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Was recommended this by a pistols fan who is also into the Punk scene. Not being a Pistols fan I was unsure but my friends tastes are similar so gave it a try. Very pleased I did. It's a thoroughly enjoyable docu film with some great footage and really encompasses the whole scene. It's amazing how times have moved on really and this is also a look at how society was so stuck up it's own arris here in the UK at that period.

John Lydon has always been much more than just a yob of a front man as every interview I have ever heard with him he has always spoken with true meaning and passion. This has not changed my mind and you cannot help but be moved by his interview, especially on the death of Sid. The best moments for me are the interviews and clips of journalist Nick Kent, an absolute 'kent' if ever there was one. As a big Adam Ant fan it was nice to see some footage of the man behind the song "Press Darlings", and boy did he come up trumps. What a complete.... It also reveals McLaren to be the compete t**t he was too. A great film for everyone with even a passing interest in music and not just punk. It's about a change in ideals and the times. And very well done. 9/10 as it does what it sets out to do very very well.

If nothing else, this is the only Sex Pistols film (there are now at least 3) to make explicit and in-depth reference to the band members' working class roots, and the way that experience informed their project. This alone makes the film worth seeing, as it explodes the myth, fostered no doubt by their PT Barnum manager, Malcolm McLaren, that the whole project was an exercise in cynical nihilism and money grubbing. As the band members tell it, nothing could have been further from the truth. I believe them.

The film is cobbled together in large part from 2 previous Sex Pistols documentaries, "Rock 'n' Roll Swindle," (a McLaren project also directed, ironically enough, by F&F director Julie Temple) and "D.O.A," plus clips from BBS television and elsewhere that try to locate the Pistols in the political and social climate that spawned them. This effort, to give the Pistols a historical context, is by far the most valuable part of the film for those trying to understand how a bunch of working class stiffs, who could barely play their instruments, and who only released one album, could set off an explosion that reverberates in the music world--if increasingly faintly--even today.

Best part of the film: footage from their last, secret gig at a palace in a working class district (they had been banned from appearing anywhere in England) before embarking on their ill-fated US tour. It consists of two performance on Christmas Day, benefiting the families of striking local firefighters, who had been out of work for many months. The attendees consist of the local lads and lasses, none of whom are "punk" in any apparent sense of the term.

Before the Pistols performed, everyone eats Sex Pistols cake and ice cream; "Never Mind the Bollocks" shirts are stretched over the pubescent bodies of every bobby soxer. Then, after a thank you from the emcee, the Pistols launch into the searing "Bodies," its sarcastic refrain sung from the point of view of an aborted fetus ("I'm not an animal!/I'm an abortion..."). All the boppers dance like it's a sock hop, with the difference that everyone gleefully throws leftover desserts at one another. Steve Jones is shown playing guitar with his face covered in cake icing, beaming. In his reminiscence about the gig, Rotten grows wistful, saying it was easily their best memory as a band, and the last good one before it all fell apart.

I never knew the guys were such sentimentalists.

It's hard to believe that there once was a time when rock music could actually matter, when it was possible to actually escape the commodified rebellion that now sells Budweiser, Nike, and SUVs, when it was possible, however briefly to scare the pants of the political establishment. Young pop music lovers who swallow the meretricious rebellion of rap or grunge--whose self-important lyrics and idiotically monotonous rhythms make their authors rich off the weekly allowances of white middle class kids whose idea of rebellion is big loud subwoofers in the Corolla Daddy bought them for their 16th birthday--might profit from getting a glimpse of the Real Thing.

The rest of us, who were lucky enough to have been there when history was made, and who can still recall the opening chords of "Anarchy in the UK" blasting all traces of "More Than a Feeling" and "Take It Easy" out of our speakers cabinets and into the first circle of music Hell where they always belonged, can enjoy the film for what it teaches us about the power of ordinary, thoroughly obnoxious people to make their own history, and ours.

Another thing I learned from the film: if Tom Cruise were a junkie, he would look just like Sid Vicious.

if your not a pistols fan before you watch this, you definalty will be after. at least thats the experience I've had from myself and people i know viewing this film. i was already a bit of a fan. you know i had a thing for sid pre nancy days and i thought johnny rotten was a unique man. but after watching this documentary with my dad ( who is a musician, but never liked anything the pistols did) i realized that this band, was so much more than the punks they were made out to be, they were rebeling against being a product of their surroundings, but at the same time find that it near impossible to achieve. my dad on the other hand, watched the movie, and immediately asked for one of my pistols cd. so i game him never mind the bollocks and set off to listen. the very next day, i find him singing 'anarchy' while doing the dishes. his views were exactly hte same as mine. except this documentary turned him from a non believe to a fan.

