The milky bar kid

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2016)

A Clockwork Orange was always a film I wanted to watch but it was one of these films that I was too young to watch when it was initially released in British cinemas and then banned by Director Stanley Kubrick from being available in Britain. The ban remained until he died.
The film became infamous for its depiction of violence and sex. It overlooked the fact that despite its initial scenes of brutality and rape, in its heart it is a dark comedy set in a futuristic Dystopian Britain.
An adaptation of Anthony Burgess novel, Malcolm McDowell might be a shade too old to play the teenage delinquent Alex getting high on milk-plus which is infused with drugs and then partakes in an orgy of ultra-violence which includes beating up a vagrant, fighting with a rival gang and then speeding through the country roads where they burst into the house of a writer who gets beaten up and watches his wife get raped as Alex sings Singin in the rain.
We know Alex is still at school as he lives in his parents flat and is visited the next morning by his probation officer who is concerned about his absence from school.
However Alex's luck runs out. He falls out with his fellow gang members and when he breaks into another house, he kills a woman with a phallic sculpture, betrayed by his gang and caught by the police, he is sentenced to 14 years in jail.
The opening part of the film would had been deemed shocking in early 1970s Britain. I doubt that level of sex and savagery would had ever been seen before in a mainstream British film.
However the film becomes more of a surreal prison film once Alex ends up in jail where he joins a church group and tries to fend off advances from fellow inmates. A visiting government minister offers him a chance to take part in an experiment. Once he undertakes an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals within two weeks the film becomes a black revenge comedy.
Once freed from prison and rehabilitated Alex finds there is no room for him in his parents home, he gets set upon by a gang of vagrants as the tramp who he beat up in the beginning recognises Alex. His old gang members are now in the police and they torture him. Worse still he stumbles into the house of the writer who he attacked and he gets his vengeance as well. Poor Alex now cannot listen to his favourite piece of Beethoven without doing harm to himself.
There is an underlying political satire of a government wanting to tackle violence in society by being draconian themselves until public opinion turns against them.
The film contains a lot of slang derived from east European languages and although I mentioned he looked rather old to play the teenage Alex, Malcolm McDowell delivers an amazing performance providing a narrative with his Yorkshire tones.
The film might put off some of its audience with its disturbing opening but settles in well after that.