50 Fun Facts About A Clockwork Orange

Which song does Alex sing during the home invasion in A Clockwork Orange, an improvisation by Malcolm McDowell?

Singin' in the Rain was the only song McDowell said he half knew the words to when Kubrick asked him to liven up the scene with a dance. It appears nowhere in Burgess's novel.

David Prowse, the attendant Julian in A Clockwork Orange, later wore the costume of which Star Wars character?

Darth Vader came his way after George Lucas noticed the English bodybuilder as the writer's manservant in Kubrick's film.

Which rock singer hoped to play Alex in an abandoned 1960s film of A Clockwork Orange, his band as the droogs?

Mick Jagger was keen on the lead when the Rolling Stones were lined up for the project, with Ken Russell attached to direct. The rights later passed to Kubrick.

The white outfits of Alex's droogs in A Clockwork Orange grew out of Malcolm McDowell's own kit for which sport?

Cricket whites that McDowell owned gave Kubrick the idea, and he told the actor to wear the protective box on the outside of the trousers.

The man dripping saline into Malcolm McDowell's clamped eyes in A Clockwork Orange was really what?

A doctor stood in the shot as one of the treatment staff, there to stop the actor's pinned-open eyes from drying out.

What do Alex and his droogs drink at the Korova bar in A Clockwork Orange, laced with drugs before a night out?

Milk spiked with drugs is the gang's drink of choice, taken to fortify themselves before a night of what Alex calls ultraviolence.

Which Tarantino film's torture scene, set to Stuck in the Middle With You, nods to A Clockwork Orange?

Reservoir Dogs borrows the idea of cheerful music over cruelty from Alex's home invasion, and its slow-motion walk at the start echoes the droogs too.

Which pop artist filmed A Clockwork Orange as Vinyl in 1965, six years before Stanley Kubrick?

Andy Warhol shot Vinyl in black and white at The Factory, with Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick in the cast.

A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from British cinemas for 27 years, returning only after which event?

Its director's death in 1999 ended a withdrawal Kubrick himself had requested from Warner Bros. after the press blamed the film for copycat crimes.

Which Beethoven work, played over a treatment film, can Alex no longer bear to hear in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange?

The Ninth Symphony is the piece the film ruins for him, while in the novel it is the Fifth and all classical music becomes unbearable.

Nadsat, the invented slang Alex narrates A Clockwork Orange in, borrows most of its words from which language?

Russian supplies words such as droog, from the word for a close friend, and Burgess chose invented slang so the story would never sound dated.

What job have two of Alex's former droogs taken when they find him after his release in A Clockwork Orange?

Policemen is what his old gang mates have become, and they use the uniform to settle scores by beating and nearly drowning him.

Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange omits which part of the novel, also cut from early American editions?

The final chapter shows an older Alex growing bored of violence and thinking of a family, an ending Kubrick thought unconvincing.

In A Clockwork Orange, the Ludovico technique's drugs train Alex to feel what at the thought of violence?

Nausea floods him whenever he tries to fight or grope, leaving him unable to defend himself against anyone who attacks him.

Which pet, never mentioned in the novel, does Alex own in Kubrick's film of A Clockwork Orange?

A snake is Alex's pet on screen, one of the few details Kubrick invented for a script that otherwise stays close to the book.

In the Nadsat slang of A Clockwork Orange, what does Alex mean when he calls something horrorshow?

Good is the meaning, because horrorshow is how an English ear hears khorosho, the borrowed word for it.

In A Clockwork Orange, where is Alex when his singing gives him away to the writer Mr Alexander?

In the bath, he breaks into the tune he sang during the attack, and the writer realises who his guest is. In the novel, careless remarks give Alex away instead.

In a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, which character dresses as Alex from A Clockwork Orange?

Bart wears the outfit in Treehouse of Horror III, one of many nods to the film in the series, which also had Mr. Burns use the Ludovico technique on the family dog.

Which US rating did A Clockwork Orange first receive, before Kubrick replaced 30 seconds of footage?

X was the original rating, and Kubrick swapped about 30 seconds of explicit footage to earn an R for a re-release later in 1972.

Whose version of the song Alex sings during the attack plays over the end credits of A Clockwork Orange?

Gene Kelly's recording, from his 1952 Hollywood musical, returns over the credits after Alex has sung the tune twice in the story.

What does the droog Dim smash into Alex's face as sirens approach, leaving him for arrest in A Clockwork Orange?

A bottle does the job in the film, payback for Alex's bullying, while in Burgess's novel the same droog swings his chain.

Which band refused to let Stanley Kubrick use their Atom Heart Mother suite in A Clockwork Orange?

Pink Floyd turned him down because he wanted the freedom to cut the piece up. Roger Waters later asked to use sounds from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Kubrick refused in turn.

The woman Alex kills in A Clockwork Orange, played by Miriam Karlin, is nicknamed for which pets?

Cats give the Catlady her nickname, and her death during the break-in is the crime that sends Alex to prison for murder.

Which surname did Stanley Kubrick give Alex in the film A Clockwork Orange, a name the novel never states?

DeLarge comes from a boast in the novel, where Alex calls himself Alexander the Large; newspapers later in the film muddy things by printing another surname.

Which injury did Malcolm McDowell suffer while filming the eye-clamp treatment scene in A Clockwork Orange?

A scratched cornea left him temporarily blinded, and he also cracked ribs while filming the stage show where Alex is humiliated.

