The Death and Resurrection Show

The Killing Joke - I never liked it. Just another noisy band with an unpleasant voice. If the voice annoys me, the song pushes the "Ignore!"-button. So my question to this documentary was: Why the hell is The Killing Joke - moderately - famous? It delivers some answers, tells a story of obsession, drama, music press fodder, the power of a strong public image and enigmatic lyrics. My ignorance of The Killing Joke probably worked in my favor, as they didn't tell me anything I did already know. For me this movie was a new and interesting vignette of 20th century pop culture.

The KJs obsession with the occult is a central theme of this documentary. It motivates them, it unites and divides them. But don't let all the mumbo-jumbo about "magic" repel you, just see it as an important plot device - as that it works quite well for this movie.

Aleister Crowley, the embodiment of modern occultism, was a funny guy. Even when he was deadly serious with the things he did, you can look at it all as a very elaborate kind of joke. Therefore it absolutely makes sense that KJ's Singer, Jaz Coleman (another JC), who actually considers himself to be a great magician and a successor of Crowley, stylized himself as a court jester, a joker. It's all a big joke. But it's also real. Placebos are real. Faith can make it real. If somebody takes a placebo, but he is convinced that it's a poison pill, he can actually die. Some jokes can kill you.

Did magic work for the KJs? They sure think it did. Did it work for me? No. I checked out some of their better known titles, but I'm still: You sold your soul for THAT? Seriously, bro, you must be joking!

Yes, this documentary should have been 60 minutes shorter, more concise, more effective. It would have been much better, more attractive to a wider audience. As it is, it will not leave much of an impact outside of Killing Joke's parish. And that's too bad. I'd love to see more documentaries like this, real efforts to tell astonishing tales about unique bands. A documentary about the great Alien Sex Fiend. Or about King Kurt - answering the question: "Does flour work?"

I think I am writing the first review of this film. I have followed modern music throughout most of my life and whilst I had heard of the group Killing Joke, I knew nothing about them and was not familiar with any of their music. Having seen this film, I am not much better off. I am sure that we have all watched documentaries about pop groups - their formation, successes and failures, the inevitable reliance upon drugs and booze, the lies and deceptions and the final falling out. This film is no different save that the group is still going as far as I know. You get more or less what you would expect with two possible exceptions. Firstly, the members of the group profess an affinity with mysticism and the dark arts generally with many references to metaphysical events which they claim to have experienced and which permeate their music or at least that's what they say and if you could actually hear any of their lyrics, this may well be true. Secondly, the "front man " is a remarkable individual called Jaz Coleman. A very intelligent and talented man but as is so often the case with such people,deeply flawed with self-confessed stays in psychiatric hospitals and narcotic addictions.I was not particularly engaged when watching this film as I found the group members and attendant managers and disgruntled former managers to be by and large the sort of people I would very much wish to avoid.I am sure that if you took any well known past or present rock band and put the members under a microscope, threw in some archive footage and vague reminiscences from people who claim to know or have known them, you would not see very much different than what is portrayed here. I can't see that this film would appeal to anyone other than a die-hard Killing Joke fan and surprisingly there are plenty of them..

When it's covering Killing Joke's music, or the political/social values of the band's members, or the way their music reflected the times, it's pretty good stuff.

When its covering occult topics, horoscopes, and even things like UFOs (briefly), I couldn't really vibe with it. If all that stuff is integral to the band and its members I understand to some extent, but I don't think the documentary interweaved these fairly extreme themes into a music documentary very effectively or coherently.

So it's a mixed bag. Maybe 2/3s of it was quite good, but I wasn't a fan of the other 1/3, so I did end up feeling its two and a half hour long runtime.

But at the same time, I did like watching a documentary on a band I'm not super familiar with- I've only really listened to Night Time of all their albums. They're definitely an interesting and influential band, and this documentary will probably be great to big Killing Joke fans, and decent to pretty good to non-fans like myself.

I used to be a big fan of this band. I had all their albums up to 2003's self-titled album. I had started to lose interest by then, but still think their early albums are interesting, mostly due to the unique guitar playing of Geordie. He is one of the most idiosyncratic and original guitar players working in rock music.

However, this movie was poorly done. For a start, the sound mixing was horrible, and it was hard to understand what was being said during much of the movie. I also would have preferred to see and hear more of the personal interactions between the band members, and how they got along over the years, and how the various albums were created. Instead, what we are treated to is the Jaz Coleman clown show. Jaz making countless inane pronouncements on this or that childish and ridiculous occult topic. Jaz really should think about growing up. His juvenile obsession with the occult is extremely tedious. And furthermore, for someone who professes to know so much about the topic, he should at least know how to pronounce Aleister Crowley's name. He mispronounces Crowley's last name. In addition to his occult-mania, we get Jaz the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, ranting on about more nonsense. How in the world he manages to get up in the morning and put his trousers on is really beyond me.

I've always thought Killing Joke were a bit special so wanted to see if there was anything worth learning from this documentary.

As it turns out the band have an interesting history, particularly with their Occultism background, and this kind of explains the power and shape of the music.

However 2.5 hours is waaay too long for a rockumentary and there was a lot of waffle it could've done without. As well, it must be a top contender in the worse movie sound awards. Much of the dialogue is drowned in soundtrack or lost in sinister rumble or is just plain badly recorded. There's no excuse for it unless you've only got found footage. Fortunately the music audio was OK. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of it.

The other problem is that if you're not a fan, you're not gonna follow the plot. Assumptions are made that the viewer already knows that A) followed B). And when events unfold via incomprehensible mumbling, well, good luck with that. Between the film's length and the crap audio, I found myself drifting off, because it couldn't make me care about what bloke 1 and bloke 2 were saying.

On the plus side, it was nice to get to know the lads, each of them characters essential to the tale and for the undeniable chemical reaction. A glimpse into the fiery mind of Jaz Coleman was fascinating, although, watching in 2022, the frequent references to 'energy' and such feel dated and a bit cheesy, pinned to that Gen X era . The earnest prophetic 'storm coming' bits at the end made me wonder if Jaz might today be a QAnonner. It's a kind of Magick.

Killing Joke are one of the sharpest and most original British bands ever, so it was definitely worth making a film about them. Maybe a better one than this though.

(The graphics/animation in the closing credits was great though.)