These Are Your Favorite Surf Movies Of All Time

Editor’s note: Our favorite entry from below will get to order a free custom from Coby Perkovich’s Systm Surfboards. If your response was printed above, keep an eye on your inbox this Friday — one of you is going to win. While we have some frontrunners, we could always be swayed in the comments…

Last week, we posed a question designed to arrive immediately at the core of one’s existence: What’s your favorite surf movie of all time? 

Initially, we posed it to ourselves, the Stab staff. Then we posed it to our Instagram following. And finally via email, to you, our Premium subscribers. This article will be focused on the responses from the last of those three groups — because we’re all friends here, yes? 

All up, 50 people replied. We had teens, and we had senior citizens. They came from the Great Lakes, Germany, Texas, and of course, the wave-rich locales you’d expect to produce individuals with favorite surf movies. 

Some responses were brief, some were tender, some were profane. We appreciated every single one of them. While we initially aimed to slice them down to ten, after reading them all, we chose to expand it to 15. Still, it was quite the task — wheat and chaff can’t be separated in an entirely subjective world. 

Before we get into it, a few interesting facts: 

– Taylor Steele and Jack McCoy earned more selections than any other directors, tying at six. Jack’s selections should also be interpreted as a nod to Billabong. 
– Volcom movies earned six selections as well, eclipsing Rip Curl, …Lost and Globe. 
– Seven movies were selected twice: Trilogy, The September Sessions, Bunyip Dreaming, The Bruce Movie, Magnaplasm, Kelly Slater In Black And White, and Strange Rumblings.
– Only two movies were selected three times: Pentacoastal and View From A Blue Moon. 

The juxtaposition there speaks to the myriad of factors that contribute to the potency of a surf film. 

Ain’t that something? 

Name: Wyat Gitlan 
Age: 23 
Location: El Segundo, California  
Favorite Surf Film: Chapter 11  
Why:

It combines some of the most unrelatable surfing with the most relatable things (mental health issues: we all deal/have dealt with it in some form). 

Name: Lance Arinaga
Age: 40. Hell, that’s the first time I had to write it down 
Location: Hawaii 
Favorite Surf Film: Magnaplasm 
Why:

That movie represented everything rad and counterculture about surfing. I never identified with mainstream radio or jocks at school, or school in general. This was like the first time I heard punk rock. I was hooked. The whole vibe of the film, claymation, the animation, the locations, the soundtrack, the film stock, the anti-establishment attitude, the characters: Beschen, Barney, Tai Van Dyke, Dave Post in Newport and goddamn Bruce Irons! 

Me and Bruce were the same age, and I couldn’t believe all the shit he had done already. I was barely passing Algebra 2. The movie was like a fantasy world that I wanted to live in. My favorite shot is when Dave Post is cutting back and sprays some birds flying overhead. Who can forget Bruce in the ending with surfing perfect Indo tubes to a Spanish song, “Buenos tardes amigo…” Some acoustic Latin emo shit right there. Magnaplasm was ahead of its time and for me is still the benchmark of creativity and the core of what surfing should be. 

Name: Braiden Maither 
Age: 24 
Location: Maui, Hawaii
Favorite Surf Film: Trilogy
Why: 

I was about 12 and it was Christmas and all I wanted was the new Young guns 3 movie—Clay was my favorite surfer at the time of course being from Maui. I received Trilogy instead for Christmas and was a little bummed out, but who cares, a new surf movie on Christmas throw it in the DVD player. From Andy flying in a helicopter to deserts with Mickey Avalon blasting, to Taj going loony at Lakeys and home. Soundtrack A1, best surfers in the world at that time all together. Wow. Gonna go search it up on YouTube as we speak. 

Name: Todd Johnson  
Age: 37
Location: Pacifica, California 
Favorite surf film: Searching For Tom Curren
Why: 

Soundtrack rips, locations fuck too, and of course it’s Curren. 

Name: Imon Davies
Age: 21
Location: Thunder Bay, Canada — Lake Superior surfer for the win
Favorite Surf Film: Nordfor Sola
Why: 

A Norwegian surf film where two guys build a cabin on a remote northern Norwegian beach out of garbage and wood that drifted up onto the beach over the years. And then proceed to live in that cabin for almost a year through the winter surfing, snowboarding and paragliding along the way. They ate only food that was free from supermarkets that whole time as it was expiring. When I lived in Norway last year, I trekked into the beach and stayed for two nights in their cabin and surfed both days I was there. Great film, great location, great message and was extra sick to experience it all myself.

Name: Juan Gutierrez  
Age: 30
Location: Los Angeles, California 
Favorite Surf Film: The September Sessions
Why: 

This film is the most laid-back surf film ever made. Even the narration is hypnotic in a languid way. Not to mention the fact that some of the world’s best surfers at that particular moment in time are surfing some of the finest-looking waves ever caught on grainy film. It gives you stylish surfing at its finest.

