I definitely would have ranked this higher. It certainly cannot be compared to other films about education made around the same time, "Up the Down Staircase", "To Sir With Love" and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" to mention a few, are the most popular of those films which showed a change in education that were a far cry from "Goodbye Mr. Chips", "Cheers for Miss Bishop", "The Corn is Green" and "Good Morning Miss Dove". This film is seen from the point of view of the students at a British boy's school where the newcomers are labeled as scum and treated horribly, with violence and degradation, a longtime tradition in these halls of education.
Filmed with sequences in both color and black-and-white, this doesn't really have a lead even though Malcolm McDowell is top billed. You can easily see it almost as a prequel to "A Clockwork Orange" as his character Shirley is deranged. Other films he did during this time we're similar in nature of an oddball society of violence and sexual perversion, which goes to show why a decade later he would be cast as Caligula.
The scenes of the inhumane treatment of some of the boys are difficult to watch, among them a moment in the laboratory where one of the boys is tied upside down over a toilet and another where someone is suffocated with a plastic bag over their head. I'm not sure, but I think it might have been the same boy. This certainly is not a film that everybody will like, but it is well acted even if a lot of the characterizations are of vile and unlikable people. Veteran British character actress Mona Washbourne is recognizable as the school nurse but has little to do. This is the type of film that you only will probably see once because for most cases, once is enough and in others, once is more than enough.
Filmed with sequences in both color and black-and-white, this doesn't really have a lead even though Malcolm McDowell is top billed. You can easily see it almost as a prequel to "A Clockwork Orange" as his character Shirley is deranged. Other films he did during this time we're similar in nature of an oddball society of violence and sexual perversion, which goes to show why a decade later he would be cast as Caligula.
The scenes of the inhumane treatment of some of the boys are difficult to watch, among them a moment in the laboratory where one of the boys is tied upside down over a toilet and another where someone is suffocated with a plastic bag over their head. I'm not sure, but I think it might have been the same boy. This certainly is not a film that everybody will like, but it is well acted even if a lot of the characterizations are of vile and unlikable people. Veteran British character actress Mona Washbourne is recognizable as the school nurse but has little to do. This is the type of film that you only will probably see once because for most cases, once is enough and in others, once is more than enough.