Burl reviews Surf II! (1983)

 

Hang loose, hodads: at the sign of the shaka shaka and with a big bau bau, it’s Burl, here to review one of the kookier comedies of the 1980s! Ha ha, they made all sorts of teen sex comedies back in those days, and while most of them were fairly normal exercises in peeping tomfoolery and beer-fuelled hoot-n-holler, there were some that yearned to be a little different! Here you might have a Zapped!, incorporating science fiction themes into the mix; there, maybe a School Spirit, which went with the supernatural; and then there were some that couldn’t settle on anything but wholesale weirdness, like The Party Animal! Today’s movie takes a little pinch from each bucket, and the messy and inchoate result was given the title of Surf II!

Ha ha, it’s all like some crazy shenanigram from another dimension! Our location is a coastal surf town, where there are a pair of idjits very like Greg and Steve from Pinball Summer, though not quite as bad as Greg and Steve, because nobody is as bad as Greg and Steve! This pair is Chuck and Bob, played by Eric Stoltz from The Wild Life and Some Kind of Wonderful, and Jeffrey Rogers from Friday the 13^th part III, and instead of a boogie van they drive a dusky orange VW bug! They’re surfers, and so obsessed with the sport that they animatedly exchange surfing stories even as their exasperated girlfriends (one of whom is Brinke Stevens from The Slumber Party Massacre) remove their tops in a bid to get some attention from these dumbasses!

But why they want attention from these clods I couldn’t tell you! Anyway, thankfully there’s much more going on than whatever Chuck and Bob are up to! Strange things, in point of fact, are afoot: surfers are being sucked below by something in the water that looks like a UFO, and are resurfacing as zombie-like punk wasteoids! (And by the way, as an old punk rocker myself, ha ha, I sort of resent the implication that punks are all gross nosepicking dumbasses! They were a pretty prim bunch as I recall, and usually pretty  intelligent!)

Anyway, behind it all is glasses nerd Menlo Schwartzer, played by nerdo di tutti nerdos Eddie Deezen from I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Desperate Moves! He’s a perpetually outraged goon who took too much frazz from the high school surfer bullies, and now is taking revenge against all surfers whether they bullied him or not! He’s invented Buzzz Cola, which is really just motor oil and detritus, and I was never sure about the part where the surfers got sucked down to his lair, because why was that necessary? And what about these mutilations we hear about but never see? And then there's Menlo’s reluctant partner-in-crime, Sparkle, a pretty gal played by Linda Kerridge from Fade to Black and Down Twisted, who once was a homely glasses nerd herself but is now beautiful thanks to Menlo’s weird science!

Chuck and Bob’s fathers, it turns out, are the local distributors of Buzzz Cola! They’re a couple of old surfers, mercenary capitalists in quasi-hippie guise, forever asking people if they can relate! The dads are played by Morgan Paull from Blade Runner and Biff Maynard from Lunch Wagon; the moms by Ruth Buzzi (the female Joe E. Ross, ha ha), whose voice, they say, was heard in The Rescuers, and Brandis Kemp from Clifford; and one of the movie’s most impressive and memorable scenes has the two families shown in a split screen (actually a set built like a split-screen shot) having the same conversation at the same time!

Meanwhile Chief Boyardee, played by Lyle Waggoner from Swamp Country, and Inspector Underwear, who’s none other than Ron Palillo from Friday the 13^th part VI, dopily investigate the disappearances, or mutilations, or personality changes, or whatever is going on! Those character names give you a taste of the level and variety of the movie’s humour, ha ha; and further investigation into the case comes from the school science teacher, Beaker, played by Peter Isackson from Grand Theft Auto! And on the sidelines, watching with increasing incredulity but to absolutely no narrative purpose, is the school principal, Mr. Daddy-O, wielding a megaphone and played by Cleavon Little from Vanishing Point and Blazing Saddles!

And meanwhile again, there’s plenty of beach- and surfing-related buffoonery involving the younger set! One of the first possessed surfers is Jocko, played by Tom Villard from Parasite and One Crazy Summer, who’s a pal of Chuck and Bob, and a pal too of Johnny Big Head, played by Joshua Cadman, who was in The Sure Thing and of course was Bronk in Goin’ All the Way, and whose oft-repeated catch-phrase is "Bau Bau!" There are side antics with Johnny Big Head’s family: his brother Little Big Head played by Pat Romano from Hot Moves, and who became a celebrated stuntman; and his mother Mrs. Big Head, played by Lucy Lee Flippin from Summer School! And there are some sisters, Cindy Lou and Lindy Sue, played by  Corinne Bohrer from The Beach Girls and The Kid With the 200 IQ, and Lucinda Dooling from The Alchemist, and their parents, whom we see for some reason, are played by Terry Kiser from Weekend at Bernie’s and Friday the 13^th part VII, and their mom, Carol Wayne from The Party! And then, just to provide colour commentary, there’s a so-called teen called Becker played by Ralph Seymour from Ghoulies and Killer Party; and finally there's a pair of seat-splitting sand ‘n’ surf superchubbins played by Fred Asparagus from Fatal Beauty and Jim Greenleaf from Joysticks!

Phew! That’s a lot of characters, and a lot of familiar faces playing those characters, and many of those faces are, in their way, beloved by those of us who watch these kinds of movies! Does it add up to something worth sitting through, though? Well as you can see, it’s a complicated case! For example, as we also find in The Party Animal, and who can forget Party Party, the movie has a strangely killer soundtrack that would seem well beyond its budget to afford! We get several Beach Boys tunes of course, since it’s a beach picture; plus She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby (because of science); a Circle Jerks song (included to underline the ragged wildness of the crazed punks, but to me just plain good music); some Oingo Boingo numbers; a triumphant use of Six Months in a Leaky Boat by Split Enz; songs by The Stray Cats, Talk Talk and The Ventures; and of course Wall of Voodoo’s hit Mexican Radio! Pretty good, ha ha!

Anyway, I’m sorry this review was so darn long! Surf II is weird, which is good, but also is bad, which is bad! And mixed in with the badness like spots on a domino are the occasional moments of terrific timing, or a good gag, or a clever shot, or a "Bau Bau," so it’s not a total loss! Why, it gets turkey-points for the breakfast scene alone! Ha ha! It’s hard to quantify the value of this movie exactly, as it is and should be with any work of art, but I guess I’ll give Surf II one and a half cries of "Bau Bau," for how could it be otherwise? Ha ha!