A candle flies across the room. Caity Simmers emerges from the gloom, dressed in black and wearing fangs. A knife hovers over Jaleesa Vincent’s open palm. An ornate book promises ancient secrets, while lightning forks over a dark castle. The immortals surf at night by the light of the moon.
All of this is to say that Vampires Surf is not your usual surf film. The creation of Luka Raubenheimer and Vincent, Vampires Surf combines fantasy-infused drama with surfing from Simmers, Vincent, Frankie Harrer, and Kobe Hughes. Fittingly, the film premiers on Halloween night.
“You would never hear those two words together — vampires and surfing,” Vincent told SURFER over the phone. “I think sometimes surf movies can be a little bit boring if it’s just surfing, so we wanted to create a film that has some magical components.”
A year in the making, the script involves three immortal girl surfers, powerful evil, an ancient prophecy, and a blood moon. “It’s like when you’re a kid playing and you create a world, and you get so absorbed inside it,” says Vincent, of writing the film. Raubenheimer drew inspiration from The Lord of the Rings, while Vincent is a big fan of the Twilight series.
It’s fair to say that Vincent is an original. By now, she’s no stranger to inventive, unique projects. When it came time to name her board brand, for example, she called it Pussy Surfboards. Growing up, Vincent loved theater, singing, and dancing far more than she did surfing. She’s held on to her drama kid roots by directing a surf musical and fronting her band Cupid and the Stupids.
Initially, Vincent didn’t find surfing to be an especially welcoming place. She felt like she had to shrink herself down. As a woman, she worried about getting in peoples’ way in the lineup and taking up too much space. That’s hard to imagine now. Obviously, her perspective has shifted — so much so, that she’s just made a surf film about vampires.
“When I first started surfing, to fit in, I felt like I needed to be a bit of a tomboy and put the creative, playful, sassy part of me in a box,” Vincent confides. “Now it’s awesome to open that box up and bring all my favorite personalities together.”
For Raubenheimer, the project was an opportunity to experiment with effects and dig into an arsenal of fantasy film-making tricks. “The girls didn’t always realize what they were doing in front of the green screen,” laughs Raubenheimer. “They’ve got no idea I’m going to make them hang upside down in a castle window or something.” He and Vincent bounced script ideas back and forth and were still adapting the narrative during production.
For the surfers, the project involved some unusual challenges. “We had to do a lot of the acting on the surf trips, so we were packing the cloaks and the fangs, while we were also packing our boardbags,” says Harrer, who found the surfing much easier than the acting side of the project. “I don’t even like doing karaoke,” she adds.
When the three immortals surfed in their fangs in Puerto Rico, they definitely drew attention. “People were definitely weirded out by us, but that’s cool,” says Farrer. At Uluwatu, more than one surfer complimented Vincent’s alternative surf craft; the board was a coffin she’d built as a surfable prop for the film.
“They thought I was choosing to ride that as my functional piece of equipment,” says Vincent. “They were like, ‘This is so cool.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m making a vampire movie. It’s a coffin.’”
Despite its fascination with capes and fangs, Vampires Surf does not neglect the essential surf film project of riding waves. With Simmers, Hughes, and Farrer involved, you just know there’s going to be barrels — and lots of them. As if that weren’t enough, Timo Simmers and Mille Coco Brown also appear in the film.
During a memorable session in Puerto Rico, Simmers and Hughes traded massive, slabbing barrels, while Farrer charged heavy lefts. “It was so inspiring — their determination in the ocean and their connection with the water,” says Vincent. The crew also traveled to Indonesia where Vincent and Farrer shared a memorable session at a glassy a-frame.
“The idea of the film is so campy and theatrical and fun,” says Harrer. “But then, from the waves that everyone got that I saw with my own eyes, there was so much good surfing going on.”
Vampires Surf premiers in Noosa with a costume party on Halloween night. Additional screenings are scheduled for Europe, New York City, California, and Australia. The cast will come dressed to kill, and Vincent hopes that audiences will play along with their own costumes.
“Halloween is my favorite day of the year,” says Vincent. “To have our premier on Halloween and to dress up like vampires is just, ‘dreams come true.’”