EyeAskance

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 king pimp slaps his backtalking beeyatches. Fawning groupies, photographers, and reporters surround him, but he takes his celebrity in stride, obsessing more on 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.

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 unrelatable) fringe dwellers. I can't imagine it having much appeal to those of a more mainstream bent, but it's a pearl beyond price for anyone interested in underground/counterculture cinema, and 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, quite appropriately, a nanosnippet of The Doors' "People Are Strange".

7/10...a welcome return.

A gorgeous young film industry upstart is pecking around in a stock footage archive, and stumbles upon an old porn loop which prominently features a pre-famed celebrity TV personality. The film is latterly stolen, ensuing in a mystery packed with murder, political intrigue, and, naturally, enough jiggling ta-tas to circle the globe.

As neo-noir trash of the bra-and-panties variety goes, this ultra-rarity is unexpectedly watchable. Nobody of sound mind would ever call it legitimately GOOD, obviously, but it should well-appease enthusiasts of porn who hate explicit sex scenes, and the castmembers are attractive, never mind that most of them couldn't act wet in a swimming pool.

Recommended.

And so, our time had come. We all knew that one day the sun would expand in a supernova explosion, taking with it all the planets in the solar system, and every living thing on Earth. Then...the announcement came. Armageddon was upon us. Chaos erupted in the streets as frantic people sought shelter in underground bunkers, desperately hoping they might survive the inevitable. Many found comfort with family and friends, others converged in churches to pray and repent. But not this guy. As the night sky turned into a white-hot blaze of blinding light, I was tuned in to Turner for a special end-of-the-world military band rendition of NEARER MY GOD TO THEE. It was a glorious sign-off...but it needed some cowbell.