I Finally get to See the King!

I have had this VHS tape since I was a teenager.

Blow Out was written and directed by Brian De Palma. The movie stars John Travolta, Nancy Allen, and John Lithgow. With that kind of name recognition, Blow Out has been easy to find on cable, DVD, and Roku. The Criterion Collection even released a special edition Blu-ray of Blow Out ten years ago. There is no reason to own this film on VHS.

King of the Mountain was directed by Noel Nosseck. It stars Harry Hamlin, Dennis Hopper, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, and a modified Porsche 356. When HBO stopped airing King of the Mountain, my VHS tape became the only way I could watch this film for years. 

In the 2000's, I ordered a DVD copy of KOTM from ioffer.com, but that turned out to be a bootleged copy of a nice VHS tape. Every so often I'd see this DVD on my shelf and wonder, "Is there a legal DVD out, yet?" The answer was always no. I read rumblings that copyright problems with the soundtrack kept it from being released, but I don't know that for sure.

On Friday night  I was shopping eBay for spaghetti westerns, and I stumbled onto an auction that looked too good to be true.

Whaaaaat? There's a legit Blu-ray of KOTM? I checked Amazon, and yep, Scorpion Releasing (who?) put out a DVD and a Blu-ray of KOTM in Nov of 2020. How did I miss that? Well, there was a lot going on in 2020...

Anyway, I didn't mess around with an eBay seller. I punched the "Buy Now" button and let Amazon Prime work it's magic. The next day... fanfare, please!

Here's some Bootleg to Blu-ray comparisons:

I've already watched the Harry Hamlin and Noel Nossaeck interviews. They tell interesting stories of movie making in the late 70's and early 80's. This film could not be made the same way today.

Let's compare what's really importatnt: the image quality. VHS vs. Bootleg DVD vs. Blu-Ray

VHS:

Bootleg DVD:

Blu-ray:

The bootleg DVD was an improvement over my old VHS tape, but check out the Blu-ray's detail on that tree on the left. I hadn't even noticed the white lettering on the tires before. There's no way KOTM has looked better on home video.

That Porsche 356 is such a cool car. And that's really what all this is all about. I couldn't care less about the acting or the music industry storyline. This isn't a film review.

The cars in this movie are the stars. Dennis Hopper looks more dangerous than the night street racing. His alleged coke and alcohol fueled perfomance is truely unhinged, but his rat-rod 'Vette looks awesome. Joseph Bottoms's '69 Mustang is a stud. There are cameos by a Ferrari, a Superbee, a couple of Firebirds, a Datsun 240 Z, and some Porsche posers in the background at a German car repair shop. Deborah drives a cool, vintage Citroën. Even the beater pickup that Dennis races is sweet. 

These are the cars that I dreamed about when I was a kid. It's a lot to fun to see their details more clearly for the first time since then. Looks like I can finally toss my old VHS tape.