Ski Film

A Report From Attending Possibly the Worst Ski Movie Ever Made

By Allen Best, 3-02-11

The movie was advertised as dreadful, probably the worst skiing movie ever made. And after a viewing on Saturday evening at the Denver’s Film Society, that seems a fair description of the star-starved “Snowbeast.” While some reviewers have tried to find redeeming value, this reviewer could only find solace in seeing Crested Butte, where the movie was filmed.

A made-for-television horror film, apparently modeled on “Jaws,” it was first broadcast in 1977. The plot featured a certain Rill Lodge and Ski Resort, where a 50th Annual Winter Carnival was under way, as well as a thin love triangle, an aging Olympic skier coping with his post-skiing mission in life and then… missing skiers.

The culprit, as you might have guessed, was a big-footed-type character who can occasionally be heard roaring in the woods adjacent to ski slopes that, on the busiest weekend of the year, mysteriously were always empty.

The script was written by Joseph Stefano, whose credentials otherwise included the 1960 thriller “Psycho,” and directed by Herb Wallenstein, whose other TV work included “Star Trek” and “The Brady Bunch.”

The film seemed to be intended for parody. After all, the county sheriff, named Paraday, did have one of the movie’s great lines. He asks the resort operator’s grandson to identify a victim. “Maybe I’ll recognize her when I see her face,” says the lodge operator. Says the sheriff: “She doesn’t have one.”

So, why would anybody pay good money ($12) to see a dreadful movie? The notice in Denver’s Westword billed it as an “abomination that is a classic in no sense of that word,” and invited patrons to put on their most dreadful one-piece ski suits in a chance to win a weekend of lodging and skiing at Crested Butte. The shows were sold out.

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