Expresso Bongo

The missing Nausea sequence was included in the version shown on the British TV channel 'Taking Pictures'. It's an amusing interjection, with very little in common with the rest of the film. The film is a genuine period piece, and worth watching, despite Laurence Harvey's exuberant performance with its range of accents.

Featuring a veritable 'who's-who' of great actors Laurence Harvey, Eric Pohlman, Susan Hampshire, Sylvia Syms, Martin Miller (in a bunch of throwaway scenes), and many others), this film captures the 'changing of the guard', as it were, as the youth music - the then-burgeoning rock and roll was just being born in the UK. The dialogue - esp. Mr Harvey's - is rat-a-tat fast, like another commenter (rayshaw44) of this film noted, is akin to His Girl Friday's. As for another commenter (LHL12), I have a beautiful print of the filn, and it contains the 'Nausea' sequence, as well as the others mentioned. I'm writing this almost a decade after they wrote their comment (actually a long interesting story of this films butchering), and therefore I don't know if they're aware that a complete version of 'Bongo' isn't that hard to find (though I DO totally understand and commiserate, being a completest myself, I'm a stickler for the 'correct', unadulterated versions of things). To say this is a film by a great master, like a Fellini or a Kubrick, it isn't. But there was a wonderful period in postwar England that the film business percolated (a pun), and many wonderful small films of all varieties were made. This is one of them. It makes me (as one who wasn't yet born) both fond of, as well as a bit misty-eyed, as the homogenous days we are now in leave no room for an individual's voice. I highly recommend Espresso Bongo.

It's been said that Cliff Richard was the UK's equivalent of Elvis Presley. Personally I saw a lot more Ricky Nelson or Frankie Avalon in his musical style. Nevertheless he was and does remain a very big singing star in the British Commonwealth countries though he never was able to make it the USA market as the Beatles who symbolize the next generation of pop stars.

He plays what he is a young musical hopeful who gets discovered by Laurence Harvey, a fast talking British cockney version of Sammy Glick. Harvey gives a nice performance here though he's almost as 'on' all the time as Phil Silvers.

Sylvia Sims is Harvey's patient girl friend who works as a stripper in a Soho club and Yolande Donlon who was an American expatriate in London plays an American musical comedy star who takes a far more than motherly interest in young Richard. Donlon manages to best Harvey, but the man does come out of the battle none the worst for wear.

Expresso Bongo is a realistic look at the British music industry at the beginning of the sixties. Richard sings a couple of songs and does them well in the manner of Ricky Nelson.

Best scene in the film when Harvey gets on a panel discussion show with a minister and psychologist about today's youth and their musical taste. Those two and the moderator were certainly not expecting the shtick Harvey gave them. Worth seeing for that alone.

This is kind of an annoying low-budget film, but at least I, an American, got to see what the fuss used to be about the UK singer Cliff Richard, whom I had never seen before. I also have never seen Lawrence Harvey in a semi-comedic role. He seemed as if he were on speed, or coke; very annoying. I kept yelling, "Give the guy a Valium!" And his accent drifted from plummy English to South African to European Yiddish, and back again. Most disconcerting.

But watch the film for future celebs! There's Hermione Baddley (who was on "Maude"), playing a street-walking prostitute (!), there's Burt Kouwk (who played Cato in all those Pink Panther movies), playing a dissolute Soho youth, and Susan Hampshire ("Upstairs, Downstairs," and various TV movies).

The film's depiction of Soho reminded me of old American films' depictions of 42nd St. in N.Y. Really cheesy.

And apparently there wasn't too much censorship of British films then, because we see in this film lots of true female nudity (the strippers in the film). Man, I haven't seen breasts like those in ages! (All natural, all non-augmented.) See this as an interesting historical time capsule.

Ignore anything or anybody that denigrates Espresso Bongo. It is loaded with period detail and attitude, is singularly risqué for it's time and sports great music and one of the best scripts about England's Tin Pan Alley, wisecracking and inside, besides an unprecedented performance by Laurence Harvey as you've never seen him, a hustler who recalls Sidney Falco in the "Sweet Smell of Success". Maier Tzelnicker is tremendous as the record company executive who calls it "rock dreck". Yolanda Donlan, Val Guest's wife, plays a "Sweet Bird of Youth" like aging diva Alexandra Del Lago who seduces Cliff Richard, whom many called the Pat Boone of England. See the opening strip number when the girls perform a burlesque version of the "Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". It sets the tone for an overlooked gem. A "B" Movie Classic. Enjoy.