An unusual mixture of musical and melodrama, principally set in the expresso bars and strip clubs of contemporary London, this is an unusually candid snapshot of life amongst the lower echelons of society struggling to make a life in the shadows of the big city's bright lights.
As the movie opens, after its novel title sequence with the credits amusingly displayed on everyday items like a cafe's food menu or a sandwich-board man's hoardings, we immediately encounter Laurence Harvey's spivvy go-ahead agent, trying to find the next best thing who'll make his fortune. He and his pretty girlfriend, Sylvia Syms, live openly together in a crummy flat, just up the road from where she works nightly in a strip club. She too wants to escape her rat-hole existence as a respectable singer and dancer but Harvey doesn't see it and instead focuses his full wide-boy attention on a talented young singing bongo-drum playing youngster he encounters in an expresso bar, hence the film's unusual title.
This of course is evergreen U.K. pop star Cliff Richard in a very early role, at the time being promoted as Britain's rocking equivalent to Elvis although he later in the 60's came to publicly wear his Christian and Conservative beliefs on his sleeve and became an anodyne all-round entertainer. Here, he still has his teenage quiff and pout as he attempts a James Dean / Elvis type broodiness. However while he's fine in the few songs he gets to sing, including his big hit of the time "A Voice In The Wilderness", his acting is terribly callow and wooden.
When the teen star's career starts to take off after a guest appearance on a comeback TV special for an ageing glamour-puss blonde singer, Yolande Dolan, the film becomes a Faustian battle for the poor boy's soul, taking in Harvey, an older rival record company executive, Meier Tzelnicker and Dolan who becomes the lad's sugar mummy.
Surprisingly cynical for the time, it's also unusually adult too with some adult language thrown in, while the first major scene lasciviously takes in a bunch of scantily-clad young strippers performing their mildly titillating routine to salivating old men in dirty raincoats. Then it cuts to Harvey and Syms in her down-at-heel flat where his intention is only too plain while Richard's Bert Rudge / Bongo Herbert character lives in a crowded flat with his grasping mother, drunken dad and the rest of his many younger brothers and sisters.
It's a grubby, distinctly unglamorous, backstreet world, full of hustlers and wannabes, which is later contrasted with the fake glitter of showbiz glamour and is vivaciously directed by Val Guest. I preferred the dramatic elements to the musical interludes especially when the largely unexceptional songs are spread around the main cast who infrequently burst into song. Harvey is manic in the lead role, although "Oy vey!" his Jewish accent is hopelessly exaggerated and out of place. Syms and Dolan are better in their more sympathetic roles but Richard at this early stage, his singing apart, is really just eye-candy for his teen fan base, especially when required to pose in a pair of skimpy shorts for Dolan's delectation. One wonders what the octogenarian mum and indeed grandmum's favourite thinks now when he looks back at this sometimes racy, amoral film.
For me the musical and dramatic elements more often clash than mesh, but with its madcap energy and unvarnished depiction of life at the bottom, it often overcomes its cliched storyline and patchy acting to beat out an interesting and entertaining movie.
As the movie opens, after its novel title sequence with the credits amusingly displayed on everyday items like a cafe's food menu or a sandwich-board man's hoardings, we immediately encounter Laurence Harvey's spivvy go-ahead agent, trying to find the next best thing who'll make his fortune. He and his pretty girlfriend, Sylvia Syms, live openly together in a crummy flat, just up the road from where she works nightly in a strip club. She too wants to escape her rat-hole existence as a respectable singer and dancer but Harvey doesn't see it and instead focuses his full wide-boy attention on a talented young singing bongo-drum playing youngster he encounters in an expresso bar, hence the film's unusual title.
This of course is evergreen U.K. pop star Cliff Richard in a very early role, at the time being promoted as Britain's rocking equivalent to Elvis although he later in the 60's came to publicly wear his Christian and Conservative beliefs on his sleeve and became an anodyne all-round entertainer. Here, he still has his teenage quiff and pout as he attempts a James Dean / Elvis type broodiness. However while he's fine in the few songs he gets to sing, including his big hit of the time "A Voice In The Wilderness", his acting is terribly callow and wooden.
When the teen star's career starts to take off after a guest appearance on a comeback TV special for an ageing glamour-puss blonde singer, Yolande Dolan, the film becomes a Faustian battle for the poor boy's soul, taking in Harvey, an older rival record company executive, Meier Tzelnicker and Dolan who becomes the lad's sugar mummy.
Surprisingly cynical for the time, it's also unusually adult too with some adult language thrown in, while the first major scene lasciviously takes in a bunch of scantily-clad young strippers performing their mildly titillating routine to salivating old men in dirty raincoats. Then it cuts to Harvey and Syms in her down-at-heel flat where his intention is only too plain while Richard's Bert Rudge / Bongo Herbert character lives in a crowded flat with his grasping mother, drunken dad and the rest of his many younger brothers and sisters.
It's a grubby, distinctly unglamorous, backstreet world, full of hustlers and wannabes, which is later contrasted with the fake glitter of showbiz glamour and is vivaciously directed by Val Guest. I preferred the dramatic elements to the musical interludes especially when the largely unexceptional songs are spread around the main cast who infrequently burst into song. Harvey is manic in the lead role, although "Oy vey!" his Jewish accent is hopelessly exaggerated and out of place. Syms and Dolan are better in their more sympathetic roles but Richard at this early stage, his singing apart, is really just eye-candy for his teen fan base, especially when required to pose in a pair of skimpy shorts for Dolan's delectation. One wonders what the octogenarian mum and indeed grandmum's favourite thinks now when he looks back at this sometimes racy, amoral film.
For me the musical and dramatic elements more often clash than mesh, but with its madcap energy and unvarnished depiction of life at the bottom, it often overcomes its cliched storyline and patchy acting to beat out an interesting and entertaining movie.