Bongo is a doughy, bespectacled chap donning a tam-o-shanter and necktie, with his slacks pulled up to his chin. Belying his unassuming visage, he's a prominent fixture of the LA rock music scene who slaps the bongos like a beast. Fawning groupies, photographers, and interviewers surround him, but he takes his celebrity in stride, concerning himself more with eccentric personal interests such as werewolves, demons, and vampires(he is, in fact, a self-proclaimed bloodsucker). We follow him as he visits local bookshops, attends a Count Dracula Society convention, and casually shoots the breeze with a conniving, addlepated street hustler who lures him to a midday free-love party(minus the "free" part, and not much love, either).
Tom Baker's BONGO WOLF'S REVENGE was screened mostly at rock music venues before completely disappearing, and subsequently spending decades at the top of many cinephiles' "most wanted films" lists. Finally, this elusive nouvelle vague head flick has been exhumed and brought to the fore in a crisp, clean print, possibly the only one still extant. Was it worth the long wait? I think so, though it's not at all what I was expecting it would be. It's very much in-step with Warhol's body of film work, being largely improvised within a very loosely structured narrative, and preoccupied with the somewhat scurrilous toings and froings of colorful(if entirely unrelatable) urban fringe dwellers. I can't imagine it having much appeal to viewers of a more mainstream bent, but it's a pearl beyond price for anyone interested in underground/counterculture cinema. Too, it offers some rare keyhole peeks into LA's rock music undertow, circa 1970. Features music by Mike Bloomfield/PJ Proby and Jim Ford, and, appropriately, a nanosnippet of The Doors' "People Are Strange".
6.5/10...a worthy resurrection from the Lethe of lost media.