I'm not really one for documentaries... i thought id cracked it when i watched spinal tap, and then realsied that they were only mocking hte whole genre... so then i felt like a fool (but immediately went to see if my dads marshall went up to 11 rather than just 10). but the filth and the fury held my attention from the very first shot to the rolling of the credits. so naturally when i saw it in the store, i bought it, and I've watched it A lot of times since. sometimes in the row... and every time, it makes me laugh, and cry and makes me want to have lived back in the days of the punk.

the filth and the fury is an emotional ride of a doco that combines everything you want in a movie with an awesome soundtrack and some real meaning. this documentary is a MUST for all music fans, whether you think you like the pistols or not. by the end of it, you will be converted. or just appreciative. its an excellent piece of film making that tells the story of one of the most influential bands of the 70's, and indeed of rock history.

The Filth and the Fury is directed by Julien Temple and is a rockumentary charting the rise and fall of Punk Rock flag bearers, The Sex Pistols. 20 years earlier Temple had made The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, a bonkers and quirky movie that skewed the Sex Pistols legend as some elaborate hoax formulated by band manager Malcolm McLaren. The Filth and the Fury tells the story from the viewpoint of the band members themselves and goes some way to dispelling the myths that surround them and their self publicising manager. The title of the film is a reference to a headline that appeared in the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror after an interview with the band on ITV's Today show presented by Bill Grundy. The story follows the band members from their humble beginnings in London's Shepherd's Bush, to their implosion at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, and then to coup de grace as Sid Vicious & Nancy Spungen left the mortal coil.

Love them or hate them, The Sex Pistols in the mid to late 70s created a wave in the music industry that can still be felt today. Most of it now seems tame of course, swearing on TV and alleged distasteful songs are common practice these days, but it were not the case back when flared trousers and guys wearing make up gave way to Punk Rock Britannia. But is there anything here for those who just don't get that the Pistols were influential and one of Britain's most important bands? Yes, definitely. This is no rose tinted glasses documentary serving only to keep the Pistols name on the high heat. Nor, is it over an hour and half of their videos and live footage. Of course the music features prominently, but it's in context to the story, a story that sees the remaining band members give frank and honest assessments of the time, the place and the now.

Interviewing the band singularly in darkened silhouette to give off the impression we are witnessing criminal informers at work, Temple also puts the band into historical context with Britain's social situation in the 1970s. This is crucial to the origins of the band. It was a time of strikes and suspect politicians, so with archival footage from the period, Temple fuses the Pistols ire with that of a country that was limping along in apathy. Haters of the band don't want to agree of course, but the Pistols showed that not all of Britain would surrender meekly, and, that music could actually make a difference and shake up the system. "Get Off Your Arse" snarled John, and thousands did, as Punk bands formed over night and showed that the youth of the day had a voice. How many bands can say that eh?

But as we know, it was to be a short lived journey for the band, one that would end in tragedy: as first the press went bazooka over the top with their every move, and then as one out of his depth bass player lost sight of the bands vision. This part of the film is subtly handled by Temple, the sense of impending doom hangs heavy, none more so with the old interviews held with Vicious that are woven into the last third as self destruction grows ever near. These sequences show what many people either forget or don't realise; that Vicious was just a kid of 21 years of age. This part of the tale also lets us into an untapped part of Lydon's {ne:Rotten} emotional side, a telling moment that brings the sorry chapter to a close.

From a time when music could be as dangerous as the politicians running the country, The Filth & The Fury is an essential music based movie. Not just for fans of the band, nor just for curious music fans in general, but also for historians wishing to see just how bad late 1970s Britain was. 10/10

In interviews done at the time of the film's release, Julien Temple talked about the genesis of this film, and the reasoning behind some of the peculiar and novel gimmicks he used. Basically he had some out-takes that he had filmed for "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle", as well as some random British TV recordings from the 1970's that he had recorded on one of the first commercial VCR's. Temple wanted to use this material to tell the story of the Sex Pistols from their point of view, rather than Malcolm Maclaren's point of view presented in "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle". He said he included the ancillary material such as the video recordings to give a flavor of the times. The reason he gave for recording the living Pistols in witness-protection style silhouette (and Maclaren in a mask) was to hide their age and make it seem like the interviews were contemporaneous with the other footage, especially with regard to the interview of a non-silhouetted Sid Vicious in London's Hyde Park in 1978. In practice, the silhouettes are annoying and repetitive and make it hard to identify who is speaking on first viewing.

