A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange is based on the book of the same name by Anthony Burgess. It is said that Stanley Kubrick made this movie because of the failure of Waterloo(1970). After he completed 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), he had planned to film a movie about Napoléon Bonaparte's life. After many years of research, he sent location scouts to various Eastern European locations, and even had an agreement with the Yugoslav army to supply troops for the vast battle scenes. However, after "Waterloo" tanked, Kubrick's financial backers pulled out. He thus decided to adapt the American version of "Clockwork", which had been given to him by Terry Southern (co-writer of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)).

Reactions

"There was a lot of humour, but when it came out, because it was so startling and shocking, people just sat there dead silent. At the end, they didn't move out of their seats."- McDowell

Mary Whitehouse, moral activist said it was "sickening and disgusting...I had to come out after twenty minutes", she then got it removed from British cinemas.

UK 'banning' of the film

Contrary to popular claims, this was never banned in the UK. It originally received an "X" rating in 1971 and was withdrawn from distribution in 1973 by Stanley Kubrick himself. One of Kubrick's reasons for withdrawing the movie in the UK was that, according to his wife Christiane Kubrick, he and his family received several death threats because of the film. In the 1980s and 1990s, British fans who wanted to see this movie would have to order it from video stores in other countries, usually France. In 1993 London's popular Scala Film Club showed this movie without permission. At Kubrick's insistence, Warner Brothers sued and won, causing the Scala to close in near bankruptcy. In 2000, the year after Kubrick's death, the film was released again throughout Great Britain and received an "18" rating.

The two copycat crimes that prompted Stanley Kubrick to have the film withdrawn in the United Kingdom were the rape of a Dutch girl in Lancashire in 1973 at the hands of men singing "Singin' in the Rain" and the beating of a 16 year old boy who had beaten a younger child whilst wearing Alex's uniform of white overalls, a black bowler hat and combat boots.