9 Classic Movie Scenes That Were Awful To Film

9. Alex's Reconditioning - A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick was a notoriously difficult director, undoubtedly getting results, but putting his actors through the ringer on the way to the finish, few more so than Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

As teenage gang leader Alex, he is a singing, dancing, fighting livewire until his arrest at the midpoint. Incarcerated, he is subjected to experimental treatment, having his eyes forced open while being subjected to nauseating images. The “Ludocivo technique” scene is one of the film’s most famous, and the pain McDowell exhibits is real.

The contraption Alex was strapped into was as uncomfortable as it looks - the claws scratched the actor’s cornea, leaving him temporarily blinded. A physician was on hand to moisten McDowell’s eyeballs, but not, apparently, to ensure he left the set with his sight intact.

Being a Kubrick production, the scene likely required an astronomical number of takes, and the shoot on the whole was a gruelling one - McDowell left one of the particularly physical humiliation scenes with a couple of cracked ribs. The film remains iconic and the performance an astonishing one, so it’s unlikely the actor regrets his involvement, though the process itself can’t boast many good memories.