Max’s Drive-In Movie – A Clockwork Orange

This movie changed me when I was a teenager. It made me realize the power that a movie can have. Just a few movies have moved me like that, and this was one of them. Platoon and Full Metal Jacket were two others. I had seen violence before on the screen but this was realistic and brutal…especially when you are a very young guy (too young to watch this) viewing it for the first time. I had to rethink many things after seeing it.

I love the soundtrack, especially the music performed on a Moog synthesizer, which set the tone for the film. I’m not giving a synopsis of the movie…there are plenty of books and internet sites doing that… but a movie that will change you does its job and more. This film was directed by the great Stanley Kubrick and you know it’s his movie within 30 seconds of the intro. 

There is a story about a frog and a scorpion, which I relate to this movie. It goes like this. A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river, the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it is in its nature to do so.

This movie runs the gamut…cruelty, horror, the absurd, violence, pity, and justice. In my opinion, this movie shows that evil exists in all of us and what happens if we let it take over. Also, I think the movie shows you that no one can change someone’s nature no matter what drugs or treatment you may give them outside of a lobotomy. Treatment and drugs may slow them down and help but their nature is not going to change. They will at least have to keep fighting it every day. 

In the end, A Clockwork Orange challenges viewers to consider human freedom and the ethics of “curing” people against their will. This movie has been analyzed to death and rightly so. It could have only been made in the period it was made. I can’t imagine this movie coming out now…although I wish more modern filmmakers would take chances.

The scene that stick with me are the record shop scene, the Billy Boy gang fight, Singing in the Rain, and of course the eye scene… The record shop scene was filmed in the Chelsea Drugstore… I would love to have a room like that place. Very 60’s-70s futuristic…immortalized in the Stones’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”…The building is now sadly a McDonalds…modern progress?

Malcolm McDowell as Alex was excellent in this movie along with his droogs Pete (Michael Tarn), Georgie (James Marcus), and Dim (Warren Clarke). 

Plot from IMDB

Alex DeLarge is an “ultraviolent” youth in futuristic Britain. As with all luck, his eventually runs out and he’s arrested and convicted of murder. While in prison, Alex learns of an experimental program in which convicts are programmed to detest violence. If he goes through the program, his sentence will be reduced and he will be back on the streets sooner than expected. But Alex’s ordeals are far from over once he hits the streets of Britain.

The cool car is an Adams Probe 16 AB/4 that was referred to as a Durango 95 in the film has been restored…

The Record Shop (Chelsea Drugstore)

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Adams Probe 16 AB/4

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

50 thoughts on “Max’s Drive-In Movie – A Clockwork Orange”

  4. That story about the Frog and Scorpion is very eery indeed especially given the context of the movie.
    I’ve had this one on my rewatch list for years, but I’m afraid to pull the trigger.
    As you wrote kids should definitely not be allowed to watch this.

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    1. I saw it entirely too young…I thought that fable fit the movie pretty well. It’s almost like two movies…the very violent first half and then after “the cure”

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    1. obbverse…the film has stuck with me through all of the years. I never can go long without watching it…almost reluctantly. It’s one of the few films that touched me more than just a movie…that includes The Shining and his other movies…this one is just different.

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      2. I know right on that car! Yes…I love that car…I had to include that and the once Drugstore…now serving big macs…ARGGGGGG

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  12. I also saw this film too young. I think this was the first time i’d come across the notion of sadism and it terrified me; that someone could take such perverse joy from committing violence. That feeling would disturb me again years later when I say “House Of A 1000 Corpses”. Now, seeing that kind of sadism in everyday political banter reallyt disturbs me.

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  15. A brilliant movie adapted to the silver screen of a brilliant novel. I saw the movie years ago and read the book a few years ago. What a scathing comment on social engineering. What I learned after reading the book is that they left off the book’s real ending and banned the last couple of chapters in the U.S. They wanted to leave a depraved impression of “today’s” youth (back at that time,) which allowed real life agents of control and repression to continue their abuses unabated. I truly loved this film for so many reasons, not least is the artistic flair it shows in costumes and in the violent scenes. A power satire that is not forgotten once seen. Max, I think all 3 of the movies you mention are directed by Kubrick, a genius in making movies. Dr. Strangelove is another one of his I think is brilliant.

