1981 Directed by Noel Nosseck
A group of friends race their high-powered cars up and down a dangerous and deadly mountain road known as Mulholland Drive to see who can claim the title of "King of the Hill."
1981 In Review - May
#3
A Loa Angeles mechanic (Harry Hamlin), songwriter (Joseph Bottoms) and record producer race sports cars on winding Mulholland Drive.
This almost feels like an 80’s earlier version of The Fast and the Furious, only it spends too much of its time focusing on the characters trying to get into the music business when it should be more about illegal street racing which is so much more interesting.
We have Harry Hamlin and Dennis Hopper, but this never really gets going.
King of the Mountain, on top of it being a Noel Nosseck sports drama that actually works unlike his 1979 melodrama Dreamer, is a genuinely fascinating piece of work. The story of Steve, a street racer in a souped-up Porsche who remains unbeaten in his mastery over a lethal stretch of Mullholland Drive that goes along a mountainside, hence the title "King of the Mountain." He finds himself at a crossroads, falling in love with the musical protégé of his close friends, and dealing with growing tensions with a former "King" and coworker (played by a classically deranged Dennis Hopper) whose accident on Mullholland Drive resulted in the end of his reign. It's a downtempo kind of drama that, while…
Interesting slice of life drama dealing the L.A. scene(recording, street racing) in the early 80s. Meanders a bit, but overall pretty worthwhile. Good cast.
King of the Mountain is a bit of a tease, especially with that poster and tagline. It pretends to be this exciting tale of street racing on the impossibly winding run of Mulholland Drive.
And some of that is there, but it's not really about that. What it's actually about is three lifelong friends as they reach a critical moment in their lives and must face the realities of the world. Steve is the street racing mechanic, Buddy is a song writer and Roger works behind the scenes in music. Two thirds of this triad deal with the music industry, and we spend a lot of time in that world.
Everybody is pretty good here, even Harry Hamlin as Steve.…
Deborah Van Valkenburgh’s presence anoints this as an unofficial entry in her Walter Hill cycle. But it’s not just her that recalls Hill’s masculine explorations, it’s the chilled-out, slow boiling look at a trio of guys (friends) as they maneuver young adulthood—it’s how each one enters manhood and where those choices lead. It’s probably more fun than I’m letting on and Valkenburgh glows in all her scenes. Joseph Bottoms finds the perfect notes to sympathetically portray the excitable artist. Hamlin’s spacey demeanor and cavemanish features serve his character’s laconic detachment. It’s good! Watch it with STREETS OF FIRE or maybe THE LONG RIDERS.
Thoroughly pointless and dull film starring Harry Hamlin as a dull fellow who likes to race cars on Mulholland Drive and be the “King of the Mountain”. Hamlin looks like Jim Morrison but is boring so henceforth he will be known as Dim Morrison.
Dim Morrison has a lot of friends in the music industry and there’s a whole subplot about the evil machinations of the record business which leads nowhere. The main plot about drag racing doesn’t go anywhere either.
Dennis Hopper drinks and slurs through his performance as a slurring drunk, this film no doubt representing a dark time in his career.
Excellent freezeframe at the end tho. Almost bumps it up a star.
A really solid and intriguingly peculiar effort, that's like a weird mash-up of American Graffiti hang-out vibes with surprisingly engaging street racing melodrama.
Honestly, it's kind of impossible to classify, and I don't think it's entirely successful as a result, but the new Scorpion Releasing disc boasts a pretty sterling transfer, and it's well worth a pick-up. I can see myself revisiting it with some regularity already.
Atmospheric snapshot of '81 Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of a Mulholland Drive street racer whose friends are aging out of the lifestyle. A killer cast of character actors, a fun soundtrack, and gorgeous shots of SoCal at the turn of the decade keep this one humming, and it's a total mystery why this one's been MIA on physical media for decades. mondo-digital.com/kingmountain.html
I'm the best, I take perfect lines, I can drive the road in my sleep, around Sweeper and Dead Man's curve. Its like I am part of the machine I am piloting. No man can beat me and the stopwatch fears me. But why Buddy, why did you have to go so fast, WHY DID YOU GO SO FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This movie feels like it should have come out in 1972. Its an old-school car movie, in the same vein as Dirty Marry, Crazy Larry or Vanishing Point.
Its a lot of fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. There's lots of b-plot not related to racing, that feels good. Like an old LA drama.
The racing, however, is a bit lack-luster. Given that the entire film is about racing up and down Mulholland Drive, the had to shoot everything at night so as not to interfere with daily traffic. So you can't really see shit.
Its still brings suspense, and the over all tone of the movie is really comfy. Its like a movie you'd unexpectedly watch in the 90's on MST3K.
It also had a BANGER of a song in it - check this shit out!
Another of those instantly forgotten but endlessly compelling time capsule pictures of L.A. in its late ‘70s/early ‘80s pomp. Hamlin leads this one off well too. Deserves to be known.
This is one of those fascinating 'last gasp' examples of the New Hollywood era, an attempt to crossbreed a SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER-style "guy aging out of his youth scene faces growing up" movie with the existential car race/chase movies that were their own genre in the '70s. Hamlin affects a kind of low-key blankness that prefigures Keanu Reeves as a protagonist who plays his existential crisis close to the vest, with the showier work done by Hopper (warming up for his mid-'80s renaissance) as his antithesis, an angst-ridden burnout who represents his potential future. There's also an interesting music biz B-plot with Cox facing his own existential 'is growing up giving up?' crisis as a record producer, with Bottoms representing…
