Fabio Tackles an Urban Legend

This weekend, according to a report in the News Eagle, 51-year-old former romance novel cover boy and margarine icon Fabio will travel from Beverly Hills to the tiny Pennsylvania Poconos borough of Hawley to complete the first leg of what he hopes is a modest movie career reboot. In exchange for his August 1st-3rd cameo role work in The Fallen Ones, a gory $200,000 horror thriller inspired by a North Carolina small town urban legend, Fabio has contracted with director Shawn Cain for lead roles in two other movies.

In the first decade of this new millennium, Fabio's big screen career has been nothing like his more prominent TV profile with the likes of Conan O'Brien. A cameo in the 2009 Weird Al Yankovic comedy Al's Brain in 3-D is pretty much it.

The Fallen Ones was written and is being produced by Hawley resident Keith Stoddard. Among the locations being used for the three-week shoot scheduled to wrap August 7th is a Code Red Video and Entertainment store co-owned by Stoddard, on Route 6 between Lake Wallenpaupack and Decker Pond.


Hoping to prove he is still Fabio-lous
(Image courtesy FabioIFC.com)

The title The Fallen Ones seems - to quote Shawshank Warden Norton's least favorite word - unnecessarily obtuse; a marquee that could hew more closely to something like "Watch Fabio in The North Carolina Massacre" would likely draw in far more lovers of butter-soaked popcorn. Fabio's co-stars include Lee Perkins, Chuck Williams and a number of professional wrestlers.

No matter what happens with Fabio's planned movie comeback, you can bet the resort hamlet of Hawley will soon be a-Twitter with sightings of the fun-loving, self-deprecating Milan native. But a word of warning to Mr. Lanzoni: you should go out of your way to make sure any new big screen endeavors are decent or, at least, appropriately wink-wink. Otherwise, more than one wise-cracking movie critic is bound to chime in with the punchline, 'I can't believe it's not better.'