Ski Troop Attack

This is a very average war film. We follow a small group of soldiers on skis.

For low budget, this works very well. Of course, what Corman and others call low budget is still much more than most of us will ever get our hands on.

We get the story of 5 men, but it soon becomes 4, so 4 characters are followed through. They stray just slightly off the common stereotypes, but not much. We have the leader and second in command at some odds, with a split between the other two men aligning with the two leaders.

We get the excitement of the film feud with the two other men as well, much as minor characters cajole each other in films like "Escape From Fort Bravo" and "Warpath". This one has the Norhterner-Southerner reference, and we feel either both will perish, or both will survive.

The uniforms and vehicles are different, and the scenery makes this unique in war films. Not a great film by any stretch, but not close to the worst.

Roger Corman has a track record that no other filmmaker can match. While he's produced and directed well over 500 films, mostly VERY cheap ones, only one of his movies ever lost money*...so he is an expert at economical filmmaking as well judging the taste of the viewing public.

This is a WWII action picture filmed, of all places, around Deadwood, South Dakota in the Black Hills. It looks good in the movie but is an odd choice that's awfully far from Hollywood. Corman chose this place because he was offered financial incentives by the local government to film there. It stars Michael Forest, a guy who is still making pictures into his 90s, as he recently appeared in a Star Trek fan fiction film that is surprisingly watchable ("Pilgrim of Eternity") as well as a film released in 2020...though I have to admit that "Unbelievable" is total garbage and Forest must have needed the money!

As for the film, it's just okay...at best. While Forest is pretty good, the rest of the cast is pretty forgettable and the story never is all that interesting. I see it as a time-passer or film Corman-lovers should see...all others...you could do better.

*Amazingly, the only film Corman made that lost money was "The Intruder"....one of his BEST films. I strongly recommend you see it!

Another moment when the low rating for a film at IMDb doesn't make sense.

A tight, taut, tough-minded little war movie, this is Corman on a low budget at his absolute best. Most of Cormans problems in his early years derived from a lack of knowing where to cut scenes and move on, and a fatal dependence on the performances of inadequate actors. The editing here is very crisp - even the use of documentary footage is handled well, although its grain admittedly never meshes with that of the film as a whole. And while the acting remains unexceptional, it never becomes excessive in an amateurish way, and it fits with the overall gritty realism of the picture.

Corman benefits here from a surprisingly strong story and script that leaves its thematic issues open to interpretation. The issues receive temporary resolution by the end the hard way - through combat, as is most often the case in a war.

I'm not saying this is a forgotten masterpiece, but it is certainly worth a view, and at 63 minutes hardly threatens to tax one's patience.

In a snowy German forest, stranded GI's observe stock WWII footage and evade the enemy. Aside from some testy exchanges with a frosty fraulein, the stick-figure characters bark war-comic banalities (though the script's feverish dialogue and structure might have made a swell comic!). The troop's captain is constantly baited by his smug, war-happy sargeant. One assumes a showdown will ensue, but the budget must not have allowed for even modestly choreographed fistcuffs. The equally anticlimactic finale has the soldiers destroying a bridge that's "an impossible target from the air." (??!) Bereft of stuntwork or even a passable master shot, the lucky viewer is left with a jumble of grimacing-face close-ups and mismatched model train footage that even Al Adamson would disown. Roger Corman always blames this dog's shortcomings on production snafus...yet a rookie director employed most of the same cast,crew, and locations for BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (shot back-to-back with SKI TROOP), and that schlocker turned out OK. Corman's apparent strategy was to grab as much footage in as little time possible and hope to cobble together something watchable in post. As a result, many scenes look interchangeable, and there's little dramatic flow. You can make a good cheap war flick with a tiny cast (BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND, '60) and scant action (UNDER FIRE, '57), but this sucker should be avoided like a cloud of mustard gas.

The heroes in this low budget WWII feature are normally a reconnaissance unit, but eventually decide that they can do a lot of good by destroying a bridge vital to the Nazis. The story deals with the camaraderie between the guys, as well as the tensions between them: the lieutenant in charge (Michael Forest) often butts heads with his problematic sergeant (Frank Wolff).

Always looking to save money whenever he could, producer / director Roger Corman filmed this one in South Dakota after the production of "Beast from Haunted Cave" finished shooting. He utilized much of the same cast & crew that worked on "Beast", including stars Forest and Wolff. While the story is not a bad one, per se (the script is by Corman collaborator of the period Charles B. Griffith, and you could usually expect some good dialogue from him), it's largely an unremarkable one. It's not lacking in atmosphere, fortunately, and the action scenes are decent. Despite the efforts of a capable cast (also including Sheila Noonan, Richard Sinatra, and Wally Campo from "Beast"), the scenery is the real star of this thing. You do get a true sense of people working against not just human opponents, but the elements, as well.

All in all, "Ski Troop Attack" is passably entertaining, but not as memorable as other Corman / Film Group pictures around this time.

Corman himself appears on screen, uncredited and dubbed, as the leader of the bad guys.

Six out of 10.