This film has exactly the same flaws as Temple's original effort, "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle" - its account of the Pistols' story is a biased, inaccurate, incomplete, poorly-structured mess, frequently interrupted by unnecessary, gimmicky, distracting, pretentious irrelevant inserts that have nothing to do with the main story. Only this time, instead of portraying the Sex Pistols as mindless puppets in a cynical commercial ploy by a clever manager, they are portrayed (implicitly via news footage from the 1970's) as idealists making political statements about their society, financially exploited by a useless Maclaren. Both slants are fantasy. The Pistols have repeatedly pointed out they were not political, although Rotten has in recent years started parroting some of the fantasies written about him and the punk scene by intellectuals; any quasi-political imagery foisted on the band was largely the doing of the supposedly useless Maclaren and his cronies. We see all the usual tricks of agenda-pushing documentaries, with isolated, possibly irrelevant snippets of visual interest (e.g. a fat racist squirming through a window to rant to a TV camera) edited together to imply relatedness. What's more, many of these clips appear to date from long after the Pistols formed. Likewise we see the bad guys (Maclaren and cronies) in unflattering shots and the good guys (the Pistols) in flattering or neutral shots. That's just childish, as are the sudden dramatic increases in volume every time a Pistols song starts playing.

Instead of Rock & Roll Swindle's cutaways to shots of Maclaren singing, mugging and pontificating, we get Olivier playing Richard III or TV ads or weather reports or forgotten comedians. These non-sequiturs are supposedly justified on the grounds of Rotten citing his influences or as a reflection of life in the 1970's, but it goes on and on and on long after the original point (if any) was made, until the original point is lost. When Temple was asked if there was any Pistols footage left unused after "The Filth and The Fury", he said there wasn't really, apart from additional concert footage which he considered redundant. This, I suspect, is the real reason for the excessive irrelevant footage, i.e. filler to get a commercial length for a feature film. I would dearly love to have seen the "redundant" concert footage instead. It would have been infinitely more interesting, entertaining and relevant. Temple's TV archives could have interest in their own right, but they belong in a separate documentary.

Ignoring the inept, pretentious directing, this film does have many priceless moments, and does reveal a number of obscure or unknown facts about the Pistols, although I was surprised at how little unused footage there really was, and how much was reused from the final cut of "Swindle". The Pistols are shown to be funny, intelligent and personable, far removed from the punk caricatures. The 3 Johns, and John's closeness to Sid, and John's crying over his dead friend are a revelation. So too, the Pistols' last concert before their American tour, a firemen's benefit with lots of young dancing children joining the band in a cream pie fight - not very punk, but oddly touching. We see footage from the Pistols' very earliest days, together with some of the bizarre early fans like Sue Catwoman highlighting the bohemian roots of the punk scene. We get to see footage of the disgusting Nancy Spungeon. In a remarkable stroke of luck, Temple captured skinny teenage punk fan Shane MacGowan, long before he was famous, doing an acapella rendition of "Anarchy in the UK" on the grounds of a council flat, and schoolteacher Sting playing a gay rapist in a scene from the abortive "Who Killed Bambi" movie. But by far the funniest scene in the film was the intro to a 1978 American TV music show, in which the Pistols were the most normal, most successful, and least ridiculous-looking band to appear on the program.

In summary this film was a wasted opportunity on account of the talentless director. But it's still essential for the odd gem of obscure Pistols footage, which even Temple couldn't mess up. If you want to see the definitive Pistols documentary, check out the "Never Mind The Bolloks" episode of the "Classic Albums" TV documentary series.

The Sex Pistols were a band who combined a mixture of internal fury and energy with pantomime showmanship; but this combination generated such a reaction that it became a phenomenon that the group were no longer in control. Their manager (the recently deceased Malcolm McLaren, who gets no voice in this documentary) - allegedly - ran off with all the money (or was too incompetent to make it in the first place), the group self-destructed and so literally did bassist Sid Vicious, who possibly stabbed his girlfriend before dying of a heroin overdose himself. Julien Temple's film isn't bad at conveying what it must have been like to be a member of the band, although it doesn't explore why punk was so resonant - was it just a marketing trick (as McLaren proudly thought it was, much to lead singer Johnny Rotten's disgust) or did it really strike a cord in a profoundly disillusioned youth? There are no answers here, the documentary is really just a platform for Rotten and I don't understand why the interviews with him were all shot in the dark. But it's still interesting to remember a time when a few young men could induce moral panic through a little faux-yobbery. The truth is that with 30 years of distance, even the Sex Pistols seem quaint.

