Ride the Wild Surf (1964)

(Note: If you need to enlarge the pictures simply click on them)

Starring
Fabian as Jody Wallis
Shelley Fabares as BrieMatthews
Peter Brown as Chase Colton
Barbara Eden as Augie Poole
Tab Hunter as Steamer Lane
Susan Hart as Lily Kilua
James Mitchum as Eskimo
John Anthony Hayes as Frank Decker
Roger Davis as Charlie
Catherine McLeod as Mrs. Kilua

The Gospel According to Clyde

In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. But the earth wasn’t much of a place because there wasn’t any water. So then God made the oceans and the seas and saw that it was good. But after a while, God grew tired of watching the water just sort of lay there and do nothing so he made the surf and the waves and saw that it was good. And for a long time God was happy.

But soon, God became bored once again. You can only watch the waves hitting the shore for so long before you begin saying to yourself, “If you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all.”

So in his infinite wisdom God made the surf board and placed it on the shores of Malibu and Waimea. But amen I say unto you, the surfboard was lonely on the shore with nothing to do. So again, in all of his graciousness, God made the surfer man, who did praise unto God and did thus climb aboard the surfboard and rode the surf mightily from sea to shining sea and God saw that it was good.

On the last day, God rewarded man by bestowing upon him the bikini. And seeing that the bikini needed a little filling out, God created woman and slid her into the bikini. And when God saw what he had done, he knew that it was very very very good. And so did the surfer man. And he did thank God mightily.

We all have our guilty film pleasures. These are the movies that you may have watched at one time or another, movies that have for the most part been trashed by the critics and/or public, or movies that should not be viewed with any relevance if you consider yourself a real film connoisseur. In other words, a snob.

It’s not the fact that you watched these cinematic exercises that make them a guilty pleasure. It’s the fact that you have probably watched them several times and even enjoy watching them when you do. I have quite a few movies like this that I generally don’t own up to them as being favorites in public company. But I have decided to cleanse my soul, not only by admitting that I have actually seen Ride The Wild Surf, but that I actually enjoy watching it. All of this even though I know deep down in my heart its not a very good movie. But something must make it worth watching.



Now don’t get me wrong. I absolutely abhor the vast wasteland of surfing movies from the sixties that starred Frankie, Annette, and the dumbest group of overaged 25 to 30 year olds pretending to be teenagers ever to hit the big screen. Most young guys like myself went to films like Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo simply to ogle at the female flesh shoved inside some rather flimsy material. And every once in a while there would be some rock group come on to play a lame song so that you could watch the gals shake that booty for all it was worth. As to why any teenage girls went to these movies, you may have to ask one of them because I don’t really know and have never asked although I have my suspicions.



But still, even with a bunch of scantily clad gorgeous females, (except for Annette. Her bathing suit was always very chaste and so was she which probably made her seem hotter than she was), the movies were difficult to sit through. Even at the age of thirteen and fourteen I knew they were idiotic and was bored with anything that happened plot wise when the music quit and the jiggling stopped. I personally wanted to strangle Eric Von Zipper just to get him off the screen.




But nothing is etched in stone and there are in fact a couple of these surfing type movies that I actually enjoyed. Well, technically, you can’t really call the two that I like Beach Movies because neither actually fit the criteria even if they were directed at that particular audience. Of those two movies, the one that serves our purposes for this review is Ride the Wild Surf.

The reason Ride the Wild Surf was a cut above the norm is because instead of third grade level comedy capers, it decided it wanted to go in an opposite direction. The producers, directors, the writers, and powers above decided to take the genre and turn it upside down by featuring a bunch of people who could act (somewhat), several romances that didn’t rely on anyone being kidnapped by a klutzy motorcycle gang, and instead of third grade comedy you get fourth grade dramedy. Hey, an improvement is an improvement so don’t be so judgmental.

Oh yeah, Ride the Wild Surf has a lot of something else. It has a whole bunch of surfing in it which is something that the Beach Party movies never had very much of, even though supposedly they were about surfers.

Put on your thinking caps and try to keep up as I give you the plot synopsis. Three surfers, Jody (Fabian), Chase (Peter Brown), and Steamer (Tab Hunter), travel to Hawaii to surf the really big waves there that you can’t seem to find on the shores of California. Sort of the last big thrill before they move on with their sad and wretched lives. And of course, it doesn’t take long for our three heroes to get connected with their love interests.

Steamer, meets his gal pal first when she shows up on a beach riding a horse. He finds out later that her name is Lily Kalua (Susan Hart) and that she lives on a farm with her mother (Catherine McLeod) who absolutely hates surfers. She hates them because her husband decided to get on his surfboard and catch a wave down to Borneo. When you meet Mrs. Kalua, you’ll understand why.


Speaking of the luau, during the party Chase watches as Augie Poole (Barbara Eden) does hand to hand combat with one of the guys. She loses that match but then goads Chase into a match after he calls her a girl nut. Since Augie is a black belt she quickly pins Chase and demands that Chase say Uncle. Chase, being the stuffed shirt that he is, says nothing and shows us what a sore loser he is. Later, Augie tracks him down and apologizes for having the audacity to lick him in a fair fight. Well, this was the sixties and women hadn’t even burned their first bra yet so please make allowances. What we find out though is that Augie is an adventurous fun loving gal, and Chase is just an old stick in the mud wanting to do nothing but spoil her fun.



