Cinema: Uphill Racer

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SNOW JOB

Directed by GEORGE ENGLUND

Screenplay by KEN KOLBY and

JEFFREY BLOOM

Not since Sonja Henie first skid ded across the Hollywood ice has there been such a movie debut. Skier and Promoter Jean-Claude Killy is now an aspiring actor. Looking like a cross between Dick Cavett and Peter Fonda, he bounds down the slopes with agility. But he racks up whenever he has to say lines — which, as luck would have it, is often. Waxing romantic or working out plans for an elaborate robbery, Jean-Claude always manages to sound as if he were making a half hearted pitch for Chap Stick.

The screenwriters must have discovered their prehistoric plot frozen in a glacier. Christian Biton (Jean-Claude) runs a ski shop in Switzerland. He and his buddies have a pretty good thing going, selling equipment and eyeballing the snow bunnies who fall by with enviable frequency. "I have very strong thighs," says one in a voice that could turn hard pack to slush. Smirks one of the shop boys: "Maybe you'd like to feel my pectorals some time."

Biton and his pal Bob (Cliff Potts) steal $250,000 from one of the resorts and stash it in a snow-covered cranny. They plan to retrieve it in the spring when the snow melts. But an insurance investigator (Vittorio De Sica) comes around and endangers the whole operation. De Sica spends most of his time wagging his finger and laughing uproariously, for reasons that remain unfathomable.

Director George Englund is the man who produced the papal soap opera Shoes of the Fisherman, and last year made a rock-'n 'roll western entitled Zachariah. Thus Snow Job hardly comes as a surprise.