Driving May Not Be His Forte

50s and 60s singing heartthrob Fabian Forte escaped serious injury twice this weekend, first in a car crash and then in a concert accident. He is not a guy you hear a lot about, but he is a guy I was thinking of a couple months ago, not for singing but for acting.

Now acting is not the word that most people would use to describe what Fabian (or Frankie and Annette or any number of other teen heartthrobs who made the transition from pop records to the movies) did. Some would not even call the vehicles they performed in, movies. I'm not one of those guys. I love those silly beach movies. The Frankie and Annette variety are just as bad as you remember them to be. No, actually, they are a lot worse than you remember them to be.

But Fabian starred in one beach movie that was different. It was so different that 40 years after seeing it, I still remember it fondly. Even stranger, when my TiVo picked it up a couple months ago, I remembered whole scenes of dialog from the film. That freaked even me out!

The film is called Ride the Wild Surf and if you ever see it coming on TV, give it a chance. I think it will pleasantly surprise you. A couple of things set this film apart from the typical teen "beach" movie.

First, it takes place in Hawaii where the surf really is as wild as they show, rather than Malibu or Redondo Beach where they never get the kind of wave you see in a Frankie and Annette movie. The film follows its stars as they hit one beach after another on the North Shore of Oahu, ending up at Waimea Bay.

Second, not only is it packed stem to stern with some amazing surfing shots, it actually has a story, following three friends from Malibu as they try there hands at Hawaii for the first, and maybe last, time. They come from different backgrounds and they are all on different paths in life. Maybe the stars are a little too old for a "coming of age" drama, but they do discover direction for their lives in what they find in Hawaii.

I was eight when I saw this film, but even at that age I could tell it was a step above the average "beach" fare. OK, it's not a giant step, but the dang step is there, I tell ya.

Fabian, Peter Brown and Tab Hunter play the three friends and Susan Hart, Shelly Fabares and Barbara Eden (less than a year away from fame as Jeannie on TV) play the three women who discover them. James Mitchum (Robert's son) and Roger Davis (of Alias Smith and Jones) play their surfing adversaries.

Yeah, sure, they all look stupid standing in front of the film of waves during the close-ups and pretending to surf, but a lot of the other surfing scenes using the actors look really good. And I swear, there is a scene near the end of the film with Tab Hunter, Susan Hart and Catherine McCloud that I recited in my head as I saw it play out. I remembered it from 42 years ago.

It remains on my TiVo list of films to be auto-recorded. It's not a classic by any means, but it's a cut above the standard fare and dammit, I feel real young when I watch it and Shelly Fabares is just as cute as when I was eight years old.