Lech Kowalski's DOA (1981)

Folks, if you're at all into punk, this is a must see!
I saw it twice while an undergraduate in Chapel Hill, and it stuck with me: the raucous scene, the one and only 1978 Sex Pistols tour of the American South, and glimpses of a lot of performances, telling glimpses of the Clash, X-Ray Spex, Generation X, Sham 69, and a touch of Iggy Pop. It's shot in punk noir style -- thank God for Lech Kowalski, a D.A. Pennebaker of punk and immediate precursor to Penelope Spheeris in covering the fringe milieu! There are even helpful lyric lines splashed over the screen when the Pistols dish out their happy little ditties. The filmed audience reaction is fascinating, one fan enthusing: "When I saw Johnny Rotten's face I thought I'd vomit, he's so beautiful."


In DOA, we get to see Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious making various witty observations, Nancy at one point declaring about her relationship with Sid, who of course later killed her in their room at the Hotel Chelsea: "We have good fun. We help each other out." Indeed, Sid is the anti-star of this wild documentary film. To see their last days fictionally portrayed, there's the 1986 Alex Cox film Sid and Nancy, or Love Kills. But DOA is hard to beat -- and hard to find in the USA.

God Save the Queen!