The Filth and The Fury: Filth, Thou Liest!

This has been described as Julien Temple's apology for The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. Rather than following a script dictated by Malcolm McClaren, he gets the Pistols themselves to talk about what the band really meant to them. He intersperses the film with fast cuts to stock footage, old TV commercials, Pistols in concert. Most of the Pistols are interviewed with their faces in the dark, so as to draw any attention away from how they might look at the time of the interview. All of the discussions with McLaren are done in his rubber suit, apparently original footage from Swindle. McLaren says that he had hoped to promote the Sex Pistols as the next Bay City Rollers. John Rotten (aka John Lyndon) can't even bring himself to say McLaren's name and just refers to him as "the manager" or "management" - he laughs in disgust at the notion that they were the Bay City Rollers (to which Temple cuts to some footage of the Rollers emphasizing the point.). McLaren is also accused variously of bilking the band of money, misrepresenting them in the press and all sorts of other petty crimes. Still, it was his vision that put the whole concept together even if it became bigger than himself.

Tensions within the band -- the Cook/Matlock/Jones camp vs. the Lyndon/Vicious, the former being competent but somewhat clueless as to what was going on aroudn them and Lyndon pushing them to expand and do something new. Lyndon also is shown crying over Sid Vicious's death, regretting that he hadn't done anything to get him off heroin. There's also a significant amount of interview time with Vicious himself, who comes off as a rather pathetic wretch filled with self-pity and fully aware that his heroin habit would eventually take him. Nancy Spungen is also portrayed as a villian and blamed for hooking him on the drug.

The entire short history of the band is recounted through enthralling concerts, their now somewhat quaint profanity-laced druken appearance on the BBC's equivalent of the Today show, their romp through three record companies, their ill-fated American tour and finally their dissipation as Lyndon finally got fed up with "the management". The Sex Pistols and Lyndon in particular are also placed into the context of British cultural history, compared with Lawrence Oliver's performance as Richard III and the broad slapstick post-war British comedy, all of which Lyndon surprisingly agrees with. This is quite an original documentary and much better than Temple's first film on this subject or his (previously reviewed) short piece on the UK Subs (some of the latter footage also appears here).

U.K. Subs: Punks Can Take It

Starring the UK Subs, dir. by Julien Temple

A nice little addendum to Filth and Fury giving one of the few of the Class of '77 (influenced by the Ramones, played shows with the Clash and Sex Pistols) that never sold out their due. The Subs crash a wedding party, their fans rip down a statue of Johnny Rotten, hold a funeral for all the hippy icons in a church and generally run around in a faux documentary (featuring the voice of a '40s newsreel narrator -- among his last work) that's pretty fun and not at all serious - it brings to mind a John Waters film. The DVD extras include a interesting tour of the Charlie Harper's record and memorabilia collection. Recommended only for Subs' fans this is a throw-off. Spend your time instead on The Filth and the Fury, still one of the greatest rock docs ever made. Here's more on the DVD.