Released: 1960

Dir.: Roger Corman

When you suffer from depression, you endure bouts, sometimes severe, of not really caring much about anything. Life has no purpose, you keep telling yourself you don’t matter, nobody seems to care about you, your world has become breath-takingly small, you feel you have nothing important to contribute, over-whelming hopelessness, and you can’t make decisions, even what movie to watch. Something as trivial as finding a movie to watch is what your life has been reduced to and has become the most crucial decision of your life. If that sounds like I’m making light of mental health and depression, well, I deal with depression every single day, lately it’s been bad, and perhaps being glib or sarcastic is a coping mechanism.

With that, I found myself searching through Tubi. Anyone familiar with Tubi knows there is myriads of content, ranging from genuine classics to the absolute worst of straight to streaming productions and everything else in-between. For that, I am filled with gratitude. I literally could not make up my mind what to watch. Then I hit upon Ski Troop Attack, starring Michael Forest, directed by Roger Corman. It wasn’t one of Corman’s usual no budget sci-fi or monster epics, this was a no budget wartime adventure picture. Something clicked, and it wasn’t just the start watching button. I needed to watch this.

Now let’s go back in time, it’s December 1944. Lt. Factor (Michael Forest) is leading a reconnaissance ski patrol, behind enemy lines, reporting German movements, specifically of Hitler’s Elite Stock Footage Division in the Hurtgen Forest. Fighting is fierce, but Lt. Factor and his men repel some guys dressed as members of Germany’s Alpine Corp.

Immediately Factor is butting heads with Sgt. Potter (Frank Wolff), a veteran to Factor’s fresh out of officers’ candidate school lieutenant, who just wants to fight and kill Germans. While Factor’s mission is to gather information and pass it along to the allies. Engaging the enemy will just make their job more difficult. Cliches are settled for the time being.

Soon the Patrol comes across more stock footage of German tanks and report it to headquarters only to discover that the U.S. Army is under fierce attack. Although it’s never made clear whether HQ is being attacked by stock footage as well, what is certain, the Battle of the Bulge has begun. Factor and his men are on their own. Despite Potter’s objections, Factor rightly chooses to carry on with their mission. It seems Factor is more interested in providing vital information that will save lives rather than Potter just wanting to kill anything that moves.

Our heroes encounter a German patrol, and they kill everything that moves. Factor loses one of his men, supplies are running low, and decides they need to find some food. Opting out of eating the dead guy, they ski back three miles to a cabin they saw, that supposedly has chickens.

At the cabin they find the chickens, and the lovely Fraulein (Sheila Carol) who lives there. Unfortunately, the young lady, whose husband was sentenced to the Russian Front, is a fully indoctrinated Nazi. She attempts to kill Factor and his men, first by poisoning their coffee, then trying to shoot them. She fails miserably and succumbs to a rapid onset of lead poisoning.

Stuffed with chicken, Factor and his men celebrate Christmas in a cave. Meanwhile, a German patrol discovers the dead woman in the cabin and the missing chickens. They setout after the Americans, by following a trail in the snow of empty liquor bottles and chicken bones.

Now totally cut off from HQ, Factor decides to change the objective of their mission, and blow up a vital railway bridge. He and his four men, sorry three men, one just got killed, are going to blow the bridge and fend off the Alpine Corp, who are now closing in.

They slap together some explosives captured from a German mortar position and set about rigging the bridge. Two sacrificed men later, Factor succeeds in blowing up a bridge in a different movie, and a chase ensues.

More guys are killed, leaving Potter and Factor as the only survivors. Potter has had his fill of killing and he and Factor ski off into the sunset. The end.

That is Ski Troop Attack in a nutshell.

As I was watching, I realized there actually were some good ideas, as far as the mission behind enemy lines genre of movies go. I found myself thinking, how could this be made better, beyond its clearly miniscule budget, cliched characters and situations, lack of character development, etc.?

First of all, it should be noted that this has to be the first Battle of the Bulge movie filmed that actually has real snow. 1949’s Battleground, though an excellent film, was largely filmed on a sound stage. 1965’s Battle of the Bulge, had virtually no snow at all, its climactic tank battle being fought on a very un-Ardennes Forest arid plain. Ski Troop Attack is literally up to its keyster in real snow, one of the film’s few assets. It was definitely made under harsh conditions.

I liked the ideas of the patrol deciding to engage in sabotage, while at the same time being pursued by the Alpine Corp. This seems the perfect setting for a cat and mouse scenario between the two patrols. Unfortunately, the audience is introduced to the pursuing patrol long before our heroes are. Factor and his men being aware of the enemy patrol and trying to stay ahead of them would certainly add tension as well as a sense of impending doom that the final film sorely lacks.

The film never has a sense of place. We never know where the opposing patrols are in relation to one another, even when they are shooting at each other. Judging by how often they each miss they could be miles apart for all we know. Perhaps a clever use of POV might remedy this.

I didn’t think too much about the characters, they are your typical collection of war movie stereotypes, I was more focused on the filming and storytelling. Having said that, the German patrol could have benefited by being a character all its own, much like the super posse from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an ominous presence that just won’t go away, that frighteningly continues to come closer and closer. The real difference is that there is a final showdown between the two forces.

These are the kinds of things I was thinking about while I was watching Ski Troop Attack, ways to make a bad movie good. I really don’t know if my ideas are really that good but getting back to my original point of being hopelessly depressed, Roger Corman’s little war epic got my creative mind working. A fun little exercise turned into something so much more. I never thought I’d write something about Ski Troop Attack, but here we are. Something clicked, and the thoughts and words started flowing.

I’m not saying Ski Troop Attack is going to snap everyone out of a bad bout of depression, it might just make the happiest person depressed, so beware. However, unwittingly, and unexpectedly I found myself, in my mind, turning something pretty bad into something better and enjoying the process. It was fun.

Ski Troop Attack can be found on Tubi or the YouTube, and wherever fine cosmetics are sold.