English director Alan G. Parker’s illuminating docu Who Killed Nancy? poses a fascinating question but doesn’t provide any conclusive answers. Nancy Spungen was 20 when she was found dead in a New York hotel bathroom on October 12, 1978. Cops promptly charged her boyfriend, Sid Vicious, who had been comatose in the bedroom, with murder.
Four months later, the punk rocker succumbed to a heroin overdose, aged 21, and the case was closed. Parker (not to be confused with the veteran English director) makes a powerful case to support the view that Vicious was so zonked out on barbiturates when Nancy died, he couldn’t have killed her. There were plenty of clues which the cops apparently ignored. The murder weapon, a knife, had been wiped clean of blood and fingerprints. A large quantity of cash was missing. A succession of drug dealers, junkies and band members had passed through the room that evening. Cops did find the fingerprints of six people but none was interviewed and their names were obliterated in police reports.
Parker is hardly unbiased: he was friends with Vicious' mother, Anne Beverley, who encouraged her son’s drug habit, and she begged him to try to prove Sid’s innocence before she committed suicide in 1996.
He weaves together a compelling story using interviews with the couple’s colleagues, friends and associates, inventive animation and archival footage; but, for some strange reason, Parker didn’t talk to Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren or band members John Lydon, Paul Cook and Steve Jones, only bassist Glen Matlock. And there are no clips of the Pistols performing, just (to my ears) a bunch of boring, inter-changeable tunes by lesser lights like Terrorvision, Steve Diggle and The Delinquents.
There’s no doubt Sid was self-destructive and he did strangle a cat, but maybe he wasn’t as Vicious as history has judged him.
Extras include Alan G. Parker's story, Neon Leon’s recording of Fast Track to Hell, and outtakes of Sid Vicious at the Roxy.
