Malcolm McDowell Says A Clockwork Orange Is Becoming Reality

Malcolm McDowell reckons that the dystopian vision of the future shown in his most famous movie, ‘A Clockwork Orange’, is upon us.

The 72-year-old actor told the New York Daily News that the novel by Anthony Burgess – and the film by Stanley Kubrick show 'a world in which all older people stayed indoors with their televisions on’.

“And that’s basically what happened,” he said. “It’s just the young people out there doing drugs — and he foretold all this before the drug explosion.”

He added that the book, written in 1962, and the movie, filmed in 1969, were both particularly prescient, 'so this is really before huge gang violence and drugs happened’.

“Nobody comments about Anthony Burgess anymore but he is the real genius here,” he went on.

“I don’t see any aversion therapy thank god, but it’s amazing how there’s so many people incarcerated in America. We are so backward in our thinking, we are so medieval.”

McDowell also spoke about his meetings with Burgess, during which the writer told him that he was inspired to write his controversial book after seeing a group of 'Muscovite thugs’ menaced a group of his friends, pressing their faces to the window of a cafe he and friends were drinking in.

The movie was a financial and critical hit on its release, though some commentators were disturbed by its violence. Notably, Roger Ebert gave it a damning review, calling it an 'ideological mess’.

Following the furore around the movie, including threats to his family and instances of so-called 'copycat’ violence, Kubrick asked Warner Bros to withdraw the film.

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Image credits: Rex Features