SLIPPERY WHEN WET (1958) / BAREFOOT ADVENTURE (1960)

Bruce Brown broke into big time filmmaking with 1966’s THE ENDLESS SUMMER, a documentary which followed two young American men as they travel the world trying to keep summer alive by finding new places to surf. It was the rare documentary that became a commercial hit, and a few years later, Brown's ON ANY SUNDAY, a doc about motorcycle racing, was nominated for an Oscar. But Brown, himself a surfer, had made six short surfing docs years earlier and Turner Classic Movies showed some a while back. These aren't stuffy educational films with interviews, research, and a social agenda, they're just Brown showing surfers having fun devoting their summer days to going from beach to beach trying to catch the perfect wave. Shot silent with chatty casual narration provided by Brown, the bulk of the footage of both of these early short (70 minutes) films consists of watching surfers catch waves, fail to catch waves, and (quite often) wiping out. These films were not distributed theatrically, but shown in rented-out halls and theaters with Brown narrating live accompanied by a musical soundtrack playing on a tape recorder. These two make for enjoyable viewing. Brown never takes himself or his subject too seriously; SLIPPERY's narration starts by evoking the Bible's opening words, "In the beginning" with shots of sun, water, foam, and waves. Then we are told, "With civilization, there came the surfer with his urge to conquer these moving walls of water." A narrative of sorts follows, as Brown shows five young California men daydreaming about surfing in Hawaii. For example, Del Cannon pictures native women fanning him with palm fronds and feeding him grapes and bananas; and Henry Ford imagines himself cramming poi in his mouth and smearing it all over his face (as pictured below right). The five get to Hawaii and spend all their time surfing at various beaches. The surf footage is broken up with mildly humorous vignettes: two crabs carefully drag a cigarette butt on the beach down into a sand hole; the guys jump from waterfalls; when they rent a dilapidated beach shack, we see that all the cupboards and the refrigerator are filled with cans of baked beans. Despite the five being handsome WASPy types, they seem not at all interested in women. In fact, the only time we hear about women, they're called "Gidgets" and dismissed. Before the guys leave for Hawaii, they have a short misadventure with a would-be surfer named Mooks who wants to surf because a gidget has encouraged him to. He comically doesn't cut the mustard.

BAREFOOT ADVENTURE features a couple of the same guys and the same locations. It lacks a story throughline but has slightly more fleshed out fictional vignettes. The longest and weirdest one involves Del Cannon breaking into a surf shop to make his own board in the back room and completely mucking things up. Near the end, the guys drive across an abandoned military base to get to a beach and wind up hitting a buried landmine which blows their vehicle to pieces, after they get to safety, of course. The explosion and the gutted vehicle are certainly real but the story and most of the footage look fake. Women are similarly ignored here, though there are a few brief shots of a female surfer joining in with the boys in the surf. One sequence of the guys mocking some female tourists taking hula lessons could be borderline offensive today. Brown’s facility with a camera is impressive, as are the abilities of the surfers. The recorded narration for this film was lost, so Brown recorded new narration in 1990, which sounds just as laid-back as that in SLIPPERY. What sets both of these films a bit above being just elaborate home movies are the scores, written by jazz saxophonist Bud Shank (who released dozens of albums between 1954 and 2009) and recorded by his band. The music is used very well, and current-day viewers may be surprised that it's a jazz soundtrack, without a bit of what we think of as surf music (like that of the Beach Boys or guitarist Dick Dale). ENDLESS SUMMER is essentially a more polished, less humorous version of these two films. Incidentally, despite both films having shirtless guys getting wet and hanging out together 24/7, their behavior is about as un-homoerotic as you could imagine, with the possible exception of that boy with the poi on his face. [TCM]