Movie Gadget Friday: The Head Clamp from A Clockwork Orange
posted September 10th 2004 5:44PM
For this week's Movie Gadget Friday Josie Fraser takes a look at a multipurpose gadget from everybody's favorite ultraviolence movie, A Clockwork Orange:
Like last week's director Brian De Palma
, Stanley Kubrick is a creative talent who doesn't shy away from making bizarre castings, like getting the almost 30 year old Malcolm McDowell to play the role of Burgess's 15 year old reprobate Alex de Large. OK - so the movie would have had zero chance of ever being bankrolled or released with a 15-year-old protagonist getting up to Alex's nasty deeds (kind of the point of the book…). It does seem a bit weird though that Alex, rapist, killer and fully-grown man, still wants to live with his mum and dad. Also, at fifteen, McDowell's head may have been a bit smaller resulting in less damage during the shooting of the head clamp scene - he was temporarily blinded after scratching a cornea during the filming. The moral being that this is a gadget for qualified medical professionals only, unless you have good insurance.
Eventually caught for one of his crimes — the murder of Catlady, a middle aged woman who lives with multiple cats and phallic sculptures, but isn't called Phalliclady for some reason — Alex is offered his liberty in exchange for undergoing the experimental Ludovico Technique. This consists of wearing the spectacular head dress and attending the carnival of unmitigated pain: the head clamp allows endless agony-enhancing chemicals to be pumped directly into your brain while you're simultaneously force fed images of extreme grimness of all kinds, shapes and sizes.
The treatment is a huge success and afterwards Alex is unable to consider anything involving violence or badly synthesised classical music without vomiting and pain.
Little Known Fact: along with the boot licking scene, the Ludovico Technique scenes are the most popular
Movieoke request at
Aversion Therapist get-togethers.
Click here for last week's Movie Gadget Friday: The Pong console from Brian de Palma's The Fury
Here in my part of Texas we've got special rope "headphones" for people who refer to the work of W. Carlos as "badly synthesized".
yeah, i'm sorry. but you're not permitted to disparage what is widely regarded as one of the most forward-thinking, stylistically pure, and technologically influential pieces of film music ever created. you are not merely passing judgement on a Rollerball (1975) or even a Logan's Run (1976). have some respect. shame.
just wanted to note that in the film at least (and i'm fairly certain the book as well, because i seem to remember that being where i finally figured this out) it is a needle full of evil drugs that gives him the pain (they call it "vitamins") and the helmet thing is just to keep his eyes open and monitor his brain state.