After recently watching A Clockwork Orange for the first time in years, I think I can safely say that it will be a few more before I ever watch it again. It's such an intelligent and wonderfully weird film, with an eternal score by the wonderful Wendy Carlos, some incredible slow motion work and a truckload of big, weighty themes. But it's also super fucking gross.
Everything in it is revolting - the fashion, the decor, the way Alex eats those peas at the end, the perv teacher drinking the water with the false teeth in the glass. Malcom MacDowell's smirk is deeply creepy, his singing and clumsy use of ultra-violence is off-putting and his retching once he goes through the treatment is properly appalling. That gorgeous Carlos soundtrack is the only part of the film I would ever want to revisit (I always thought it makes a great soundtrack to any writing efforts).
Kurbick famously took this movie out of circulation in the UK for several decades because he was concerned about copycat crime, but he shouldn't have bothered. Everything in the story of Alex and his droogs is awful, and there is nothing there that anyone should want to repeat.
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