Mountain High

"Mountain High" is one of a dozen or so Nicholas Steele features that he made circa 2005 independently, after scoring his great success as director and producer for Adam & Eve. After his success with big-budget porn several years later at Britain's Bluebird Films label, Bluebird reissued many of these titles as if new, under a sort of mythical "Seductions" sub-label, but with all the Bluebird data on-screen and in the DVD box fine print.

One that got away was "Edge Runner", a title that Bluebird left alone, as its treatment of Motocross racing was so poor I judged the film to be unfinished. "Mountain High" is quite similar but far, far better, using a 3-day mountain bike race as its similar subject matter.

Unlike "Edge Runner", Steele actually depicts the race on screen, with two teams of 3 competing. The Seekers consist of our hero Steven St. Croix and two fine exotic femmes: Mya Luanna and Avena Lee, both bringing Oriental ancestry to the table. The opposing team The Slayers (moniker hints they're the bad guys) are Cheyne Collins, an obscure actor named Tyler Burden and the very talented and sexy Venus.

Though the "racing" footage seems to be in slow motion, as the cast does an okay job of staying upright on their bikes but are clearly porn talent rather than Lance Armstrong wannabes (and that's a Good Thing), the outdoor setting plus outdoor sex gives the film some semblance of resembling a real movie. One fabulously shot sex scene (by Steele's very talented cameraman John Noz Muka) is bathed in golden light as Evan Stone humps Cassey Courtland, they being cast at the married couple who runs the race. Unfortunately, a technical glitch has this scene ending with non-matching footage of the duo with entirely different lighting and color grading, typical of what happens in the "start and stop" approach to staging sex scenes typical of "open up for the camera" porn, as opposed to the realistic, more organic style that makes labels like Sweet Sinner/Sweetheart Video and Girlfriends Films so appealing.

Steele's composer Lance Erickson contributes another of his fine original scores, both action-oriented and romantic, and the minor film is definitely entertaining in a back-burner sort of way.