I'm not sure to whom to credit this epiphany, but it initiated a flurry......no.....an avalanche......uh........a whole lot of ideas and insights. Wouldn't a ski gondola be the ideal place for two curious youngsters to experiment with oral sex? And I'll bet out-of-control skiers are always crashing through the walls of buildings. Why not have the overweight buffoon character crash through the walls of the women's bathhouse while the Swedish women's ski team is having a steam in the nude? And we'll never need an elaborate set-up for the line, "Let's get you out of those wet things." We could use it every time a female character comes in off the slopes! And think of how many different occasions there'll be to use "pole" as a double entendre! When the guy behind the counter at the equipment rental shop asks the sex-starved older woman whose businessman husband is too preoccupied with work to satisfy her carnal needs which size pole she prefers, it'll seem completely natural! The ideas just kept coming until in 1990 a film was made that so perfectly embodied the skiing-themed comedic sex romp aesthetic that it would ultimately bring about the death of the genre. That film was Ski School.
I was one of the few people who were fortunate enough to see Ski School during its brief theatrical run. It was a stroke of luck, really. On the night of the film's release, a friend of mine and I went to a local theater to see a movie. I'm not sure what we had planned to see, but when we arrived we noticed the poster for Ski School and bought tickets for that instead. We loved it so much that we went back a couple days later to see it again, but, alas, it was no longer showing. I can only assume that the manager of the theater was one of those people who cling to the old-fashioned notion that topless frolicking shouldn't take place outside of a beach environment.
In Ski School, John Roland (played by Tom Bresnahan) arrives at a mountain resort to participate in a skiing competition for the resort's eight ski school...groups. I'll admit that I don't fully understand why the ski school is divided into eight sections (multiple viewings are required to sort out the intricacies of this film's plot -- I've probably seen it twenty or thirty times, but I've still not yet put all the pieces together). I also don't really understand why John Roland just shows up for the competition when he's not even an instructor. Apparently, he pays money to enter the competition. Do the other ski instructors have to pay to participate? If so, what's the point? And why do the ski instructors never seem to actually give any ski lessons? They don't even seem to do all that much skiing.
Anyway, Johnny shows up, apparently thinking he's going to be skiing with Section One, the mountain's elite, but Johnny doesn't have all that much money, and he grew up skiing in Idaho or Montana or Kansas or someplace, so the people of Section One, who for some reason are in charge of section assignments and can therefore ruin a competing team's chances at any time by assigning them George Wendt or Dan Schneider, decide that he's just some rube and sign him up for Section Eight, Section One's main rival.
Section One is headed by Reid Janssens (played by Mark Thomas Miller, and you can tell this casting decision was pure genius because anyone who uses three names like that has to be a total asshole -- just kidding, Mark). Reid is considered by many to be the best skier on the mountain. He's rich, well-dressed, confident, and he takes himself and his sport very seriously. He's frequently accompanied by his teammate Derek (Spencer Rochfort), and he's hatched a plan with Anton Bryce (Mark Brandon), who I guess is the manager of the resort, to get Section Eight kicked off the mountain.
What has Section Eight done to raise the ire of Reid and Anton Bryce, you ask? Nothing! Other than binge drinking, indiscriminately copulating with any female who buys a lift ticket, vandalizing resort property, and occasionally crashing Reid's parties, the instructors of Section Eight have not done a single thing to deserve expulsion. Section Eight's only crime is trying to have a good time, and if there's one thing rich people hate, it's fun. We've encountered people like Reid and Anton a thousand times before......in movies. These monogamous, teetotaling control freaks can't be content to just sit on their own miserable asses and let the rest of the world go about its fun-having business. They complain and whine and bitch until everyone else is as sullen and uptight as they are. Every time a head breaks through the plaster of one of their walls and vomits on the floor, these guys go apeshit. They certainly can't take a joke. If you fill their ski boots with urine, they can't just laugh and go wash their feet like a normal person; they have to make a fuss. And God forbid a used condom you aimed at the trash can misses and splatters across the entertainment center. These stiffs won't be satisfied until everyone else is a robot too.
Dave Marshak (the great Dean Cameron, whom you may recall from Things Are Looking Up and Facing It: My Friend's an Alcoholic) is Section Eight's leader. He's apparently been a ski instructor at the resort for a while and is a "folk hero" to a lot of the locals. Marshak has witnessed the resort's decline over the years, and though he's generally a fairly happy-go-lucky type of guy, he'll occasionally become morose when he thinks about some of the changes that have taken place. One thing that really bothers Dave is the half-naked women he sees walking around the dorms. He yearns for the good old days when the women used to walk around completely naked. Like some of the newer members of the Section Eight group, the film's audience hasn't seen the resort in its heyday, but the observant viewer will catch fleeting glimpses of the nostalgia and sense of loss that Marshak tries so hard to conceal beneath his insouciant veneer and will be left with little doubt that the resort must have been something really special at one time.
