King of the Mountain is celebrating its 40th Anniversary this year.
Poster artwork combines elements from the first race and date night scenes of the movie.
Steve (Harry Hamlin) is a musician/Porsche mechanic that loves driving his Porsche 356 Speedster hot-rod on Mulholland Drive, a long mountain road steeped in street racing lore, which Steve is a part of. Just ask the cops. His love for the road and thrill of the street racing scene has made him the man to beat.
While Steve’s over there, his friends Harry “Buddy” Dunn (Joseph Bottoms) and Roger Terry (Richard Cox) have either taken street racing less seriously (Buddy’s more of a ringmaster) or left it completely (after crashing his green Camaro, Roger drove the road once more with his Jaguar XKE and never did so again). Instead, songwriter Buddy and manager-type Roger are working hard to make it into the music biz, and with Tina’s (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) vocals, it seems that they’ve got it made.
Bigshot record producer Barry Tanner (Seymour Cassel) made Roger an offer that wasn’t what he had in mind, but reluctantly accepted. In other words, part out all the hard work they’ve done together as a group. For their sacrifice, Roger and Buddy legitimately enter the music biz and Tina as a star under Tanner’s guidance. Roger recruited Steve to help break the news to Buddy, who really wanted to cut a record with the original group more than anyone. He warmed over it after a while… except Roger didn’t tell the whole truth: Tanner coerced Roger into straight up selling a number of Buddy’s songs for another music group, not just polishing the songs under Tanner. When Steve and Buddy found out what the actual deal was, both felt betrayed, with Buddy feeling enraged enough to race his 1969 Ford Mustang on Mulholland against anybody willing to race. The problem is… he challenged Cal.
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It Rolls. 