I first saw this as a teenager in the early 80s, after having grown up watching Monty Python my whole life. The whole prison guard character made me crack up, the way he would bark out whatever he had to say. Especially, "Shut your filthy hole, you scum!" I can absolutely hear the next line as, "Your type really makes me puke!"
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
This scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucgU2DJlBiw
Many scenes in the movie reminded me of Monty Python. It is often-inane dark humour after all, so not too much of a stretch to see MP in A Clockwork Orange.
Also, many of Alex/Malcolm McDowell's mannerisms reminded me of Monty Python (possibly Michael Palin in particular). The prison scenes, and that chief guard, were particularly Pythonesque.
Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free
The main link between ACO and the Pythons is the shared British culture, it seems.
The Pythons specialized in broad, absurdist humor, and what little humor there is in ACO was of a dark, satirical kind.
Broad? I hardly think the references to Proust and Marx are broad.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
The fast-motion orgy sequence could have fit right into a Python episode.
Hell, take out the William Tell Overture and use the Benny Hill music and it could fit in with that, too!
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!"
I had seen ACO before and didn't think much of it. I've since watched it again recently and kept thinking that John Cleese should have been in this somewhere, perhaps one of the doctors or other authority figure. To me, it definitely had a Monty Python feel. I was reminded how great Malcolm McDowell was in this. I thought his acting was oscar worthy, maybe not a win, but certainly deserved a nomination. I couldn't take my eyes off him.
"Well, make something up!" (RG)