As for Jody, his gal is Brie Matthews (Shelley Fabares whose other career consisted of playing Mary Stone on the Donna Reed Show, Francine Webster on One Day at a Time, and Christine Armstong on Coach). They get hooked up when Jody volunteers to take her to Augie who is with Chase since Augie and Brie are best friends. Jody’s big hangup is phonies. He hates phonies and since Jody thinks everyone is a phony to some extent, I guess he hates everybody.

Later, Brie tries to convince Jody that he shouldn’t have dropped out of college and that he could have back and make it if he really really tries. It is then that Jody decides to go for the King of the Surf title which will get his name on a surfboard by Phil and some cash to go back to college with. To do so, he must be the last surfer surfing at Waimea and outlast the previous years winner, Eskimo (James Mitchum, one of the begotten sons of Robert) in the process. But before that can happen, Jody faces a couple of problems. He accidentally tries to take another surfer’s nose off with his surboard and that surfer is out for revenge. To add to his misery, poor old Jody suffers a wipe out, and instead of wanting to conquer the waves some thirty feet high, he becomes Mr. Scaredy Britches. And of course he still has to deal with his “Everybody’s a phony” psychosis.

And that pretty much sums it up. In the middle of all of this high concept drama we get a lot of surfing as the guys surf this beach and that beach while they wait for the waves at Waimea to come up. At one point you might get confused thinking they are at the same beach on the same day but they are not. I figured this out by listening more closely to the narrator, and by noticing that Brie and Augie’s bathing suits kept changing colors as they sat in the sand ogling their surfer guys whom they have fallen madly in love with in just the short span of 24 hours or less.

As for the surfing, we get the funny kind and the real kind. The funny kind is when they show the stars against what obivously is a blue screen rear projection. It is very poorly done, so poorly in fact that it will actually have you laughing a bit. (Again, some of this can be seen in the attached video clips).

As for real surfing, obviously it is done by stunt doubles but what makes these scenes a huge cut above what you generally see in these types of films is that there was a real effort made to show us some pretty good surfing. And, they even made sure each and every real life surfer was wearing the exact same bathing suits as the stars did. And just so they didn’t get messed up on which suit was worn by who and on what day, both stars and stunt doubles wear the same bathing suits throughout the film. Of course, it could be that since the only thing these guys do is surf, and that holding a job might be a strange concept for them, they could only afford the one suit.



But either way you go you will like the surfing scenes and if not you can admire the beefcake if you are a truly red blooded American gal (or any gal from anywhere), and if you are a guy you can stare at Barbara Eden’s navel that she was never allowed to expose during five seasons of I Dream of Jeannie. Anyway, in my opinion two piece flowered bathing suit trumps harem outfit any old day of the week. And there’s something about Shelley Fabares’s very very bleached blonde hair that always has me debating as to whether she should have gone with that color for the rest of her career or not. Who knows, if she had she could possibly have been the next Marilyn....nah, just kidding. But it will grab your attention.




And where else do you get authenticism such as a big fat guy named Phil chewing on a cigar while he waxes surfboards and gives out truly authentic surfing commentary and advise? Heck, this movie is worth tuning into just to see Surfboards by Phil in action.



I think the thing about Ride the Wild Surf is that when you put it up against crap like Bikini Beach, Muscle Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, or even How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, it comes off looking like a much better film than it probably is.

Although the various plots are a bit lame the actors involved manage to do a pretty good job working with very little. Many of these actors and actresses went on to further their career in some fashion or another. Fabian had some nice guest star roles in films like North to Alaska, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, The Longest Day and Five Weeks in a Balloon. I’ve already mentioned the television careers of Shelley Fabares and Barbara Eden. Even Tab Hunter has had some decent film roles over the years including a pretty good one in Damn Yankees.

If there is a weakest link in this ensemble it would have to be Susan Hart. She pretty much seems to sleepwalk through the movie with two expressions: glum and glummer. And we will not forgive we her taking up so much screen time doing that crappy dance at the luau. Now if she had done it on the beach in her bathing suit we might feel differently.




Now I know that despite what I say here, you’re not about to rush out and rent or buy this film. Still there are a lot of worse ways to go and you may want to slip it into your netflix queue out of curiosity as much as anything else. And it does give you a chance to see a lot of future TV stars, and film co-stars as they were beginning their careers. Then again, maybe the reason I like the film and watch it is because that I have this fantasy that in one of my viewings, Augie’s big rocket will somehow magically fly after all, and we’ll get to see it in all it’s glory instead of what really happens thanks to shmuck face Chase. And no, I’m not going to tell you.

So all in all, not a terrible way to go. You might even find youself humming along to the catchy end title theme song by Jan & Dean. Well, maybe not. But if I were to grade this film on Clyde’s sixties surfing movie curve, then I would have no choice but to give it my grade of C+. Until next time, Aloha.