Tom Baker’s eye-opening pseudo-documentary, Bongo Wolf’s Revenge (1971), a vérité following the exploits of an eccentric bongo player in a psychedelic Los Angeles, has been restored and is now available for streaming following its discovery and reconstruction from archive 16mm prints by Lost Reels.
Bongo's writer/director Tom Baker is virtually unknown in the UK, yet his fingerprints are on the work of Andy Warhol (I, A Man (1967)), Norman Mailer (Beyond the Law (1968)), and he was a significant figure in the life of Jim Morrison of The Doors. Baker aspired to produce a "pseudo-documentary" similar to his recent work with Warhol and Mailer and for his subject he selected Donald Grollman a.k.a. Bongo Wolf, a cult figure on the Hollywood sunset strip. Grollman was an associate of musician P.J. Proby and had earlier been photographed by David Bailey for his Box of Pin-Ups photoset during a trip to England. Grollman was a bona-fide eccentric, dressing in a suit with a slim tie, constantly carrying a large canvas bag, and preoccupied with werewolves and vampires, including wearing his own homemade vampire teeth.
Shot on black and white in 16mm Bongo Wolf's Revenge's structure alternates between documentary realism, manufactured improvisational situations, and psychedelic fantasy. It also contains several music performances, featuring two Mike Bloomfield / P.J. Proby recording sessions, a pool party song by Jim Ford, and a montage sequence accompanied by People Are Strange by The Doors. From this vantage point we're exposed to Bongo's obsessions and follow him along the sunset strip to seedy bookstores, all-night cinemas, a hotel at Venice beach, and a meeting of the Count Dracula Society.
Despite having only a limited "club" cinema release in the UK Bongo Wolf's Revenge was reviewed in the British Film Institute's Monthly Film Bulletin where reviewer Mark Williams called it “an engaging documentary” and praised its “fascinating insight into the flushed-out sub-culture of psychedelic Hollywood." The UK is also miraculously the home of the only two known surviving prints of the film - one at the British Film Institute and the other at The Cinema Museum. Both prints are incomplete but taken together they contain the entire film. Further to this Lost Reels has obtained a UK orphaned works license permitting non-commercial theatrical screenings and a streaming release of the film which we now present here. Please enjoy Bongo Wolf's Revenge, now viewable again after more than fifty years.
