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Singer John Lydon claims the Sex Pistols were a real band. Malcolm McLaren, the seminal punk act's manager-provocateur-huckster, says that the whole Pistols phenomenon sprung from his clever mind, and that the band was merely part of his scam to grab "cash from chaos." The truth is likely somewhere in between, but McLaren entertainingly lays out his case here in what -- although billed as a Sex Pistols movie -- is undoubtedly McLaren's creation. Cobbled together by director Julien Temple from other aborted film projects, most notably the failed Roger Ebert-Russ Meyer collaboration Who Killed Bambi?, nearly half of the film is McLaren dictating to a dwarf assistant his ten-step plan for rock 'n' roll success. These edicts include "forget about the music...concentrate on creating generation gaps" and "terrorize, insult, and threaten your own useless generation." Cynical as it seems, his advice now seems prescient. Interspersed with this, we get a subplot featuring guitarist Steve Jones as a noir-era gumshoe on the trail of McLaren, for reasons the movie never explains. There is also: footage of the band's riverboat kamikaze concert during the Queen's Jubilee celebration; a surprisingly good disco medley of Pistols tracks; two Sid Vicious performances, including his infamous, expletive-laden cover of "My Way"; a Rio de Janeiro performance with British cult hero (and train robber) Ronnie Biggs on vocals; and various other acts of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Lydon had quit, or been sacked, by the time the film was in production, and is only seen in older footage. His presence is sorely missed. While Temple would later offer a more accurate portrait of the Pistols' meteoric rise and fall with The Filth and the Fury, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle remains an absolutely essential snapshot of the original British punk revolution. Bill Pearis

All Movie Guide

Let Malcolm McLaren show you how to achieve fame and fortune by making your pop group the most despised band in the world! This film about the brief but eventful career of The Sex Pistols primarily focuses on McLaren, their manager, as he presents his ten-point program on how to achieve success through chaos, ineptitude, and abusing the music industry. Despite some remarkable footage of The Sex Pistols' infamous Jubilee Day performance and clips from their final concert in San Francisco, there's surprisingly little screen time devoted to the group actually performing. Instead, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle offers McLaren's agit-prop philosophies on music, culture, politics, and the entertainment industry, as well as an amusing (if often inaccurate) account of the band's rise and fall. Along the way, we're also offered some curious animated sequences, "film noir" episodes starring guitarist Steve Jones, footage of the band recording with exiled British train robber Ronnie Biggs, and Sid Vicious singing "My Way" (he had been dead for over a year by the time the movie was released). The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle began life as "Who Killed Bambi?," a project written by Roger Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer, which closed down after two days of shooting when funding fell through. By the time McLaren and Julien Temple got it off the ground (with a radically different script), Johnny Rotten had left the group, which explains why the band's front man is hardly in the movie. The rest of the group broke up a few months later. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 826663001792
• Source: SHOUT FACTORY
• Region Code: 1
• Sound: Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound
• Language: English
• Time: 1:40:00
• Sales Rank: 10,544

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