To begin with, I understand that I am not sitting down to watch great cinema, such as 'Citizen Kane'. On the other hand, I am quite struck by the silliness of all of the beach movies, and you can throw this into the mix, along with all of those incredibly inane Elvis movies.On the plus side, you have the hopelessly cute Deborah Walley, the very hot Yvonne 'Batgirl' Craig. Also an asset is seeing Lesley Gore and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Although, I must confess, it's a bit unsettling having James Brown break into your ski home around all of those nice white boys and girls. At least the crackers seem to enjoy James' soul music.On the negative side, we are treated to Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman in drag. And, like most teenage comedies of its time, it's not funny.I suppose if you were raised in sunny California, this might elicit some 'memories'. But all of these teenage romps, along with just about any Elvis movie you can name, has no basis in reality for most people.Even the Beatles went Hollywood, with the preposterous 'Help!' 'Help!' of course features a wonderful Lennon-McCartney movie score, but the preposterous plot is as silly as Elvis playing a race car driver. It doesn't 'help' that the Fab Four's first film proved that you could make a quality, amusing film about pop music stars without insulting the viewers' intelligence.The only true joy to be derived from most of the teenage movies of this period are the musical acts that are featured in so many of them. It would have been nice to have cut Ms. Walley's and Mr. Avalon's music segues and include more James Brown and Lesley Gore.I like a lot of bad movies. Some of them are really enjoyable. 'Ski Party' is not.

A friend of mine came over last night and we were both feeling kind of run down after the holidays, so we wanted something "light". He brought three "Frankie and Annette" films over (this, plus MUSCLE BEACH PARTY and BIKINI BEACH) and I figured they had to be fun, and with some cute chicks and all.... but oh, brother! Since it's winter we decided to watch this first, even though it comes later in this series, and Annette Funicello isn't in it except for a really quick cameo where she plays a teacher at the beginning. The thing plays like another version of SOME LIKE IT HOT, with Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman as two buddies who go on a skiing trip and wind up dressing in drag while they try to make time with Yvonne Craig and Deborah Walley. Hell, they even mention SOME LIKE IT HOT in the movie! This film doesn't have much to recommend in it, and I figured going in that it had to be the least of the three movies we'd watch... but who knew it would turn out to be the "best"? At least this film had a story, even if it's clichéd. My favorite moment involved Lesley Gore popping up on the bus trip to sing her big hit "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows", and then later on getting to enjoy James Brown belt out "I Got You (I Feel Good)". These two musical performances were the shining light. ** out of ****

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.

Even by the usual leave-your-brain-at-the-door-and-have-a-good-time standards of the beach party movies, this movie REEKS!The actors all deserve purple hearts of valor for even leaving this one on their resumes! Watch the film only to catch rare film appearances by James Brown and Lesley Gore.