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The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle is the infinitive Sex Pistols film
In the opening scenes Malcolm McLaren is in the bath whilst a pre-pubescent girl is stood topless in the bathroom with him having her haircut. In the running film commentary director Julian Temple says the parents of the girl complained about her hair being cut but nothing about her being topless. Where were the social workers? Nowadays the film makers would have been arrested for a scene like that as it was bordering on Paedophilic. The whole point of the scene was to shock which is the whole point of the Sex Pistols' hence them promoting the Swastika on their jackets
Ronnie Biggs of Great Train Robbery fame guest starred on the film when Sex Pistols went to Rio. Ten Pole Tudor played the cinema guy who sang Who Killed Bambi? (Personally I think it was that bunny Thumper who was fed up eating dock leaves & fancied a taste of venison
)
In the opening scenes Malcolm McLaren is in the bath whilst a pre-pubescent girl is stood topless in the bathroom with him having her haircut. In the running film commentary director Julian Temple says the parents of the girl complained about her hair being cut but nothing about her being topless. Where were the social workers? Nowadays the film makers would have been arrested for a scene like that as it was bordering on Paedophilic. The whole point of the scene was to shock which is the whole point of the Sex Pistols' hence them promoting the Swastika on their jackets
Ronnie Biggs of Great Train Robbery fame guest starred on the film when Sex Pistols went to Rio. Ten Pole Tudor played the cinema guy who sang Who Killed Bambi? (Personally I think it was that bunny Thumper who was fed up eating dock leaves & fancied a taste of venison
)
But this isn't just a Sex Pistols film, it's a film on punk - and the world from which it emerged. Cut into the Pistols footage is a cross section of bands that followed in their wake - Generation X, The Dead Boys, X-Ray Spex and Sham 69. But best of all there's Terry and the Idiots. Apparently, Kowalski got lost on the way to Kings Road, ended up in Hackney and met Terry - an unemployed loser with a newly-formed punk band. Enjoy the band's first gig in the local (the Golden Shoe), watch him get a pint poured on him - then imagine the same thing happening all over the country, as punk bands sprung up in every city - most as bad as Terry and the Idiots, but all with dreams of using punk as a way out of their dull existence.
But that's not all - we get pictures of derelict London in the 70s, violence at National Front marches and of course, footage of the establishment (and Mary Whitehouse) decrying the foul-mouthed youths. It's all too easy to forget the impact of punk, with the word gradually being watered down over the years. Yet, with the possible exception of rave, no music-based movement has ever hit at the core of society as punk did when it burst into the public eye in 1976 - and the reason why DOA is still worth watching today is because it doesn't just show a couple of bands and a few strange haircuts - it shows this fear and the desolate environment that created punk.
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