The real story of punk rock will, apparently, never be told. I suppose that's because most of the surviving participants have too much ego invested; or because, as the years fade, and the original social context disappears, the meaning of Punk - at its inception - becomes harder to decipher and easier to forget.

I was in NYC in '76, when it was first breaking for the national press, and I hung around CBGBs under a number of pseudonyms, trying to write reviews and articles on bands that nobody ever heard of, many of them breaking up before I could dot the last "i" in the last paragraph. And I tried out a couple bands of my own, weird blends of Iggy and the Velvet Underground. But I was really an outsider (coming from upstate); and when the London scene started shipping singles over, I knew that, for whatever reason, my heart was really more into "Anarchy" and "White Riot" than the metal-surf-music of the Ramones or early Blondie. But this disjunction of 'right time wrong place' or whatever, allowed me to see the development of Punk in a way others seem content to ignore.

The fundamental problem that Punk never resolved (and current neo-punks are still struggling with it), is, whether Punk was to be a continuance of the "counter culture" of the '60s in different guise, or just another pop-music for sexually frustrated young people. This sounds like an empty theoretical issue, but it has one all-important concrete aspect to it no one can ignore - money. Did (do) punks make music to make music - or to make money? That question was never answered; or, perhaps, every punk answered (answers) it in his/ her own way. Yet once we begin adding up all the individual answers, most of them sure come out sounding like "money". Yet the memory of Punk survives largely because it seemed to be about anything other than money; so the dilemma continues.

That dilemma surfaces again in this film, especially in the discovery of the wretched rip-off Pistols manager Malcom McLaren pulled, not only on the audience, but on the Pistols themselves. The brief moments from the (thankfully unfinished) "Who Shot Bambi?" make it very clear that McLaren had not the slightest clue as to who the Pistols were, or what they represented. Yet he not only continued to guide their career after their break-up, but is warmly mentioned in Griel Marcus' scholarly history of Punk, "Lipstick Traces", which will probably bear influence on punk histories, long after the last "photo-album" paperback turns to dust. Yet it is clear that from the get-go McLaren's only interest was the profit.

The Pistols were right, and are right, to ignore questions concerning their "materialism" or "selling out", since they were never part of the hippies' 'anti-materialism' ideal to begin with, and because they never denied a desire for some paycheck (which they almost never got from McLaren). But also plain is their desire to make the music of the UK working-class slums from whence they came.

All of this comes to a head in the brief yet unforgettable tragedy of Sid Vicious - for whom music meant freedom, and money meant - heroin. But junky 'rockstars' don't play at commercial venues to make music. He ended up in NYC, which by then had a punk scene swarming with record-co.-exec vermin dealing dope and poseur sycophants trying to score. Eventually all that was left was the heroin, and it killed him.

This film won't resolve any of these issues; but it may help raise them, and place them in a proper light. I can't agree that it is a well-made film - the editing, which is very flashy, is also somewhat vapid, and goes out of control too often. But there's adequate reminder of the era of the Pistols here, and why it was many of us thought, at the time (and still believe) that the Pistols were the most important rock band in history.

The segment from the final performance at Winterland is worth the price of the film: same-old same-old music concerts are "no fun" and Jones and Rotten (knowing they've been betrayed by McLaren into performing for the corporate music world they hated) rub our noses in it until they've had enough and stalk off. If you can see this - and know what it's about - and still pay $200 to see Mick Jagger pull his wrinkled pud at you at the age of 65, you don't need a movie review, you need a psychiatrist.

After looking forward to seeing this for months, I was inevitably disappointed in the end result. The footage was great, and it was full of stuff nobody has ever seen before, which I appreciated. However, Julien Temple shouldn't have been let near this. Keeping the interviewees in the shadows, like they do on Unsolved Mysteries when they're trying to hide peoples identity, was much more annoying than creative. Overall, the material can't be denied, the Sex Pistols were a great band and lots of people were waiting for the definitive documentary about them, but the directing very nearly ruined it.

I'm sure much of this was redundant for "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle" fans, but I've never seen that movie and found this quite entertaining.