A handful of pixels is all that remains. 

Name: Tino Ramirez
Age: 65
Location: Māʻili, Hawaiʻi
Favorite Surf Film: Sea Dreams 
Why: 

It showcases progressive surfing in Hawaiʻi during the early ‘70s: BK flying on 17″ wide guns, Hakman carving Sunset and Haleʻiwa, Lopez and Russell at Pipeline, Lopez ripping Rocky Point, Reno on a tri-fin, plus lesser known North Shore locals and a priceless sequence of Keith Paull at Haleʻiwa. The surfing is from a time when everyone was trying to figure out board design and there was still a lot of room in the ocean.  It’s a great reference to what’s happening today. Too bad, though, that not more care was taken with the transfer from film to digital.

Name: Oscar Lubbock 
Age: 15 
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
Favorite Surf Film: Pentacoastal 
Why: 

I’d have to say my favourite surf film is Wade Goodall’s Pentacoastal. Whenever I watch it, I get to feel the radical-peaceful combination of feelings you get from any sick moment in surfing. Especially the way it all was filmed as well as all the quick frames that were transformed into artwork. It just set my love for surfing on fire again. 

Name: John Hoff 
Age: 37
Location: Encinitas, California 
Favorite Surf Film: 5’5” x 19 1/4
Why:

Great surfing, great soundtrack. Rad locations. It had everyone from Curren and Occy to young Bruce doing unconventional tricks like Occy’s power 360 in the white water and Andy and Cory going ham in the Waimea shorepound.

Name: Sasha Rovinsky
Age: 19
Location: Kauai, Hawaii 
Favorite surf film: Blue Horizon
Why: 

The film is beyond nostalgic and became a foundational component of my surfing identity and understanding of surf culture; its scenes of 90’s-tinted cobalt blue and Foo Fighter soundtrack are seared into my psyche, and to this day, if I watch the movie I can’t replace the initial memories I have of it. The flashbulb moments I’ve had since the first time I watched it as a nine-year-old are stored in my brain, close to the same section I recollect the visions of my most lucid childhood fever dreams. I know these were integrated at a similar time into my fertile 10-year-old identity, and have stuck around to this day in my conception of self and surfing. The relentless monotone of the narration, the excessively long title scene looking up from underwater, and “All My Life” have enough of my foundational memories affixed to deserve their own psychoanalysis.  

Chronicled in a bildungsoman-esque timeline of Andy and Dave, it offers a somewhat weighted look at the dichotomy between their surfing careers and personalities. The 2000’s backdrop of the documentary has a mix of competitive nostalgia and mythicism buoyed by the most eminent rivalry of the century. Kelly and Andy saturated the public’s thirst for drama, and McCoy capitalized on this framework in his narrative. The golden era of competitive surfing was thoroughly imprinted on my mind before I even knew what a heat was, and I was hooked. 

At the same time, McCoy was providing probably the earliest honest look into Andy’s nascent psychological troubles that would ultimately accumulate into his competitive self-combustion. As a kid, the intimate look was more inspiring than frightening, but there are obvious underscores of Andy’s troubled relationship with competition and fame that have left me with an enduring sympathy for his battles in and out of the water. Rasta’s storyline was as moving as it was dissimilar. The anomaly of freesurfing and Billabong’s young dark-horse-turned-old-soul was captivating for a 10-year-old and gave me another avenue to vicariously fill my surfing aspirations. Dave had a pure simplicity and joy that I still respect and admire; I’m deeply appreciative that McCoy and Billabong decided to present his story as they did. Without it, I would have no appreciation for Rasta’s seldom told story and largely undervalued stylistic contributions to modern surfing. 

Taking Andy’s competitive volatility juxtaposed with Dave’s divergence from the qualifying series and embrace of freesurfing, the contrast in lifestyles and the picture McCoy paints is heavy handed but tenable. I wanted to be Andy just as much as I wanted to be Dave, and to this day, they remain in my mind as two of the most influential and substantive identities of surfing. 

Name: Isaac Snider 
Age: 17
Location: San Diego, California 
Favorite surf film: Stoked and Broke
Why: 

Watching Stoked and Broke makes me realize how lucky I am to live where I live. I also like the idea of walking down the coast of San Diego and being able to score a little something pretty much anywhere you stop.

