La Grande Escroquerie du rock'n'roll

Pseudo-documentary about the revolutionary Sex Pistols and the creation of the British punk movement told through images, songs, animation, interviews, and other genuinely entertaining bits and pieces. The film is more of a creative work then a documentary, as it weaves a story about how the Pistols swindled music company after music company, behind their dictatorial manager, Malcolm McLaren. If nothing else, a must for fans of punk music or the Pistols, as their is a lot of interesting archival footage of the band from their brief but legendary existence. A lot of good songs too, including a disco version of 3 of the Pistols's hits, and my personal favorite, "Friggin in the Riggin," set to an animated sequence paralleling the Pistols's history.

As I've had the sound track for many years, I finally took the opportunity to watch the movie. My initial response was that this movie seemed so sliced and diced, it made the editing of "Manos: The Hands of Fate" look like brain surgery by comparison. My guess is that Malcolm McLaren had multiple cans of Sex Pistols footage lying around, and was having a difficult time trying to make a film out of it. To get his creative juices flowing, he'd cut segments from every reel; roll them up; snort lines of cocaine with them, and finally tell Julian Temple "to fix that bit of film with this bit I just used". Whilst in the process, the coke inflated McLaren's ego, and he came up with the idea to make the incomplete "Who Killed Bambi" into a documentary explaining how he orchestrated everything!

This movie tries so hard to be clever, instead it just seems immature and uninspired. All there is going on, is that we have band members doing dumb things; McLaren claiming credit though without any proof backing up anything he's saying, and some decent footage of Sex Pistols shows.

Some many years later, the film was pretty much confirmed as a lie, in that time McLaren wasn't known to repeat the same method and end up with the same results. These days this film is considered a tongue-in-cheek mockumentary instead of a pile of crap. So, there really was no reason to make this film, other than money.

The only value this film has is that it contains archival footage, other than that it really didn't need to be told in the fictitious tale of McLaren. It would've done better if it was narrated to the audience like it was a scrapbook. But, because it's told in such a fictitious manner the audience is left possibly irritated, or numb.

I'd give it a 8/10 because it contains decent live footage of a band I love. But, I'd give it 3/10 because the movie is a lie; so poorly edited, and presented to the audience that it is supposed to be an actual film. I meet in the middle at 5/10.

To this day, Malcolm McLaren is telling anyone daft enough to believe him that the Sex Pistols were his idea and that the band members were his puppets to be used to make him money. There is a good reason for him doing this, namely that he is a liar.

Here are some real facts.

* McLaren was actually approached by the band to be manager, not the other way round.

* The Pistols were a proper, organic band and not created by McLaren or anyone else. Jones and Cook were childhood friends. Rotten and Vicious went back a long way too. This is something that has led to unfair criticism of the Pistols down the years as they have been likened to manufactured boy bands.

* The band and no one else wrote the songs, recorded them, played live, created the publicity and gave the interviews.

* McLaren did not instigate the Bill Grundy incident. The Pistols only appeared on the programme because Queen had pulled out. According to the band, McLaren was cowering in the back in case arrests were about to be made.

* Johnny Rotten walked out of the band. He was not sacked.

* Far from outwitting the Sex Pistols, John Lydon (Rotten) actually successfully sued him in the 1980s for control and a considerable sum of money. Some of the evidence used by Lydon's lawyers was from McLaren's boasting in 'The Great Rock & Roll Swindle'. This would suggest that McLaren is none too bright despite his affectations.

* The sackings and subsequent pay offs from A & M and EMI were, again, not engineered, it was merely the way things panned out.

* McLaren boasts about the money he made from the band. If he had been competent, he could have made a great deal more. It seems he coudn't even organise gigs properly.

* McLaren's claim at the start of the film that he invented punk rock can be disproved in about ten seconds. The Pistols were not the first punk band, merely the most high profile.

This is a terrible film. The only parts worth watching are the genuine footage of the band, later put to much better use in 'The Filth And The Fury'.

Malcolm McLaren and Julien Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle offers up a load of old twaddle about the (rapid) rise and fall of the Sex Pistols. It's basically McLaren literally flogging a dead horse and milking the Pistols for all he could. And acting like he came out on top, shining. Blah blah blah.

But who cares. It has great Pistols/punk footage and music. And that's all that counts.

Julien Temple's inaccurate depiction of the rise and fall of British punk pioneers the Sex Pistols is nevertheless an entertaining tale of life in the music industry. Told from the perspective of the group's erstwhile manager Malcolm Mclaren, it charts the creation, development, hyping and subsequent implosion of the Sex Pistols, up to early 1979, when bass player Sid Vicious committed suicide.

Drawing on archive footage (not all of which is authentic), mixed with animation, newsreels and Mclaren's narration - the film is often as haphazard and random as the genre it speaks of, but, bolstered with music by the Sex Pistols (And peculiar partnerships of the group with odd guests, such as Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs), the film trundles along at a cheerful pace.

Much of the film is in exceptionally bad taste (The nude teenager "Sue Catwoman" - whose underwear was visibly chromakeyed in when the censors refused to pass the scene, the pedophile music boss, Martin Boormann singing "Belsen Was A Gas", for example), and its rambling plot bears testimony to the numerous rewites needed over the three years it took to produce, during which time the director was replaced (Russ Meyer was originally to direct), the financial backers changed more than once, the Sex Pistols formally split up, the film was retitled from "Who Killed Bambi?", and Sid Vicious died having (allegedly) killed his girlfriend.

In real terms, the film is not brilliant, and its factual inaccuracies have since been proven in court, but as an artistic statement and a chronicle of the punk scene in London in 1978, it's very enjoyable, and should form part of any serious music-fan's "History" section.