Waterlogged is a surfing documentary created by legendary film maker Bruce Brown during the late ’50s and early ’60s. The documentary follows an interesting group of young surfers as they tour the world chasing down the perfect waves. By the release of this movie Bruce Brown had already filmed, produced, narrated and released four other full length surfing documentaries each of which were moderately successful. However, Brown was after something more, something special. Realising this something special would take time and money he decided to release Waterlogged, a best of documentary cut from his previous four films. Released in 1962, this 83-minute feature was very popular and created somewhat of a cult following around the surfing crowds of that day. The popularity of this film gave Brown the money and the recourse he required to go on and create his special project, which became known as The Endless Summer, arguably the greatest surfing documentary of all time and a true classic in any nostalgic surfer’s opinion.

So then what can you expect from Waterlogged? Pretty much the same from any of the discs in the Bruce Brown collection. Lots of young guys riding waves, cracking jokes and generally playing around in front of the camera. Bruce Brown narrates, of course, and injects that dry, sultry humour that is constant throughout all his films. There are the usual prop gags, one-liners, and bad jokes that are corny enough to make even Daryl Somers blush. Not to say they are offensive, ooh no this is clean cut America in 1962 – there’s none of that language these modern surfer-punks speak. This is good wholesome family viewing, but one still has to wonder who’s writing the material when you see three innocent looking surfer-dudes pouring washing detergent into the ocean to create instant ‘Surf’. But hey, at least the humour is clean...

The video quality looks like it’s straight from 1962, oddly enough. Film grain is high, detail is low, and the colours have that washed-out look about them. Taking into account the age of the footage and choice of film used, the quality looks about the standard you would expect. The transfer itself has come out looking good, but just like the audio (which we will get to in a second) there appears to have been no work carried out to restore or remaster the original source material on this movie. This could hardly be expected considering the costs that would be involved as compared to the money these discs will make, but in a perfect surfing world it would have been nice.

As said above, the audio hasn’t been remastered and appears in its original Dolby Digital Mono format. I noticed a few more flaws on this disc than I did in the previous Bruce Brown disc reviewed, Surfing Hollow Days. The dialogue on the most part is very clear, and the musical backing is almost always present but never over-powering. The only major failing spotted (ignoring the source material’s lack of definition) is when Bruce Brown suddenly screams out a joke, when his voice rises above general talking level the speakers start to hiss and spit for just a second, not appreciating the increased volume. This is again a problem with the lack of quality in the source material and is just a minor fault viewers will have to grin and bear, but for others it could add that realistic 1960s touch.

The extras are nowhere to be seen, apart from subtitles in German, French and Spanish.

Overall this is a pleasant and enjoyable disc that almost anyone can appreciate. The reality is however that only those wrapped up in the old ’60s surfing heritage will get their money’s worth of value out of this one, but if you want to build a surfing video collection or want to reminisce about days gone by then this is a great disc to start with or add to the catalogue.