How did Stanley Kubrick film Alex's point-of-view plunge from the window in A Clockwork Orange?

Dropping a boxed camera lens-first from the third storey of a hotel gave the shot, and the clockwork Newman-Sinclair survived six takes.

Which prison figure protests that the Ludovico technique has robbed Alex of free will in A Clockwork Orange?

The chaplain argues that being decent has to be a choice, an objection the government brushes aside because the treatment promises to empty crowded prisons.

Which synthesizer pioneer, famous for Switched-On Bach, created the electronic score for A Clockwork Orange?

Wendy Carlos was already at work on a piece called Timesteps before Kubrick's offer reached her, and it became a foundation of their collaboration.

Anthony Burgess said he took the title A Clockwork Orange from Cockney slang he overheard in what kind of place?

A pub in the capital was where he heard the expression in 1945, and he later said it joined something sweet and living to something cold and mechanical.

Anthony Burgess sold the film rights to A Clockwork Orange soon after its 1962 publication for roughly how much?

$500 was the whole fee, and it was the only money Burgess made directly from a film that went on to gross $114 million.

Kubrick first set aside the novel A Clockwork Orange while planning a film about which historical figure?

Napoleon fascinated both men, and Burgess later dedicated his novel Napoleon Symphony to Kubrick.

Nadsat, the slang Alex speaks in A Clockwork Orange, is named after a suffix matching which English number ending?

-teen is the English twin of the suffix, which closes the numbers eleven to nineteen, so Nadsat is simply teenage talk.

In 2008 the American Film Institute ranked A Clockwork Orange fourth in its top ten of which genre?

Science fiction is where the institute filed it, and the same body ranked Alex twelfth among its greatest screen villains.

A Clockwork Orange lost the Best Picture Oscar, and Stanley Kubrick the directing prize, to which 1971 film?

The French Connection took both awards, yet its director William Friedkin told the press that Kubrick was the best American film-maker of the year.

Which band's singer and guitarist scored a 1990 Royal Shakespeare Company musical of A Clockwork Orange?

U2's Bono and the Edge wrote the music, which Burgess, who had wanted an entirely classical score, openly disliked.

Which composer's overtures, including The Thieving Magpie, fill more of A Clockwork Orange than Beethoven does?

Rossini scores the gang fight, the fast-motion bedroom scene and the slow-motion brawl among the droogs, with his William Tell Overture joining the Magpie.

In the Nadsat slang of A Clockwork Orange, which part of the body does Alex call his gulliver?

Head is the meaning, from a borrowed word, golova, that happens to sound like the hero of Gulliver's Travels.

David Bowie opened concerts with music from A Clockwork Orange during the era of which stage persona?

Ziggy Stardust shows began with the film's electronic Beethoven, and Bowie drew on the droogs for his stage costumes of the period.

Anthony Sharp's politician, champion of the Ludovico technique in A Clockwork Orange, holds which ministry?

Interior is his brief, and Kubrick described the character as plainly a figure of the Right, set against the writer as a lunatic of the Left.

Which character, Alex's probation officer in A Clockwork Orange, is played by Aubrey Morris?

Deltoid is no ally: when Alex is arrested for murder and beaten by officers, the adviser's only contribution is to spit on him.

Malcolm McDowell won the lead in A Clockwork Orange after the 1968 film if...., made by which director?

Lindsay Anderson's film won Kubrick over: his wife recalled him replaying McDowell's entrance four or five times before declaring that they had found their Alex.

Patrick Magee, the writer in A Clockwork Orange, played the Chevalier de Balibari in which later Kubrick film?

Barry Lyndon cast him as the hero's mentor, and Steven Berkoff, another face from the earlier film, joined him as a gambling aristocrat.

The electronic main theme of A Clockwork Orange reworks music for Queen Mary's funeral by which English composer?

Henry Purcell wrote the music in 1695 for the queen's procession through London to Westminster Abbey, and the film recasts it for synthesizer.

Which country kept A Clockwork Orange banned for more than 30 years before an uncut festival screening in 2011?

Singapore turned down a request to lift the ban in 2006 before relenting, while Ireland's ban ran from 1973 to 1999.

Which Sheffield synth-pop band took its name from a fictional group mentioned in A Clockwork Orange?

Heaven 17 formed in 1980 and borrowed the name of a pop group from the book and film; their song Temptation later featured in Trainspotting.

Which Dr. Strangelove co-writer gave Stanley Kubrick a copy of the novel A Clockwork Orange in the 1960s?

Terry Southern handed it over, but Kubrick at first rejected the book because he found its invented slang too hard to follow.

Which London housing estate, built around Southmere Lake, served as a setting for A Clockwork Orange?

Thamesmead's Tavy Bridge area appears in the film, and the estate later hosted the E4 superhero drama Misfits.

Which New Yorker critic attacked A Clockwork Orange in a review titled Stanley Strangelove?

Pauline Kael called the film pornographic for the way it dehumanised Alex's victims while dwelling on his own suffering.

Anthony Burgess traced the novel A Clockwork Orange to a wartime attack by drunk soldiers on which person?

His wife Lynne was beaten by American servicemen stationed in England during the Second World War, and she later miscarried.

Stanley Kubrick said Alex in A Clockwork Orange shares his candour, wit and energy with which Shakespeare villain?

Richard III was his comparison, a character who never hides his wickedness from the audience and wins them over anyway.