TOMMY—uh, sorry, won’t get fooled again. “Tommy can you hear me?” beseeches one of the key songs in The Who’s celebrated/dismissed/majestic/pretentious 1969 double album “rock opera”. “Tommy, can you stand it?” is an apt cut-thru-the-bull summation of the godawful mess of a movie made from it in 1975.

111 endless minutes of wanton overkill from certifiable director Ken Russell, who leaves his signature flamboyance “deaf, dumb and blind” and jugular slashes into an incomprehensible assault on—in fast-track hydrophobic quadraphonic order—curiosity, patience and stamina, making the worst hallucinogenic experience you’ve ever had (“when I find that punk who sold this, his ass is grass”) seem like wild sex in a field of gardenias with Ann-Margret.

Ann-Margret’s one of the few good things in the movie, even if her passionately delivered performance (which nicked her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress) is a 300 Spartan stand against an army of wretched material and ludicrous direction. A skilled trouper of the first order giving her all, she has no spoken dialogue, just raw physical emoting thru facial expressions, singing and dancing. Plus she endures the famous Writhe Drunkenly in a Flood of Bubbles, Beans and Chocolate Sauce sequence, a distillation of the entire production’s orgiastic banzai charge on eyes, ears and spirit. Note that banzai charges ended in carnage and defeat.

The other viable feature—many would argue the definite highlight—is the flashy version of “Pinball Wizard” temporarily yanking us out of Stuporland as belted by Elton John from atop a pair of Dock Marten’s that would fit King Kong.

Russell’s paranoid visuals (Kong’s missing, but Marilyn Monroe gets grave-robbed) are as insistent and repellent as a swarm of horseflies, and Townsend’s messiah message score (another Oscar nomination for his adapting of the album) allow only a handful of songs that really register. It sucked in 1975—if you were a real Who fan, and it’s nigh on to unbearable a half-century later. Hold that broken bottle—we like The Who. They were outstanding in concert. There’s a ticket stub (Portland, Oct 21, 1982, with a pretty girl named Kim Ware–hi!) magnetized to my fridge, next to one for the Stones. But that take-us-seriously album impressed music critics more than their faithful, and this unbearable flick wanks from here to Leeds.

Trying valiantly: Oliver Reed, Tina Turner, the band (Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, John Entwistle), Eric Clapton, Jack Nicholson, Robert Powell, hordes of extras, scads of crazy costumes, tons of wild sets, nonstop camera moves and jarring edits that dislocate retinas and raise bile.

Cost: $3,000,000. The 9th most-attended movie in 1975. Cogerson lists a gross of $47,800,000. Box Office Mojo claims $13mil less. Pick out the good tunes on the album or YouTube. Use speakers or headphones. Crank ’em up. Take the DVD, use it like a frisbee and see how far it’ll sail.