Yes, this is a train wreck and certainly not what many Who fans had in their heads as they listened to the original 1969 album of the same name.

But there's a method to director Ken Russell's madness -- and IMHO he made a successful visual pop-art adaption of Townshend's story. Even Who bassist John Entwistle said, "I never knew what the story was until I saw Ken's film."

There's visual allegory and symbolism galore in this thing and my personal favorites are how the opening and closing images bring the whole story full circle. Pinballs on top of crosses, in the armament factory Nora Walker works in. Red remembrance poppies. British air bombers as crosses. Marilyn Monroe as modern goddess to be worshipped. And on and on....

As for the actual music on the soundtrack - it's very much of its time and Pete Townshend threw on as much synthesizer as he could to make up for the lack of production on the original Who album. It doesn't exactly rock, but for the purpose of this film it works.

Any fan of the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard needs to give this a watch. If you compare this to later rock concept album adaptations like "Pink Floyd's The Wall" it still stands up remarkably well.