Alice Cooper Video:

Editorial Review:
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" sneers Johnny Rotten at the Sex Pistols' farewell performance. After seeing this picture you'll understand his disgust, but Julian Temple's sharp portrait of the ragged, raw band of working-class Brits won't leave you disappointed. The Sex Pistols left their legacy in a whirlwind 26-month reign, spitting out a caustic, confrontational brand of rock & roll that became the rallying cry for angry, disaffected youths in late 1970s England and defined the punk movement. Their story was first told two decades ago in the cynical The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, also directed by Temple but produced by the Sex Pistols' smarmy manager, Malcolm McLaren, who stage-managed the film into a self-promoting vanity project. For The Filth and the Fury, Temple turns to the four surviving band members to tell their own stories. His vibrant, vigorous direction captures the period of social unrest and alienated youth without turning into a history lesson, and shows the Pistols in all their insolent glory: spewing obscenities and gesturing lewdly to audiences and press alike, screaming out lyrics, overcoming musical limitations with pure passion and attitude. Rare, raw concert footage (including their final performance, which is appropriately enough the song "No Fun") and previously unseen interviews with the deceased Sid Vicious further energize the portrait. There's even footage of the smiling band cutting cake for kids at a fundraiser with nary a nasty gesture or sneering comment. Now there's a side of the Pistols you don't see everyday. --Sean Axmaker

The Filth and the Fury [Region 2] Reviews:
The Band That Broke The Laws Of Physics...
2009-10-06 - "What you've seen in any documentary about any band before or since is how great and wonderful everything is. Its not the truth of it; its hell, its hard, its horrible, its enjoyable to a small degree, but if you know what you're doing it for, you'll tolerate all that. Because the work, at the end of the day, is what matters. We managed to offend all the people we were f***ing fed up with"

Thus intones one Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon) over a credit sequence which emulates the opening of the legendary film version of Oliver's "Richard III" - and Lydon knows of which he speaks because as the teenage front-man of "The Sex Pistols", probably the singularly most reviled and misunderstood band of all time, he certainly had it harder than most.

To my mind, there's no two ways about it - "The Sex Pistols" are THE band that broke a fundamental law of physics by literally creating something out of the nothing of economic, social and cultural poverty that was England in the mid-seventies. And in this film, which remains probably the best music documentary ever made (and my personal favourite of all time), you get to hear, in their own words, how they charted a notorious course from being four disparate, penniless teenagers hanging around a rubber-ware shop on the King's Road to being banned from playing in the UK and pursued around the US by the CIA and FBI because they were considered such a threat to the establishment.

Listening to Lydon, Cook, Jones, Matlock and Vicious (in absentia) recounting their tale in silhouette over a wealth of material cobbled together from the films "DOA" and "The Great Rock And Rock Swindle", as well as hours of never before seen archive footage, gives you a devastatingly honest insight into not only the times and circumstances that formed them, but also the morass of scumbags, groupies, hangers-on and imbeciles that populate the gristle-mill of the music industry to this day.

One gets the impression that Julien Temple, who previously directed the Malcolm MacLaren propaganda exercise, "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle", is almost undertaking an act of atonement with this film and he wisely chooses to forego overt directorial flourishes in favour of just letting the parties involved speak for themselves.

Alternately hysterically funny, genuinely touching and occasionally chilling (Vicious' final words to camera are haunting), as a film it is never anything less than fascinating. And as strange as it may sound, I personally find it to be one of the most energizing and positive pieces of cinema that I've ever seen. I watch my copy regularly and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone despairing at the state of their lives - because if four council estate kids with nothing but a shed-load of anger (which really `is' an energy, when properly channeled) can change the world in their own shambolic way, then you can learn a lot from their example, whatever your age.


Filthy and Furious
2009-03-07 - The Sex Pistols were an incendiary band that burned out in a flash, but their impact is still felt today. Their history is presented here through interviews and archival footage, and the documentary is fittingly dirty and gritty considering its subject matter. In addition to the story, there are several almost complete songs performed live in various venues. This is a must watch for fans, as well as anyone else interested in one of the most influential and infamous bands of the punk movement.

An Honest Documentary Peering into the Souls of the Pistols
2009-02-02 - Rarely have I viewed such an honestly documented interview with any band available on video. The Sex Pistols' singer, Johnny Rotten (now Lydon) is well known for his notorious intolerance of the music establishment, the class system and authority in general (with perhaps, a little more emphasis on the British monarchy). He's in his 50's now, and I was very interested, almost startled, to listen to his views on music, the hypocrisy of the media, and his deeply loyal friendship to Sid Vicious, which was expressed in a rare expression of emotion. He has since become a television personality, appearing on talk shows and at media events in both the United States and the UK. I found him especially witty and fiercly truthful, which was a standout in this film for me, as I'm just not used to such soulful honesty in what has become a music industry cesspool of spoiled brats, addicts, and sexually confused "popstars". Lydon calls it like it is, and I really admired everything he had to say. The other high point of the film is the unusually large amount of footage attributed to Sid Vicious. We see him "smacked up" most of the time, but there are several spots (with his crazy girlfriend noticably absent) when he lucidly explains his own frustrations up to the point in time he was being interviewed. All but Sid are hidden in the shadows of strategically positioned studio lighting, which aids in giving the surviving members a sense of immortality, yet raising up their fallen band mate out of the shadows for all to clearly see in living color, and most of the time, it ain't pretty. There are important video clips of the performers during the punk madness of their heydey in the late '70's that I've not seen before, and this was really special for me. I highly recommend this DVD to anyone who enjoys the historical relevance of documentaries, such as this one, where a point in time is stopped for all to see - sometimes not glorious or flattering - yet, at other times, soulful and honest. Listening to a more mature group of Pistols; especially the witty articulation of Lydon's anecdotes and recollections, makes for an immensely enjoyable and interesting look into the souls of this seminal punk rock band.



Stay away from drugs kiddies...
2008-07-10 - A very personal, detailed look at The Sex Pistols... very sad and disturbing scene where Sid Vicious uses heroin. A look at what we lost and what could have been.

The Filth and the Fury
2007-07-25 - Combining footage of the Pistols' legendarily ferocious and chaotic performances with revealing new interviews, this exhilarating postmortem on one of the more offensive bands in rock history picks up where Temple's own unfinished "The Great Rock' n 'Roll Swindle" left off. Hearing Lydon, Cook, and Jones revisit a tumultuous time in their obnoxious young lives--and then seeing the real deal in TV interviews and concert tapes--is worth half the admission. But there are also rare on-camera conversations with doomed bassist Sid Vicious and snotty manipulator McLaren to round out the picture. Caustic, funny, and hard for any rock music fan to ignore.