Film Review: ‘Who Killed Nancy’ directed by Alan Parker

In October 1978, Sid Vicious was accused of killing his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in the Chelsea Hotel. Nancy had become notorious in the punk rock circles for her outrageous behavior. She had a history of mental illness and had worked occasionally as both a prostitute and stripper before finding Sid. When they met in England the relationship quickly became toxic. It is widely believed that Nancy was the one who introduced Sid to heroin. Since her death it has been fashionable to consider Nancy a demonic groupie who destroyed the life of a punk rock legend.

Alan Parker had become friends with Sid’s mother Ann Beverly before she committed suicide in 1996. Before she died it was Beverly who told Parker to clear her son's name. This documentary is both a promise to Sid’s mother and an attempt by the journalist to simply discover the truth.

The case was closed after Sid died of a drug overdose four months after Nancy’s murder. Questions have remained ever since among people who had actually known the couple. In 2009, music journalist Alan Parker created a documentary that sought to examine the crime evidence of that night. In countless interviews with those who had been witness to the destructive behavior of the couple, some also voice suspicion about the truth. Former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren himself expressed doubts about Sid's guilt. If anything, McLaren felt that the demise of Nancy could have been a suicide pact gone wrong.

Even though Sid himself had a history of his own difficulties coping with life, most fans consider Nancy to be evil personified. There have been movies and books about Sid and Nancy with a special emphasis on Nancy as this mentally ill tyrant that nobody liked. Whether she actually killed herself, was killed by a drug dealer, or simply lived so hard she had to die young, this film tries to bring a more balanced view about her. Many witnesses have expressed how much Nancy was hard to take for too long. She was angry and almost defiant to an extreme. Her own mother said that she was a child who lived to upset others. Such extreme antisocial tendencies support the theory that Nancy was a schizophrenic who made her condition worse by using heroin. Whatever the case, the film offers an alternate view of what might have happened the night she died. Although both are now long dead, if someone else was responsible for her murder, it is only fitting that the truth be revealed to clear Sid as the one responsible.