Fitz Fitzgerald (played by Stuart Fratkin, who was cast as Stiles in Teen Wolf Too when its producers decided that Jerry Levine, who had played Stiles in the first Teen Wolf movie, simply wasn't obnoxious enough) is Marshak's closest pal and another ski school veteran. Fitzgerald is always up for a good time, but he's a bit of a romantic and you can picture him in an exclusive relationship, so long as the exclusivity is of the emotional, rather than sexual, variety. But fortunately we don't actually witness any of that kind of depressing nonsense from Fitzgerald in this movie.
Ed (played by Patrick Labyorteaux, who worked with Dean Cameron and Mark Harmon in Prince of Bel Air...........oh yeah, and in Summer School as well) is another veteran Section Eighter. He's an out-and-out chick magnet, and he gets laid so much that even Marshak wants to put a stop to it. Dave uses a rather sophisticated form of suggestion therapy (he talks to him while he's asleep) to trick Ed's subconscious into not wanting sex. Ed spends the next few days trying to repel the advances of various attractive women. He's confused by his sudden lack of interest in the opposite sex, and Dave and Fitz eventually find the whole thing so pathetic that they decide to reverse the spell. Once they do so, all becomes right with the world. When I saw this movie in the theater, I heard the other four people in the audience exhale loudly when Ed's libido was restored. The tension in the air had been so thick that one could barely see the screen (if Ava Fabian's breasts had been a couple cup sizes smaller, I wouldn't have been able to make them out), and we'd all been holding our breath.
Paulette (the wonderful Charlie Spradling, who has apparently retired from acting and gone on to better things -- I think I read somewhere that she's a professional stripper now, but I'm not sure how reliable my source was -- whatever the case, she's sorely missed) is Reid's girlfriend and the object of Fitz's undying lust. As I said, Fitz is a romantic sort, and he seizes every available opportunity to charm Paulette into falling in love, or, at least, into bed, with him. When Paulette runs into trouble while trying to bench press a couple of ten-pound dumbbells, Fitz rushes to her aid.....by feigning an inability to lift the weights and face-planting himself directly between her breasts. Later, he takes chivalry to a whole new level when he "accidentally" spills wine on Paulette's dress and then sneaks up to her room to watch her change. In a final effort to win her over, Fitz spies on her as she relaxes in a hot tub. Thinking she's alone, Paulette removes her top and settles back to enjoy the feel of the frigid winter air on her ample bosoms, and as she does so she notices Fitz watching her. Does she scream and attempt to cover herself? No. Does she call Fitz Fitzgerald a creep and tell him to get fucked? Nope. Does she grin broadly and make every effort to improve Fitz's view? Why, yes. You see, Paulette may come from Section One parentage, she may wear Section One clothing, and she may have attended a Section One girls' private school (probably with Phoebe Cates and Betsy Russell), but she's a Section Eighter at heart. Paulette recognizes that as a woman, her job isn't to stand next to some jackass with a two-hundred-dollar haircut and make him look good, but to serve as an object of lust for a bunch of chronically inebriated and soon to be unemployed miscreants. Charlie Spradling was so on her game in this film that she executed her role to near perfection without even exposing her breasts (well, to the audience, anyway -- she did expose them to Fitz Fitzgerald).
Lori (Darlene Vogel) is John Roland's love interest. She's friendly, pleasant to look at, and not without a sense of humor. When Dave and friends develop a plan to ruin a party being thrown by Reid Janssens, she's happy to help out. The fellas from Section Eight place video cameras in strategic locations throughout the building and set up tech whiz Ed Young in the control room. Lori then approaches Derek, Reid's right-hand man, and asks if he'd like to have sex with her. Derek expresses interest (that is, he nearly ejaculates in his pants right on the spot), and Lori instructs him to meet her in a particular room at a specified time. She tells him that she's shy and that any attempts to talk to her will turn her off; he's to simply undress and climb into bed. She then finds another of Reid's Section One minions and makes a similar offer. Minion #2 is to enter the room, undress, put a pillow over his head (because she's shy and doesn't want to be seen), and wait for her to arrive. Both of these offers would have sounded somewhat suspicious to the guys from Section Eight (a babe like this who's too shy to undress in front of someone else, and who insists on going to a whole other room to get it on when there's a bar not three meters away that would be a perfectly serviceable surface once Reid Janssens's drink was moved aside -- it just wouldn't add up), but the instructors of Section One are unaccustomed to being propositioned and everything Lori has said sounds entirely reasonable to them. As instructed, Minion #2 rushes up to the designated room, strips down to his boxers, covers his face with a pillow, and waits. Derek arrives soon after, sees a vaguely human shape beneath the blankets and an arm that he fails to recognize as being distinctly masculine waving him over, strips to his boxers, jumps into bed, and.... Back at the party, the time has come for Reid to exhibit a little video presentation he's put together to showcase his skiing skills and achievements and to promote the mountain. Ed in the control room presses play and a wall of video monitors lights up. Reid appears on the screens and the audience oohs and ahhs... well, no, they mostly roll their eyes. Suddenly, Minion #2 appears on the monitors. What the heck? He's saying he wants to have sex with someone, but who? Oh, shit! It's Derek! Derek replies that he can't wait for it to happen. Wait a second. Are the instructors from Section One.......gay? The video cuts to Derek crawling into bed and lifting a pillow from the face of its occupant. It's Minion #2! They really are gay! Wait, no, they're screaming into each other's face. This must be some kind of set-up, but, damn, was it funny. Thanks, Lori. You're a sport.