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    1. I like Dr Strangelove is brilliant as well. This was not a movie a 13 year old should have watched…but it made a mark on me…a good one…not bad.
      I need to read the book…Full Metal Jacket yes it is directed by him…I think Platoon was by Oliver Stone….and it is powerful. I remember a friend and I were riding home after watching it…silence the 45 minute drive home.

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      1. You’re right, a 13 year old should not be watching that, male or female. Glad it had a good effect. Could have gone the other way. Oh ok on Oliver Stone. He’s another one that makes memorable movies. Natural Born Killers is a masterpiece. Is Platoon with D’Nofrio in it (sp?)

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  17. I’ve only heard of the movie but never watched it. Based on your post and the trailer, it looks pretty disturbing. I did watch the two only Stanley Kubrick pictures you mentioned, “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket”, and they were pretty intense as well.

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    1. This one goes past intense… but it makes you think for sure. The violence is not gory or anything like that…but it’s so real that it is shocking.
      Basically…can you change someone’s nature? For me that is what I get out of it.

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  18. Yes high on my radar. Have watched it numerous times especially when it first came out. So much going on and so many scenes , images, duologue, music that have stayed with me. A bit of an assault on the senses. Casting was spot on. English actors are hard to beat.
    Yeah I can relate to the effect it has and had on you. I have the soundtrack album in the pile somewhere. A film experience for sure.

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  22. It is a very disturbing movie, but one I saw about three times in my younger days (it came out when I was not quite 20). I read through your comments and saw you’d seen it at 13, which is far too young, but who could have stopped you, anyway?! It’s a style-filled movie, wouldn’t you say, so probably would have appealed to your artistic sense as much as anything else.

    The book, by Anthony Burgess, was written in the early sixties so Kubrick did an interesting trick in taking it through the brightness of the late sixties/early seventies (which, even though it wasn’t set in those years, borrowed some of the decor from them) and plunging it into anarchy, if that makes any sense.

    Not a violent movie? No, not in the sense of blood and gore, but I would say it’s one of the most subversively violent films that was made in those days. The word that springs to my mind to describe it, is ‘insidious’.

    The location of the record shop was a place I used to frequent often. (And even took a visiting American penfriend to it one day.) The Chelsea Drug Store was where I got a lot of my black-light and other gig posters. The walls were ‘papered’ with thick silver melamine, which is a highly-reflective plastic in sheets, made to look like a mirror. I’ve had a small roll of it since the late sixties (even brought it with me to Wales! Just shows how hard it is sometimes to let go of nostalgia). I’m not sure about the brass-coloured walls that you see in the movie (the ones with the arches) but they may have been gold melamine. Or maybe brass sheets.

    But the movie, itself. It’s not one I want to watch again, but am glad I did then.

    Have you seen Nicholas Roeg’s movie Performance? It has Mick Jagger and James Fox, and is another very disturbing (and strange) film of the time.

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    1. Thanks Val! I owe you an email! It’s great to see you again.

      Yes 13 was too young and I was at a friends house where the parents didn’t pay attention. I loved this movie from the start. Not one that is always easy to watch because it is challenging but I love it.

      Yes I saw Performance and it is disturbing at times as well…I did like it a lot. I guess I like disturbing movies!

      I’m so jealous of you going into that record shop. It looked so cool…I would love to have a room in my house that looked like that.

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      1. Not sure there was actually a record shop there. Apart from an upstairs (with glass stairs, I think, so looking through was a bit freaky) I used to go down some steps to the basement to get my posters, etc. I’ve been wondering about making a miniature of some of it. (There are a lot of photos of it on Pinterest, if you want to take a look.) Maybe I will one day.

        Here’s a pic of the bar, there (I don’t remember the awful carpet!)

        https://www.ribapix.com/chelsea-drugstore-kings-road-chelsea-london-the-bar_riba4976

        and an article about the place:

        https://flashbak.com/there-used-to-be-a-chelsea-drugstore-on-the-kings-road-7096/

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      2. Those are great pictures! I love the article as well…I do hate what it is now…it’s just not right but predictable.
        They might have just setup the record shop for the film.

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