A seedy London promoter turns a naive, working-class teenager into a pop singing sensation.
Nothing I write will be as funny as naming your teenage rebel Bongo Herbert Back when I started the ludicrous mission of watching every Elvis Presley movie with my persnickety pals, we embarked onto a side quest of watching every Cliff Richard movie as a side quest. The logic being that if Cliff Richard as supposed to be Britain's answer to Elvis, how do his movies compare. Hence we ended up watching Expresso Bongo, a film where a talent agent exploits a young singer. Right there in the premise we already have a fruitful line of interrogation in terms of comparing this with the Elvis Cinematic Universe. This film has a "Colonel Tom Parker stand in", yet he is actually the focus of the movie. To an extent this makes it more compelling as we spend more time with the morally duplicitous and multi dimensional character. Elvis films largely follow a loveable himbo who doesn't question his exploitation and just wants to sing and get off with ladies in a chaste manner. Expresso Bongo fa