Finally, there's Victoria (Ava Fabian). This exotic-looking new arrival to the mountain has everybody wondering. It's John Roland who finally solves the mystery. After wresting the who-can-score-with-the-most-females-who-have-speaking-parts-in-the-movie title from Fitz Fitzgerald (Ed, of course, holds the females-without-speaking-parts title) by bedding first Lori and then the mystery woman, Roland bursts into Section Eight headquarters and supplies the verdict. I don't want to give anything away, so I'm not going to say whether that verdict was "real" or "fake." Oh, everybody was also wondering who this newcomer was and why she was there. This isn't revealed until the end of the movie, but it turns out she had purchased the mountain. Anyway, John Roland's fling with Victoria gets him in trouble with Lori, but after Lori accidentally walks in on Ed having sex with Jerry Falwell's mother in an outhouse, she tells herself not to be a prude and decides to give Johnny a second chance (this scene was deleted, but some of the film's more perspicacious viewers should be able to piece together what happened from the context).
I've kind of left out the main plot of the movie so far. As you'll recall, Reid and Anton Bryce had been scheming to get Section Eight kicked off the mountain (if they weren't so boring, they would've come up with something more inventive, like arranging for Section Eight to be devoured by yetis). After a series of "transgressions" (this is a word used by uptight assholes like Reid Janssens and Anton Bryce to describe anything one does with a smile on his or her face), Section Eight finally does get banned from the mountain. Dave Marshak isn't having it, though. He devises a plan to get Section Eight reinstated by having a bunch of people interrupt the ski school competition with balloons, beer, and general fanfare. The competition's spectators are so inspired by this that they begin chanting "Let them ski! Let them ski!" Bryce reluctantly relents and the Section Eighters are allowed to rejoin the competition.
Prior to this, it had appeared that Section Eight wasn't really even paying all that much attention to the competition, and when they did ski they spent the majority of the time falling on their asses or sliding face-first down the mountain. You'd think experienced skiers would be able to avoid looking like such complete assholes, but I suppose they did have a lot of alcohol in their systems. Anyway, they'd spent most of the competition in last place, but getting expelled gave them a new sense of purpose. Now that they were back in the competition, they vowed to win the whole thing and shove the trophy right up Reid Janssens's ass.
Did they stop drinking beer by the gallon so they'd be sober enough to ski in a straight line and not see a pair of slalom poles as a half dozen? Not necessary. Did they implement a training and conditioning regimen and work to get themselves into the best shape of their lives? Fuck, no. Did they concoct a plan to cheat their way into first place by performing a series of actions that could cause serious injury or death to their opponents? Absolutely. They employed a variety of tactics, the most ingenious of which was the one without which no skiing-themed comedic sex romp would be complete: the distract-the-skier-by-having-a-group-of-attractive-females-open-their-ski-parkas-to-reveal-their-breasts-causing-the-skier-to-lose-control-and-ski-into-an-obstacle-or-off-a-cliff-and-into-a-pool-of-sewage trick. It's absolutely brilliant.
At the end of the day, Sections One and Eight were tied for first place. The only way to settle it was with an all-or-nothing ski-off between Reid Janssens and John Roland. You can see where this is heading. Roland might've learned to ski in Kansas or Alabama or someplace, but it turns out he has some skills. You recall that scene in Better Off Dead when Monique (Diane Franklin) teaches Lane Meyer (John Cusack) to master the K-12 by skiing beneath her spread legs in a completely non-sexual way? Well, John Roland taught her that trick. (It's lucky for us all that she was taught by Johnny and not Dave Marshak. Marshak would have insisted that she perform this maneuver naked and instructed her to grab his pole for balance as she went through, and then Savage Steve Holland would've had to replace Monique with a character who hadn't been taught to ski the Section Eight way.)
Anyway, back to the race. Johnny wins. Reid Janssens loses and takes out his frustrations on Derek. The guys from Section Eight and all the various chicks they've banged commence celebrating, and if you look carefully you can see Dave Marshak and Fitz Fitzgerald yanking down Reid's ski bib and readying the trophy for insertion in the background. The party continues into the night, and it's revealed that Victoria has purchased the mountain, which I already told you. Sorry to have spoiled the ending, but that's not all. It turns out that despite being rich, Victoria is a party animal. We already realized this, having seen her breasts, but it was news to some of the people at the resort. Happy endings were enjoyed by all. Reid and Derek made up. Dave Marshak found fully naked women walking through his dorm room later that very night. Fitz Fitzgerald tricked Paulette into giving Ed a handjob, and Johnny Roland and Lori lived happily ever after.
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