WINTER A-GO-GO

 

Winter A-Go-Go has a plot.....it just doesn't have much of one. James Stacy inherits a ski lodge and for some reason he's able to attract a very lovely bunch of ladies to accompany him to the lodge and work for free. Of course, there has to be a bad guy and this time it's a mortgage broker who wants the lodge for himself, so he sends a couple of goons to try to wreck Stacy's success. In between the scant plot is a lot of skiing, riding on ski lifts, dancing, lame comedy and, of course, some musical acts.

Winter A-Go-Go has a very weak stable of music stars: The Nooney Rickett Four, an obscure Southern California band, serve as the house band and perform "Ski City" and "Do The Ski (With Me)". On the second song they are accompanied by Joni Lyman (another minor singing personality). Ms. Lyman also has a solo song "King of The Mountain". None of these tunes are anything you would ever want to hear more than once. I had hope that The Reflections ("Just Like Romeo and Juliet"), in their only big screen performance, would be the stand-out musical group of the film, but the best thing I can say about their tune "I'm Sweet On You" is, I was glad when it was over. The best tune in the movie is "Hip Square Dance" sung by James Stacy. It was written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who also wrote the aforementioned song "Do The Ski (With Me)"

Winter A-Go-Go isn't a terrible movie, it's just not very good. It's certainly nowhere near as bad as How To Stuff A Wild Bikini. I think the main problem the film had was it was so disjointed. Sometimes it seemed it wanted to feature skiing, sometimes it seemed it wanted to to feature budding romance between the teens (well between the 30ish), and sometimes it seemed it wanted to be a broad comedy. While none of these elements would be out of place in a beach party type movie, the director, Richard Benedict, just couldn't get them to jell into one cohesive unit. A final note: the mores about drinking (the ski lodge serves only Coke) and sex (one kiss in the film leads immediately to a wedding) in the movie seem awfully quaint today; even I don't remember things being that sweet and innocent back in 1965, but then again, my memory isn't all that it used to be.