Whether we’re an expert, novice, or après skier, we all have our favourite ski movie. It’s the one you watch every winter. I’m not talking about serious films like Downhill Racer. Warren Miller and Red Bull films are also excluded. I am talking about guilty pleasure movies like James Bond.

George Lazenby played 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A ski chase has Lazenby and Diana Rigg stay one schuss ahead of SPECTRE agents. Bond and the Countess famously ski across chalet roofs and jump over a giant snowblower. The Spy Who Loves Me has the iconic ski escape where 007 skis off a cliff to evade Soviet agents.

Bond skis the trees in For Your Eyes Only. To get away from a biathlete sniper, he skis down a bobsled run and manages an Olympic-size ski jump. In A View to a Kill, you see Roger Moore’s snowplowing skill before his double takes over. In the chase scene, Bond loses his skis and is forced to use the front ski from a snowmobile as a snowboard.

A forgotten classic is Ski Party in 1965 when Frankie Avalon left the beach for the slopes. There’s a yodeling polar bear and a ski jump competition over a girl. The films Ski Patrol and Ski School both came out in 1990. In Ski Patrol, nasty ski school instructors ally with an evil land developer to sabotage the ski patrol and win control of the resort. Hot Dog…The Movie and Out Cold are similar in tone and content.

Better Off Dead, Dumb and Dumber, and Hot Tub Time Machine are super dumb and super fun. John Cusack in Better Off Dead delivers amazing ski scenes. It’s wild to see rear-entry boots, headbands, one-piece ski outfits, and giant Oakley sunglasses.

A Quebec movie from 1971 caused the Catholic church to file obscenity complaints and had municipal police seizing it from theatres. Après-ski had a very suggestive poster, with nudity. The plot is described as, “Three ski instructors spend more time in bed than on the slopes.” The English version of the poster stated, “At last in English. Meet the snow bunnies from Quebec!”

My après-ski movie is The Pink Panther from 1963. The film delivers musical numbers and slap-stick humour. Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, David Niven, and Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre – who went by the stage name Capucine – are great. It is set in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in Italy’s Southern Dolomite Alps.

Yves Saint Laurent created elegant V-neck sweaters, Tyrolean fur-trimmed coats, and luxurious gowns for the movie. A song and dance sequence starring singer Fran Jeffries is worth watching twice. The audience is impeccably dressed in preppy colors and casual high fashion offering a lesson in après-ski attire. So… light a fire, heat up hot chocolate, and press Play.

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