What film contains the memorable quote "Charlie don't surf!"?

The memorable quote “Charlie don’t surf!” appears in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. It is shouted by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, a swaggering American officer played by Robert Duvall, during the film’s Vietnam War beach assault.

In the scene, Kilgore orders an attack on a coastal village so his men can surf despite enemy fire. “Charlie” is an American military nickname for the Viet Cong, derived from the radio code letters “Victor Charlie.” The line’s absurd confidence captures the film’s mixture of battlefield violence, dark comedy, and psychological disorientation.

Apocalypse Now was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and loosely adapted from Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. The film relocates Conrad’s journey into the Vietnam War, following Captain Benjamin Willard upriver to find the renegade Colonel Kurtz. The surfing sequence was filmed near Baler in the Philippines and later became associated with the area’s surfing culture.

The quotation is sometimes mistaken for a general Vietnam-era slogan or for a line from a surfing movie. It is specifically dialogue from Apocalypse Now, although the phrase has since appeared in songs, television, games, and other popular-culture references.