"The Mountain King" is an American 20-minute short film from 16 years ago written and directed by Duncan Tucker. It was Tucker's first work as a filmmaker and a couple years later "Transamerica" followed. Since then, i.e. for over 10 years, he has not made a new film and looking at this short film here, this may be a really good thing. Terrible, terrible watch. extremely realistic scenario that two guys meet at the beach. Of course, they don't ignore each other but the banters starts and then they have sex immediately right after of course. Oh yeah, who cares if these two abuse drugs, one basically talks the other into it, makes him an addict perhaps, that they have unprotected sex with random strangers (regardless of their sexual orientation), of course went these two be a couple and happy together so much only because they are gay right? Well.. guess what. I did not. This film is 100% bait, tries so hard to be different and controversial with no basic talent of how to tell a story properly. A disastrous effort and I would be ashamed to have worked on it, no matter if before or behind the camera. Needless to say the two actors in here never made it big in the last 15 years. Their lack of talent is clearly visible. Stay far far away from this film and I can't believe people actually gave this piece of utter garbage a 10/10 rating.

The hustler wore the straight guy's clothes, because he wanted to get a new pair, he liked the preppy style and it simply made him happy to get a new outfit. Plus it matched his new watch :) The straight guy had to wear something to return to his hotel. And i also think it made him happy, it left a little "memory" of he guy he just met on the beach.It was a fairly empty island at that time of the year, the hustler got there in the first place with his client, or when he still had some money.He took the boat to return back to New York.He didn't break into the house, his client left him in there when he had to "go back to the city".

I've seen quite a few short films at the Tampa gay and lesbian film festival over the years and most of them tend to blur together in my mind after a year or so.... but this one I remember, and now I guess I'm going to get a hold of the DVD of "Boys to Men" (it's one of the three films featured) in order to see it again. Duncan Tucker went on to write and direct Transamerica and I just saw Paul Dawson in "Shortbus" last week at the festival and he was fantastic, as was the movie !I am always frustrated when people pan a movie because it deals with something outside of their own personal experience. Seduction, lies, manipulation... all words with negative associations, and yet there have been times in my life when a most scuzzy character has opened my mind to possibilities that I hadn't dreamed of.

This little film, which went largely unnoticed in 2001 at most film festivals, is an incredible tour de force. An uptight, middle-class tourist (reading Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy") on a lonely beach is approached by a sleazy, obnoxious hustler. The hustler seduces -- there is no other word for it -- him into the water and then into a luxurious beach house. There, the two lives collide in a tidal wave of sex, excitement, drugs and release. Like the accompanying music (Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," from the "Peer Gynt" suite), the film builds to an emotional crescendo that will have you on the edge of your seat. It's almost impossible to describe the emotions. It's just...WOW. The encounter with the dangerous, sleazy, manipulative hustler opens up the frigid tourist, releasing emotion like a volcano. Even when he realizes that things haven't ended up quite as safe as he'd like (abandonment, theft and breaking-and-entering being only some of the things we realize have occurred), the film's final minute is a jaw-dropping visual statement about risking everything in order to gain life. Director Duncan Tucker is someone to watch for in the future! (And so are his two actors -- just incredible!)