Relentless in their silliness, these “surfploitation” flicks inevitably featured singing heartthrobs Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, second-banana comics like Don Rickles and Paul Lynde and plenty of laughable back-projection surfing sequences. It took a gallant Bruce Brown to finally come to the rescue with his 1966 documentary , a paean to the pure thrills of surfing that finally treated the sport with love and respect. Yet, decades on, the taint of the surfploitation quickies still sticks to the surf movie like barnacles.
Maybe someday someone will make a film that transcends the surf genre the way transcended the biker genre. In the meantime, though, its good to remember that there’s more to surfing on celluloid than just Frankie and Annette. Here, then, is a “Hang 10” selection of noteworthy surfing pictures, from the cool to the kitschy to the unexpected.
A scene from the 1966 Bruce Brown documentary The Endless Summer. Relentless in their silliness, these “surfploitation” flicks inevitably featured singing heartthrobs Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, second-banana comics like Don Rickles and Paul Lynde and plenty of laughable back-projection surfing sequences.
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