Many have carped at director J. Temple's election to have the boys interviewed in the dark as they look back, but I had no problem with it. We've all seen what John/Steve/Paul/Glen look like today ("Fat and 40"-to quote Mr. Rotten), as they had a late '90's reunion tour and made the publicity rounds. I thought seeing them only "young, loud, & snotty" worked just fine in the film, thank you.

They were truly a one-of-a kind band, and should never be forgotten The thing that always really bugged me was the way the Pistols were "showcased" when they got to the USA. Granted, it probably wasn't going to go too much farther anyway (with Sid a walking zombie and Johnny's utter contempt for McLaren at that point), but couldn't they at least have booked them in some clubs where their act would have been somewhat appreciated by more than just a few fans? As I recall from 1978, being a Punk/New Wave fan was tough enough in most urban cities with the amount of verbal abuse taken from your average Van Halen fan. But I can only imagine (and now, I've seen) what kind of reception they got in the Redneck bars of Dixie! Stupid Mgmt. + Stupid Venues=A Total Waste of Time.

At least we've still got the LP, which I listened to on my way to work this morning, and it hasn't lost one bit of its impact...

I remember lying in bed one night many years back listening to John Peel on a small transistor radio with an earpiece and he said he had found a new record that was so good he was going to play it twice in a row - which he did, and then proceeded to play it a third time without a pause for any other records. The song was "Anarchy for the UK" and I thought at the time that this band was going to make quite a mark. This second quasi-documentary about the Sex Pistols from director Julien Temple attempts to show just how they went on to make that mark. The justification of the music as social phenomena is maybe a bit far-fetched in reality, but told convincingly enough. A better movie than the earlier "Sid and Nancy" or Temple's own"The Great Rock and Roll Swindle" - due in no small part to the amount of largely uninterrupted music by the band, brought together in a way that amplifies the emotional impact that raw, innovative rock and roll can have. The downside is that, at the end of the day, the characters in the Sex Pistols are neither interesting or likeable - their music seems more phenomenon than the outflowings of artistic creativity. A movie to enjoy while it's on, rather than to savour on the way home. Yet at least they will be remembered long after Julien Temple has gone. Temple only followed another's tune - whether McLaren's or the Pistols - yet he follows tunes but limply and fails to make the most of the material. Even the eternal hallowing is so counter to everything that the band supposedly stood for - the Pistols were fantastic in their time - now they are just archives. Temple, sadly, misses any opportunity to draw analogy with the present day.

'The Filth And The Fury' isn't only the best music-related documentary I've ever seen, but one of the best documentaries ever made on ANY subject. Julian Temple succeeds in blending archival footage of the band, various ads, rock videos, news reports, TV comedians, Olivier's 'Richard III', and recent interviews, and by this manages to put the Sex Pistols in a musical, political and CULTURAL context. If that sounds pretentious, the movie is anything but. It is fabulously entertaining but at the same time is a fascinating, insightful HONEST portrait that should appeal to both die hard fans and novices.

So few movies or TV shows treat music seriously, or show that it can be much more than mass-produced trivialized entertainment. 'The Filth And The Fury' does exactly that and is all the more powerful for it. A revelatory piece of film! I hope every rock'n'roll fan turns off MTV and watches this instead. If they did the music world would be a much better place.

Watching the first ten minutes of F & T F, I can honestly say that I experienced the only true religious experience I've ever felt in the matrix of a movie theatre. I had an out-of-body experience, so completely was a swept into the world of Julian Temple's interpretation of what The Sex Pistols were, how they came to be, when they came to be, and the madness of Great Britain that allowed them to come to be. It was probably the only time cheek irony ever really worked, that is, playing majestically classical music during the opening credits. And then that marvelous segue from the lower-income housing courtyard to Johnny's blistering presence. As ferociously brilliant a film as the band itself. But the film is more than just about the band; it's also about the fear of the establishment when its status quo is threatened, the media, and British society. The hypocrisy of the British government is ever evident when we see a public official denouncing the band as a disgusting bunch sub-human runts that are "the antithesis to human-kind" and then later see this and play a benefit concert and host an x-mas party for the children of striking firefighters. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE PISTOLS in some respects. Their anger was grounded in the mistreatment of working people. Maybe it was a publicity booster, but I've seldom seen any American bands get their ands dirty and link up with Labor issues. The film is also about Language. It seems that using racial epithets are accepted in some British circles, but airing some traditional four letter words on public television, is still taboo. Anti-drug? Certainly. Johhny Rotten comes right out and extols the evils of Heroin and we see what it can do to a human being in Sid and his ultimate demise. SEE THIS MOVIE!

