Word: bongos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Expresso Bongo is one of those movies that makes a Significant (though not particularly original) Point at the expense of characterization, dialogue, and plot. Through a series of disturbing scenes, it shows how popular "artistes"--and more important the people connected with them--contemptuously denigrate the public's taste. If "mass values" are the problem, though, Expresso Bongo does little to improve them...
...reveals the truth to his ambitious but faithful mistress: "This is no playground, it's a jungle," (the camera focusses on his half-made bed), "and it eats up little girls like you" (a few minutes later he pounces). It also eats up poor young boys like his protege Bongo Herbert (Cliff Richards), overnight transformed from an ordinary lower-class teen-ager to England's hottest singer...
Appearing on a filmed television documentary about teenage rebellion, Bongo gains the approval of A Minister (called just that on a panel program), and the adulation of British youth. His agent tries to tie the two together: "What does our act lack?--Religion;" Bongo treats a massive television audience to his second hit song, "The Madonna on the Second Floor." It is hard to avoid feeling nauseous when his mother turns out to be the Madonna, when you remember that, as the minister has said, "this will contribute to the pleasure of millions of little people...
Unfortunately, one feels even more disgusted at the absurdity of the plot, the shallowness of the characterizations. Lawrence Harvey's agent is the tough, glib guy with a tiny bit of feeling for his mistress. Success corrupts him, he forgets his woman, mistreats Bongo, recites lines that would be rejected by a third-rate television script writer. His mistress raises her voice only twice, and remains loyal...
...portrait on Masonite board on top of an oil heater to dry. When the board got too hot, he grabbed it by the edges and wobbled It back and forth to cool it off. As he did, out came a resonant twang like the sound of a tight-skinned bongo drum. Harris decided the sound was just the background he needed for his kangaroo song. Harris recorded the number, and soon Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport rocketed to the top of the Australian bestseller list...