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Ride the Wild Surf



Ride the Wild Surf (1964)
Director: Don Taylor
Writers: Jo & Art Napoleon
Cast: Fabian, Shelley Fabares, Peter Brown, Barbara Eden, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart
Genre: Surf movie


Ride the Wild Surf
...is a cut above the typical surf movie of the 1960s. This one is much more serious and shows the growing popularity of surfing in Hawaii as a spectator sport....Oh sure there's still plenty of pretty girls in bikinis and quickie beach romances.



The girl in the photo center, is Donna Reed's TV daughter, Shelley Fabares. She was one of the luck child actors who transitioned from playing a kid on TV to playing a young adult in the movies. She's likeable, at least Fabian thinks so in the movie. If that's not enough there's also a red headed beauty, Barbara Eden, who played Jeannie on TV and with blond hair. There's also a dark haired beauty a Hawaiian born girl Susan Hart who does the most seductive Hula dance you'll ever see on film!



And of course there has to be some surfer dudes, in fact there's a lot of them as the premise in the film is a competition on the big waves at Waimea, Hawaii...those portions are filled by Fabian, Tab Hunter and Peter Brown, and all are quite good. For added bonus, the current surf champ is played by Robert Mitchum's son, James Mitchum. Boy, does he look like his father or what!



What I really liked about this movie was, it was minimal on the silly camp, and focused much more on the actual surfing competition. There's lots of awesome scenes of surfers on the big Pipeline waves at Hawaii. Those scenes were shot by Jo & Art Napoleon who captured surfers on these freak giant waves that were a rare occurrence due to weather conditions. Later they wrote the movie around the footage they had shot. And it's that footage of actual surfers on monstrous waves that makes the film stand out from other surf movies.

Ride the Wild Surf
is like a fun time machine back the carefree days of surf and sand, 1964.

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