The Sex Pistols were one of the most underrated bands ever; just listen to the driving guitar of Steve Jones, the wailing dynamic voice of Johnny Rotten and the drums of Paul Cooke driving the rhythm with Glen Matlock on the bass; yes Glen Matlock on the bass and not Sid Vicious; Sid came later and couldn't play the bass, by all accounts, thus giving the band its reputation of incompetence which they didn't deserve; so they only used three chords; so what; so did some of the rock'n'roll greats of the fifties and so did The Ramones.

I am not of the same age as The Sex Pistols, I identify more with the likes of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, but I sure envied the fans in the 100 club shown in this movie when they witnessed The Sex Pistols there on Oxford Street with Sid in the audience inventing his pogo dance.

In this film we get an early glimpse of their Svengali, Malcolm McLaren, at the store SEX that he owned with his then wife Vivienne Westwood; we see him as he swans around the shop like Sean O'Casey's strutting peacock, wearing a teddy-boy suit and sporting a duck's arse hair cut; here was the opportunist who was to take The Sex Pistols to the top and leave them there; high and almost dry in America with no money, no access to credit and no communication as he refused to take or return any of their calls; McLaren was booked into a luxury hotel whilst the band had to make do with some motel.

The Pistols response to this was to tell the audience that they were getting 'one song and one song only as this isn't fun;' Johnny Rotten called on his alter ego John Lydon to relay that pathetic statement to the American crowd; this didn't seem to be the type of crowd that cut Sid's face that night with a missile earlier in an American performance; this was a crowd that took notice when they heard that it wasn't fun any more; it was then that we heard the voice over of Steve Jones saying that he had looked at Sid trying to play a bass, that he wasn't sure was plugged in, and wondered if he wanted to go ahead being a Pistol; he said he left soon after that but had regretted it ever since; he loved performing and loved the sex it had brought him throughout the touring life of The Sex Pistols.

Interviews with the members of the band were carried out in silhouette throughout and it became clear that the band trusted the man doing the interviews; one Julien Temple the director of this film who knew the band from his previous movie 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle' which he had made twenty years prior to this one.

Even though it had been twenty one years since the death of the twenty two year old Sid Vicious, the telling of the story brought a tear to Johnny Rotten's eye as it is quite clear that John Ritchie, or John Beverly, or whatever Sid's real name was, was the biggest victim in the whole Sex Pistols story; he was one of the Johns who had always been a friend of the other John the John they changed to Johnny Rotten.

There is a lot of archive footage in the film and a lot of it is entertaining; we do see the situation as it was in Britain during the seventies which led up to the famous 'winter of discontent' and we even see the man himself, Laurence Olivier, uttering those famous Shakespearian lines from his own movie 'Richard III' from whence the newspaper sub-editors stole the quote; we see political Britain and racist xenophobic Britain but we also see very funny Britain; there is footage from some of the funniest men of the day: where else can we see archive footage of Nat Jackley, Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Billy Dainty and even Arthur Askey who was as funny as toothache? There is the infamous television interview with Bill Grundy who, we are told by Steve in voice over, was drunk too – we weren't there but it was a terrible interview and the poor fellow deserved to be fired which came soon after that day in 1976.

I didn't have anything to do with these people as there was another CS on the scene in London who owned a club and knew Julien Temple but I remember them from afar as their music was as exciting as the first time people of my age had heard Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard; it was a terrible shock when they went away and Elvis started to sing ballads but bands like the Pistols hit the dust too when it stopped being fun.

Anarchic and crudely thrown together documentary charting the rise and fall of the legendary Sex Pistols. Interviews with the surviving band members and some with those no longer with us (including candid footage of both Sid Vicious and Heroin groupie Nancy Spungen) make up the majority of this romantic yet regretful look back at the Punk-era. John'Johnny Rotten' Lydon has the most to say (no surprise there then) and it is quite moving to see another side to the quintessential anarchist as he breaks down when discussing Sid's death and the extent to which Sid's name has been used as a way of making money. Essential viewing for fans, every bit as shambolic as the punk movement.

The Filth and the Fury covers the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s. This is fine example of the documentary as an art form. The film switches cleverly between concert scenes, interviews, and footage of riots and social unrest. If you are a Sex Pistols fan, the rare concert footage alone make this film worth seeing.

