Ski Lift to Death

Quaint small-scale entry in the 70s cycle of disaster films, such as EARTHQUAKE, AIRPORT, and THE TOWERING INFERNO. A ski ballet champion, Deborah Raffin, gets trapped on an unstable ski gondola along with fellow skiers Don Johnson, a freestyle ski jumping champion, and his cute girlfriend Lisa Reeves (who I'm on a quest to watch all 9 of her IMDB credits). There's some interesting logistics of how they bring everyone to safety, but the dumb subplot as to why the gondola failed is pretty stupid. Not a lot to recommend here outside of an early performance by Johnson, or if you're fascinated by the short-lived career of Lisa Reeves, as I am, and that was the only reason I watched this TV movie. Howard Duff and Clu Galager also appear in the film.

AI CAPSULE REVIEW: A minor and mostly forgettable entry in the 1970s disaster film trend, Ski Lift to Death offers little beyond early Don Johnson charm and ski ballet kitsch. Worth a look only for die-hard fans of obscure TV movies or Lisa Reeves completists.

This one's a stinker. And trust me, I love stinky movies. The junkier the better, usually, but this film holds the distinction in my opinion as super DUPER atrocious. Almost as bad as A Vacation In Hell, but not quite. There's a shred of something interesting here, but for all the wrong reasons, of course. It has well known TV performers of the day. This is good only if you enjoy shows like The Love Boat, the charms of which, I can certainly appreciate. The action takes place at Banff, but they call the town Silver City. Deborah Raffin plays the lead character modeled after Suzy Chaffee. A fictional freestyle skier, she's come to this fictional town for a fictional competition. Howard Duff and Don Johnson and Clu Gulager are in it. She is romanced by a handsome male colleague skiier, with a few quick and creepy facial mastication-style makeout scenes.

There's some fun footage of people flipping moguls and doing high jumps at the snow skiing competition, featuring the real Suzy Chaffee acting as Deborah Raffin's body double in a beautiful and well executed ski routine--just one of several unrelated yet formulaic plot machinations.

A gunman is hired to kill Howard Duff's character. There's tons of male chauvinism. There's a ski lodge T-shirt/boobie contest with extensive footage of women gyrating and men going hubba hubba. Tacky behavior like you'd see at a strip club. Veronica Hamel's character is shown sleeping with a married man, "who was only lying." Once the disaster finally happened in the last hour, there was really no point for the movie to continue, but it did. And that's when I realized it was gratuitous and manipulative from start to finish. And I'm not saying that like it is a bad thing, but ooh, this movie is a stinker! The other, very telling factor here is this DVD came from Netflix, yet it is a copy of something taped on a vcr from a TV broadcast. The quality is very poor and it is glaring. The opening credits are missing and there are very obvious artifacts like vcr stripes and color bars and jumps and volume issues. Was this the only surviving master copy, perhaps something Suzy Chafee may have taped on her own vcr?

***SPOILERS*** Fantastic ski acrobatics, done by stunt men not the stars in the film, makes the movie more then worth watching with it's story in deep freeze as far as logic and believably is concerned. There's Mafia front and businessman Ben Forbes, Howard Duff, who's to spill his guts out before a Federal Grand Jury about his and his son John, Graham McPherson, mob connections. This has the mob send hit-man Clevenger, played by former Canadian skiing champion Pieere Jalbert, to knock him & Jr off before they can open their mouths before the grand jury. We also have skiing womens champ Lee Larson, Debroah Ruffin, roughing it up with her boyfriend also ski champ, in the mens division, Dick Elson, Charles Frank, who's in competition with her agent Marve Gilman, Clu Gulager, that my lead to fireworks on the cold and snowy ski slopes of Silver City.

We also have hot shot skier Mike Sloan, Don "Don-Jon" Johnson, who ends up being the hero of the movie by saving himself and a number of people on a damaged and hanging on a cable ski-lift ending up breaking his shoulder and preventing him from the ski competition that he's surly to win. The best is saved for last with Clevenger kidnapping the wounded, he was also injured in the ski-lift accident, Ben Forbes who was set up by his confused and guilt ridden girlfriend, even though she didn't know it, Vicki Gordon, Gail Strictland . After murdering Forbes Clevenger planned to hide his body in the snow that will be frozen stiff until the spring thaw sets in.

It was Dick who saved the day and Forbes' life with his amazing skiing abilities that just about blew everyone watching the movie away. Even though it wasn't him or the actor who played him Charles Frank doing the skiing. There's also former "Ironside" regular Don Galloway playing a judge, Ron Corley, at the ski competition as well as cute and sexy Lisa Reeves as bar girl Wendy. It's Wendy who does a hot & sexy T-shirt dance that raises the temperature in the snow covered town well above freezing!

The story is very basic, OK ! But there are plenty of beautiful young actresses who are worth seeing !!! This is what made me watch the film till its end ! Their beauty is comparable to the ones of series of the same time (as "Love boat" and "Duke of Hazzard", etc.). For your eyes only !