that he also invented. The whole soda thing is really weird and it feels like this is some kind of alternate reality because there are Buzz Cola machines everywhere, but surfers treat soda like it’s something way out of bounds like heroin or something. No one wants to drink the stuff so Menlo has to force them to do it.
The film has a bizarre tone that ranges from wild and wacky, like when a police chief named Chief Boyardee who makes moves to the sound of ADR’d cartoon sound effects and a black principal who enters the room to people saying, “Hey, daddy-o!” in unison to straight up disturbing like when two girls who are mad that their friends are out surfing call the police and say they were raped in order to get them in trouble, only to have the cops open fire on the lifeguard hut they’re in, nearly killing them. Of course even those abnormally dark moments are a weird attempt at snagging a laugh, but none of the tones presented here are actually funny.
The “zombies” look less bred from the DNA of a Romero movie and more like castoffs from a David Bowie space-phase music video. They don’t spend their time doing anything other than ingesting weird things from motor oil to frogs and don’t actually seem like a threat. The surfers clearly run the town, just doing whatever they want whenever they want. They routinely skirt the law and spend their time in class betting on frog races while the teacher sits with his feet kicked up on his desk. They care about two things - surfing and women, and there are a lot of both in this film. In one scene, people pack into a theater to watch clips of people surfing, that is until Buzz Cola zombies eat the film reel in a scene that seemingly exists solely to pad the run time.
At about the 45 minute mark I started questioning my existence, or at least what I was doing with it. I was watching a comedy that to this point, hadn’t even made me smile once. Unfortunately, it never got better. The entire movie feels like rejected Saturday Night Live skits where not much connects and nothing really matters, interspersed with scenes of women dancing on the beach in bikinis. There was one thing that absolutely delighted me though, and that was the presence of two, yes two, Beach Boys songs. The soundtrack is pretty stacked, with Oingo Boingo, Thomas Dolby, and Talk Talk appearances, along with other Capital Records acts from the early 80’s.
The End.
The problem with Surf II isn’t its wild and wacky plot. It’s that it’s not funny and ultimately it’s really fucking boring. I can only imagine that the production of this film was fueled by cocaine and the things that made the final film looked a lot funnier while high on blow.
In usual Vinegar Syndrome fashion, the presentation looks great. Although grain-heavy, the picture was sourced from original 35mm prints. There are two cuts of the film presented here, but based on fan feedback, I watched the theatrical cut. Not sure I have the stomach for the director’s cut. There are also four different commentary tracks and an hour long documentary called The Stupidest Movie Ever Made, so I guess the supplemental materials and I are both on the same page.