Even if you don't like punk rock you will enjoy this movie. The Sex Pistols were a phenomena that changed the face of music forever. Their story is both fascinating and tragic. Highly recommended.

The good: I've never really had a clear grasp on the Sex Pistols complete history as a band and this documentary did a good job at filling in all the areas I was sketchy on. I enjoyed the interviews with Lydon, Jones, Cook, Matlock and Vicious. The footage of Vicious is especially poignant--it's as if he never died and Temple just went out and interviewed him for the film. I enjoyed the footage of the show where Lydon was handing out cake to elementary school kids and then serenading them with "Pretty Vacant" (a strange scene, that). I liked the live footage of their last show in San Francisco; it was interesting to see all of the live footage actually. I thought the home footage of the Lydon family was interesting. I enjoyed the splicing in of some footage that gave a perspective on England's political/economic upheaval in the 70s. That was helpful in understanding the whole basis of this band.

The bad: What was with those spliced in scenes of Richard III, Hamlet, and other cheesy BBC (?) Shakespeare productions? I guess these characters were supposed to be like Lydon in some way? This footage just seemed kind of silly and pointless to me. I didn't like the scenes where Temple edited in Lydon's, Cook's, Matlock's, Jones' recollections over old live footage. It just didn't work well for me. Examples of this were the scenes in McClaren's clothing store. In many places, this documentary dragged; it was very slow. Overall, The Filth and the Fury is definitely worth a watch if you are curious as to the history of the Sex Pistols.

The Sex Pistols were not the greatest Punk Band (how many albums did they release?.....exactly!) still they did have the knack to develop an unusually obsessive cult following in the midst of political chaos in the 70's as well as influencing so many bands which followed. I give credit to a documentary like this one. It's not so much a history of punk, or the band for that matter, as it is a character study. The movie keeps it at the level of the band. When the band gets together, the movie begins, when it ends, it's over... The movie also is stunning for its incorporating Richard III during interviews. I'd never thought that a movie which appears do disjointed on the surface could work so well. And, you have to give credit to a songwriter who can make antichrist rhyme with anarchist.

The Filth and the Fury should be named 4 Fast, 4 Furious. The documentary covers the full career of 4 English lads (actually 5, as there were 2 bassists), known as the Sex Pistols, who begin their conquest of terrorizing `the man's' estate with what is now known as `Punk' rock. Controversial news reports and interviews commenting on this anti-establishment establishment are molded with Sex Pistols' concert footage, music videos (the documentary plays like one large one, in fact), comedy skits, and even historical film clips. But that's just the problem. While the film does a fine job at blending the music and the politics with the culture, it becomes almost too much when viewing a serious Pistol speak of a drug overdose, only to be intervened by the flimsiness of Olivier's Richard III.

What saviors this uttermost nonsense is the Pistols' brutal honesty. They admit they were not the most musical of bands or, in fact, even talented at all. Their second bassist was so poor he tried to emulate his lead singer's stage presence on stage, rather than playing up to his own aptitude. This man was Sid Vicious, an icon if there ever was one, and a spokesperson for not knowing how to handle `it'. After the breakup with the band, and perhaps with his infamous girlfriend Nancy, Sid died of a heroine overdose on a plane in 1979. He's credited with much of the gothic style (i.e. leather coat, jet black hair) that Marilyn Manson makes so famous today. Even without these immense melodic talents, the band's thematic attitude of attack and destroy was enough to generate a whole movement.

The Sex Pistols, along with rockers Billy Idol and The Clash, were able to break out the Punk scene, feeding off the chaos that was dominating the UK at the time: a rioting middleclass upset about school and job settings. As quoted by the lead vocalist and anti-star Johnny Rotten, `Sex Pistols should have happened and did.' Nothing could be closer to the truth. This Punk rock music, heavily influenced by scar, Irish folk, metal and David Bowie, along with working class backgrounds, helped the band identify with much of the social strife and race hate that was looking for some answers. The documentary's use of montage and reenactments do an excellent job at displaying the austerity of the riot acts, including an unusual garbage strike that gave rockers a new fetish for fashion.

`The Johns,' as Johnny Rotten often called them (apparently all the members birth-name were Johns), helped create new environments to escape from normal everyday life, elevating people to become more individual, original in their ideals. With Punk, women also stopped accepting themselves as second class citizens. Taking notice of this empowerment, ironically, the Pistols still crave groupie sex after all their shows, with nothing else-perfectly normal for these punk-fueled lads, I suppose.

