Review of Sid and Nancy (1986) by Lucas D — 30 Apr 2014

Written and directed by Alex Cox, then hot of the success of his feature debut Repo Man (1984), this started life as a script Cox wrote in 1980 called Too Kool To Die, lightly inspired by the death of Sid Vicious, however when he heard of a potential Hollywood version in development starring Rupert Everett and Madonna.

Cox quickly got this version made, and it's a tragic and very painful love story. This tells the story of how Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) met American groupie Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), who came to England to bed the Sex Pistols, the two fall in love but after the Pistols split up after their ill-fated American tour in 1978, that brings Sid and Nancy closer together, it gives Sid more freedom to do what he wants.

They move to Paris to start a solo career, but no-one will take Sid seriously, because he has a very bad heroin addiction, and he's become very unreliable. Sid and Nancy take residence in the bohemian Hotel Chelsea in New York, descending into a hellish abyss of dangerous drug usage.

It might not have been historically accurate, but Cox succeeded at creating a punk Romeo and Juliet in a weird, twisted way. For a film about the noise and angst of the punk movement, Cox finds a sweet and doomed love story in the eye of the storm, but the film briefly made Cox a big name in Hollywood, shame it didn't last.