Alex (A Clockwork Orange)

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."

- Alex's opening monologue

Alex DeLarge (last name in movie only) is the protagonist villain of the book and movie A Clockwork Orange, originally written by Anthony Burgess and the film version directed by Stanley Kubrick.

He was portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in the film adaptation, who also played Caligula in the 1979 film Caligula, Colonel F. E. Cochrane in the 1983 film Blue Thunder, Tolian Soran in the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations, Kesslee in the 1995 film Tank Girl, Gangster in the 2000 film Gangster No. 1, Marcus Kane in the 2008 film Doomsday, the Tower in Disney's Phineas and Ferb, Sinclair in the 2012 film Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, and Geoffrey Tolwyn in the third and forth Wing Commander videogames.

Biography
Alex is a teenage psychopath living in a near-future dystopia who roams the streets with his friends causing general violence and destruction. Alex is recognizable by his distinctive white outfit, black top hat and eye makeup. He is also a fan of classical music.

A few of Alex's crimes in the novel that aren't depicted in the film include him getting two 10 year old girls drunk and then subjecting them to rape.

Alex commits one of his most egregious crimes when he tricks a woman into letting him into her house by claiming that his friend in trouble, only to attack her and her husband before brutally raping her in front of said husband. In the film, he gleefully sings “Singin’ in the Rain” while doing this. The woman dies, most likely from the trauma, and the husband is left crippled.

One day, after an argument with his cronies, Alex ends up killing an old lady in her home with a giant ceramic penis and is arrested for murder. In prison, Alex is volunteered for a government experiment intended to "cure" psychopaths such as himself. The experiment, known as the "Ludovico technique", consists of Alex being strapped to a chair with his eyelids being held open while drugged, and being forced to watch a series of extremely disturbing film images which, when shown in combination with the drugs, traumatize Alex and make him hypersensitive to the type of violence and mayhem he used to enjoy, to the point that he can become physically ill just by thinking about it. Alex is still evil, but is now harmless because he can't act on any of his impulses without hurting himself. However, it turns out the treatment worked too well, as Alex can't act up even when he needs to defend himself, and ends up being beaten up by some of his previous victims as revenge.

Eventually, Alex tries to kill himself, but survives and wakes up in a hospital where he realizes that the effects of the Ludovico treatment are starting to wear off. In the movie, the story ends right here, with the implication being that Alex can now go back to his evil old ways, but in the original book there is one last chapter where it is revealed that Alex has eventually gotten tired of being a sociopath on his own and wanting to start living a normal life. This last chapter was actually removed from some versions of the book because they thought people would find the ending where Alex simply stops being evil, boring.

Trivia

 * The Nostalgia Critic put Alex in his top 11 Scariest Performances, on number 7.
 * In the movie, Alex sings "Singin' in the Rain" as he is harassing a couple. The singing was an improvisation on Malcom McDowell's part because it was the only song whose lyrics he could remember.
 * Some fans have theorized that within the movie adaptation, Alex is in fact faking being "cured"-one of the reasons being due to the fact that at some point after his treatment, he sings "Singin' in the Rain". This makes no sense given Alex can't think of or commit anything associated with violence as it makes him ill, yet the last time he sang that song, he was beating an old man and raping his wife. One may argue that this was a film mistake, but given Kubrick's attention to detail and the fact that he often included hidden meanings his films, it's unlikely.