3/5 stars

It probably takes someone like Julien Temple, who has been intimately involved in the Pistols' history, to make such a compelling documentary. Not being much of a Pistols fan, I didn't expect to be moved very deeply by this narrative, but I found myself fascinated by the plethora of material Temple has dug up, and the sophisticated, multi-layered editing. The film not only follows the Pistols' lives, but gives us a rich and detailed picture of the times that spawned them. And it completely validates their attitude - the Pistols are the only people shown here who appear completely contemporary, in contrast to a stifled society that, looking back, seems almost grotesque. It was time for the Pistols' full history to become known, including the details of their demise. Thanks to the filmmakers, now it is.

This is the Sex Pistols in their own four-letter words, probably a better way to review punk rock than in Malcolm McLaren's self-regarding version of the story, filmed by the same director twenty years earlier.

It is hard to know who could be shocked by this outpouring of meaningless blasphemy and violent rebellion against nothing very much. Yet many people were deeply outraged by the first of the punk rockers. A Welsh town tried to ban them. The giant record company EMI felt obliged to fire them. And the veteran TV presenter Bill Grundy wrecked his career by failing to restrain their foul language on a chat-show.

All of this was music to the ears of McLaren, who had been casting around for a new brand of youth-protest to replace the fading hippie culture in which he himself had been so immersed a few years earlier. Something harsher was needed, something with spikes and swastikas, laced with heroin.

The answer was Punk, perhaps the most effective four-letter word of them all, literally impossible to utter without anger and hate. The band itself is awash with hate, and self-hate, at its most unmistakable in the Sid Vicious interview, where he says he wishes he was underground. (A few months later, he was.)

Julien Temple's treatment has been praised for its subtle interleaving of newsreel to provide the social background that was supposed to justify the excesses of Punk. Personally, I can't see what's so subtle about it, though the apparently irrelevant clips from Olivier's Richard III may be putting out a message too subtle for most of us.

Still, the authorised (socialist) version of 70's England is the main theme - an oppressed working class, ripe for revolution. Johnny Rotten probably didn't realize he was revealing the flaw in the argument when he says "We don't know who 'working class' means any more." Indeed not. It used to mean manual workers and their families. By the 70's, it had swung round to mean almost everything other than this - a rentamob of full-time anarchists, unemployables, illegal immigrants and striking students and professors. (Johnny and Sid first met in higher education.)

In the end, the sheer nihilism of the subject makes it monotonous, and it doesn't help that all four of the band are actually named John, so we often don't know who is describing whom. Like all revolutionaries, they disagree about everything, except their intense loathing for Sid's girlfriend Nancy Spungen. ("Never felt such negative energy"). Still, there is a nice touch, arriving at JFK, where the customs are determined to do a full drug-search... until they take a look at Sid's underwear, and mysteriously decide to wave them through after all.

The first Julian Temple documentary on the Sex Pistols, 'The Great Rock n'Roll Swindle' was a gimmicky treatment that suggested the creation of the band was all a clever confidence trick perpetuated by Malcolm Maclaren. In his version the Pistols were a personal creation that deliberately manipulated the media and the 'suits' that ran the music industry into paying out vast amounts of cash even when the band failed to produce any material.

This second version of events is a little more honest. Maclaren is shown to be a self-deluded egotist, the real driving force being 'Johnny Rotten', and the band, far from having the upper hand, were in fact ripped off financially by the very people they were supposed to be rebelling against.

It all ended in a shambolic final concert where Rotten wails out 'No Fun' for 15 minutes and then walks off with a smirking, 'Ever felt you've been cheated?'

Trouble is; this is a lie as well. The Pistols carried on after Lydon left; sad fun and games with the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs and Sid Vicious' infamous rendering of 'My Way' being the 'highlights'. What's more, within months of Johnny Rotten's noble statement about not selling out at the end of the documentary, the Pistols reformed in the 21st century and gave progressively pathetic concerts.

It's still an interesting documentary but I guess the myth has now become so mixed up with the legend that anything approaching the truth is lost for ever.

This documentary does feature, however, an archive interview with Sid Vicious – whose real name was John, Lydon affectionately remembers - which I have never seen before. It says more about the times than anything else in the film. Although dressed in his trade mark Nazi t-shirt and initially punctuated with all the predictable anarchic attitudes, this veneer gradually slips away to reveal a young naïve man, who's life along with his heroin addiction was spiraling out of control.

No fun, indeed.