Set in an uncertain time, but sometime in the future, in England.

Alex (Malcom McDowell) is a young offender who chooses to be cured by mind control whilst in prison - convicted for an extremely sick/violent rape/murder. He is conditioned to be repulsed by sex and violence.

The movie begins by studying a violent youth alternate-class (Droogs) who have adopted their own method of language, engage in ultra violence and a 'bit of the in-out' (sex).

On being released from prison after 'treatment', Alex finds an unforgiving society, even though he is now 'cured' from his criminal impulses. Unable to live at home, he is forced out on the streets.

A down-and-out recognizes him. Saving him from the other homeless, two police officers, who originally were part of Alex's Droogie crime-circle whom he had betrayed, give him a beating.

Staggering from the beating he received, he comes upon the house where he had earlier broken into to viciously rape a woman and beat a man for no reason in particular. Whilst he initially does not recognize him (Alex wore a mask and a long pointy nose during the attack) the man eventually realizes it is Alex when he sings 'Singing in the rain' - the song sung while he committed the attacks. Alex is drugged and, whilst having Beethoven played to him as torture, jumps from a window as he tries to 'snuff it.' He survives and ends up in hospital.

By this time, attitudes to the mind control he has been through has led to a policy change in the government and the minister attempts to ingratiate himself with Alex - Alex is now the victim - the man whose wife he had killed is 'put away' and no expense spared to set Alex up for life again...

A triumph of horribility. A nasty-vicious scab of a movie which one cannot stop oneself from picking at to make it bleed profusely upon the carpet of all our comfortable well beingnesses. A stunning masterpiece of domestic horror.

Oh! the differing languages of youth, determined to etch their mark amongst peers by communication via a special melody. Of a mind controlling police state willing to tweak the eye balls in their sockets of the young to prevent their continuance along the road of naughty offenditude.

I have, many a time in these volumes, expressed my complete bewitched enthusiasm for all of Kubrick's quintessential creations. This movie has triumphantly nothing of pleasure to offer it's viewers - Kubrick, the genius, has this time put nothing upon the stick of enticement other than a rotten carrot to lead us forwards!

The movie is truly nasty in places: I had to watch the entire 9th series of Friends again before the feeling came back to my goodwill to mankind muscles.

Stanley Kubrick had this movie effectively banned in England following a string of apparently similar attacks (he would sue anyone who showed it). It was released immediately on his death...

The movie is a very uncomfortable one, but one that makes very astute observations about how our society could (did?) evolve. Not a feel good movie in the slightest, and at the end even then the viewer is not let off the hook.