Chris Bystrom was feisty as hell. Do or say something he didn't like, and you'd hear about it, quick. Face-to-face if you were anywhere nearby, but more often by phone or mail. I remember being on the receiving end of Bystrom-penned flogging in the late 1980s, when I was in charge of the SURFER letters column. He didn't approve of the magazine's review of his latest movie. 

. The dude put out a lot of product, it was hard to keep up. I'd met Chris 10 or so years earlier when he was still living in San Diego, and we'd always been friendly. He was ridiculously energetic and had a good sense of humor. Decent surfer. A fun guy to be around. But after that review he let me have it, with both barrels.

No, just one barrel. He saved both barrels for Roy Fleming, who reviewed Bystrom's 

. "Where the hell did they drag you up from?" Bystrom wrote in a tirade that ASL published under the heading "Angry Letter of the Month." Fleming was a "purse-carrying nancy boy," Bystrom said, and his 

 review was "the slimiest piece of yellow journalism I've ever read." (ASL editor Derek Rielly stepped in to say there were "no hard feelings," and mailed Chris "a handsome green corduroy ASL cap." Cheeky fuck.)

Bystrom died in a car accident in 2001, at age 51. All told, he made something like 30 surf movies and videos. He also published a surf magazine, wrote a book, sang in the men's choir, coached a pee-wee basketball team, and has six or eight projects in the hopper, as usual, when he checked out.

 at the bottom of a desk drawer. For some reason it didn't get loaded into the hard drive with all the other surf movies I've been cannibalizing for EOS. 

 came out in 1984, just before I got to SURFER. I'm sure I saw it way back when, but I have no recollection.

Anyway, it seemed fitting that I pop it in the drive and give it a quick review. Thirty years late, but what the hell.

 This used to be a real thing, one of the 

 things actually, about surf movies. Bystrom got Rick Griffin to do the 

 Brainstorm himself, in a fine extended bit of surf-filmmaker goofery, drinking lighter fluid and telling us that the movie we're about to see is shit. (See clip, above.) I kind of love this. Not exactly sure why it's supposed to be funny, but I appreciate that Chris took the time to write that bit of dialogue (or freestyle it, better still!) and that he's got the nuts to open his movie in such weird fashion.

 Bystrom spreads it around. Glen Rawlings, Don Johnson, Pat Mulhern, Bird Mahalona, Zappa Wybrow—if you were anywhere near Bystrom's viewfinder in '82 or '83, there's a good chance you got a shot in 

. Bystrom viewed himself as a bit of an underdog, and he had a lot of time for lesser-known surfers.

 is 90 damn minutes long. I could have watched last night's 

 rerun in the time it took me to get through this monster. Give me one afternoon on Final Cut Pro and I'd trim this fucker down to a tidy 35 minutes.

 Like the purse-carrying nancy boy I am, I'm going to punt—all the way back 

 cub editor Chris Carter, who closed his 1984 

 review thusly: "Lots of hot surfing. A wide variety of good waves in a large variety of locales. You can't ask for much more than that—but I always will."

CHRIS BYSTROM'S "BLAZING BOARDS" IS STILL SMOLDERING

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