This movie has aired a couple times on VH1 Classics, and it was on my Netflix list, so I Tivo’d it so I could watch it now instead of waiting.
And it was largely worth seeing. Obviously I was too young to really be involved or interested in the punk scene in the late 1970s (they broke up before I even turned 10 years old). But anyone who knows anything about music knows that The Sex Pistols are the posterchildren for the punk scene.
What is comical to me is that the Pistols music was pretty benign (although played and performed very badly) when compared to other more modern music – KMFDM, or Ministry, or Killing Joke are all bands from the late 1980s and early 1990s that I consider much more…sinister (and hey – I was a bit of a goth in the late 80s and 90s before I discovered techno and became a raver instead). The only thing really “sinister” about the Pistols is their attitudes, but based on “The Filth and the Fury” they had a lot to be angry about in 1970s England. And they weren’t so much sinister as antiestablishment and antimonarchy. Who isn’t, nowadays?
I’ve seen “Sid and Nancy” many many times (it’s one of those trainwreck movies that you just can’t look away from when it’s on TV – but not in a good way) but it was only until I saw “Fury” that I realized just how much Johnny Rotten and all the other guys truly hated Nancy Spungeon, Rotten especially for what she did to Sid Vicious (read: got him hooked on heroin, which led to his killing her in their NYC apartment and later dying of a drug overdose while awaiting trial).
Even if you aren’t a fan of the Pistols (I’m not, particularly), it was a very interesting documentary – and I loved seeing Siouxsie Sioux (of whom I AM a fan from her early Siouxie and the Banshees days) and a very young Billy Idol. Oh, and Sting, which I thought was hilarious.
3 1/2 safety pins out of five.