10 Movie Characters That Shocked The World
5. Alex DeLarge - A Clockwork Orange
Malcolm MacDowell's milk-sipping sociopath exploded onto the screen, not wasting much time before he and his cohorts are raping and murdering a couple all the while doing a rendition of "Singin' In the Rain".
But DeLarge's "ultra-violent" outbursts at the start of the film are nothing compared to the suffering Alex endures after a prison sentence and behavioural conditioning. An indictment of certain psychological treatments popular at the time and how they may help bolster a totalitarian agenda, turning citizens into nothing but robots, Kubrick doesn't let anyone off the hook.
By the end, the "cure" is just more conditioning, Delarge reduced to another tool in the body politic. Alex's behaviour led to copycat crimes - incidents in the UK carried out by individuals who never bothered to look past the gorgeous visuals - and death threats to Kubrick's family led to him withdrawing the film from the UK until after his passing.