Name: August Howell 
Age: 24
Location: Half Moon Bay, California 
Favorite surf film: View From A Blue Moon
Why: 

It may be generic, but it’s hard not to appreciate the quality of surfing and production John John and Co. put into this film. It’s a movie I can watch over and over again to get hyped to go surf. That in itself isn’t unique, but it does bring in narrative, narration and storytelling arcs for each transition and section. It’s one of those rare films that lends itself well both to “core” surfers and those who have never stepped foot in the ocean. The soundtrack is playful, catchy and has generated a few fan-made playlists on Spotify. Yes, it’s probably the highest budget for a surf film ever, outside of Hollywood, but it’s still my favorite. At the end of the day, it showcases John John’s otherworldly versatility, from tweaked airs in West Oz to owning Backdoor pits just steps from his back porch. 

Name: Jason Surgent 
Age: 49
Location: Daytona Beach, Florida 
Favorite surf film: Bunyip Dreaming 
Why: 

Because Jack McCoy captured surfing in its purest essence. No contest or beer drinking hooligans, which are fine, but he gathered soul on tape. The music blew our minds, mixed with searching endless land for perfection. After that flick, my friends and I were hooked on our own searches. We made Didgeridoos and loaded up our trucks in search of empty far away surf. This was in Texas of all places. There was surf and we drove miles and miles down empty off-road beaches to surf. We would rock up literally jamming Yothu-Yindi and with Didgeridoos in hand, we would camp and bonfire out in the remotes playing our hand made instruments. We were influenced by Occ’s huge hacks and this is all we wanted, to be them. That movie really moved us and I cherish those days. Unreal. 

Name: Charlie Buckingham 
Age: 32
Location: Costa Mesa, California
Favorite surf film: Feral Kingdom
Why: 

It has been said that godfathers are chosen to oversee the spiritual formation of a child. A tradition my godfather, who was also my Uncle, kept each Christmas was gifting me a surf VHS. As the family opened gifts every year he’d walk over, hand me an unwrapped VHS, and before walking away say “oh, you might want to rewind that.” Through his gifting over the years I amassed most of the Taylor Steele collection starting with Momentum, all of the Jack Mccoy films, and the Rip Curl search series by Sonny Miller, to name a few.

Out of all of them, there was something different about Feral Kingdom. The video always felt like more of an experience than a surf film. The sections transition from one another like a journey from different ends of the earth through the lens of surfing — an embodiment of the Search and what I believe defines being a surfer. Journeying far into the unknown with nervous anticipation, with hopes of scoring uncrowded waves fueling the effort. Sonny Miller brilliantly spliced the soundtrack, scenery and epic surfing footage in this movie to make this experience. The fact he did this all with actual film makes it even more impressive. 

Not to mention the quality of surfing in the movie. In my opinion, the Rip Curl team masterminded by Derek Hynd in the 90’s is one of the most complete in modern history. Tom Curren, Shane Powell, Damien Hardman, Pancho Sullivan, Chris Davidson, Nathan Hedge, Justin Matteson, Neco Padaratz, Frankie Oberholzer all have their own place on different parts of the surfing spectrum and keep the variety of surfing fresh in the film.

My godfather tragically passed away three years ago. I still have every single VHS he gave me and have always kept a VHS player so I can keep watching them. Every time I sit down to watch one of them, I see it as our new way of hanging out and can’t help but think of his god-fatherly influence on my lifelong love/obsession with surfing.

Name: Matt Nettlefold
Age: 29
Location: Victoria, Australia
Favorite surf film: Momentum Under The Influence
Why: 

This film is 20 years old this year, which is about as long as I’ve been into surfing. Nostalgia aside, it’s still the most impressive and relevant movie in my surfing life. I own most surf movies you can think of — from Crystal Voyager with George Greenough to the Waves magazine low-budget VHS Because I Wanna through to Shelter, Modern Collective and everything in between. 

To this day, I still watch Taylor Steele’s Momentum Under The Influence religiously in my garage (on the same VHS tape Dad bought me in 2001) because it is the most legitimate no bullshit surf video ever. It features the best surfers under 23 years old from the greatest era in surfing. 

Watch the video and you’ll see that the surfing these guys were doing at that age is as good if not better than any good surfing by today’s standard. It’s got a sick punk rock soundtrack and genuine ripping from an all-time stacked cast. The Hobgoods doing some of the best backhand ripping ever, the Malloys carving threes, Rasta threading tubes and carving the shit out of Burleigh on a 6’3, Mick and Parko absolutely tearing the Goldy, Bruce doing big straight airs in the Ments, Taj pioneering big air reverses at in WA and arguably the best Andy Irons section of all time. 

Do yourselves a favor and re-watch this one.

Editor’s note: Our favorite entry will get to order a free custom from Coby Perkovich’s Systm Surfboards. If your response was printed above, keep an eye on your inbox this Friday — one of you is going to win. While we have some frontrunners, we could always be swayed in the comments…