Ski Party (1965)

Waste of time

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

TCM must have been feeling in a strange mood on January 14, 2014. Consecutively they played a string of bad as in really bad musical comedies from the 1960's. OK what was I doing watching this nonsense. Well I was working on an article and I prefer having some noise in the background and it might as well be a movie even if my attention to it is sporadic at best. Of the lot Ski Party had to be the worst of the lot. Take Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman disguising themselves as girls ala Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in Some Like it Hot but not to escape but instead just to get into the girls dorm. Of course there had to be some guy after one of them. Instead of Joe E. Brown we had some hunk making a fool of himself. But the real knee slapper came when James Brown and the Flames came out in bad, really bad ski sweaters and sang. Unfortunately for James Brown it was all so contrived it was more laughable then it was anything else. Anyway add in some absolutely atrocious special effects along with the bad lines and contrived idiotic situations and you have a - well one really bad movie. Albeit somewhat amusingly entertaining.

The "Beach Party" series taking one of its last gasps: Frankie Avalon and sniggering Dwayne Hickman hit the ski slopes and get stuck doing Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon routines from "Some Like It Hot", and the comparison isn't favorable. Avalon is actually game, but Hickman has no screen presence and the comic hijinks are mostly juvenile. The script isn't as clever as the ones for the "Beach" flicks, and everyone just seems piqued. Avalon's main squeeze is no longer Annette Funicello, who has an unbilled cameo as a college professor (her two brief scenes are beauties). James Brown and Lesley Gore are both terrific in musical support, Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig are pretty ski-bunnies, but this fractured gang is obviously a lackluster substitute. A.I.P. continued the following year not with "Cruise Party"--as advertised--but "Ghost In The Invisible Bikini". *1/2 from ****

Annette Funicello has a brief cameo as a professor, and Dwayne Hickman was added to the beach gang in a futile attempt to keep the series fresh. Really lame take off of "Some Like It Hot". Aron Kincaid plays his usual big-man-on-campus pretty blond boy routine. There are only two reasons to watch this movie. Leslie Gore singing on the bus on the way to the ski resort, and James Brown doing a split in the snow the end of "I Feel Good".

The cool kids head for the mountains and instead of Bikinis the girls have on sweaters. The fires are in a lodge fireplace instead of on the beach The guys try to impress the girls only this time they are rubbing wax underneath skis instead of on top of surf boards. The only worthwhile parts of this movie are the scenes with James Brown and Lesley Gore. Robert Q Lewis is comical for a while as a nervous wreck of a man but then it gets old. The folks who gave us such future winners with a skiing theme such as Hot Dog and Ski School must have taken their lead from this gem. The ski scenes from Dumb and Dumber were probably hatched from this as well.