Video: A Clockwork Orange

Herald rating: * * *

Running time: 137 mins

Rental: Today

Review: Ewan McDonald

It bashed, smashed and lashed on to the big screen in 1971 but Stanley Kubrick's brutal rendering of Anthony Burgess' novel about a violent, downbeat future riddled with youth gangs has not been available for video rental until today.

Thirteen-year-old Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "Droogs" speak a slang invented by Burgess, are into Beethoven and ultraviolence.

This assault on the senses, with its violence and rapes, has lost none of the intensity that made 70s audiences squirm — even after three decades of ultraviolence on the screen.