I’d leave the 3-D glasses at home this weekend, friends: the Egyptian is showing A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of ultraviolence. I’ve never actually seen the film all the way through at once, because I am a big baby, but I’ve read the novel by Anthony Burgess a few times.

The movie follows Alex, the leader of a small gang of thugs, who roams around creating violence and mayhem until his gang turns on him and leaves him at the scene of a robbery. He goes to jail and is eventually subjected to aversion therapy treatment, where his eyes are held open while he is shown scenes of extreme violence. This treatment renders him unable to be violent any longer, not even in self-defense. And then everything really goes downhill.

Clockwork Orange was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but lost all of them to The French Connection. It caused considerable controversy at the time, mostly because of the extreme sexual violence, and possibly even spawned copycat attacks in the United Kingdom. It’s generally considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

A Clockwork Orange plays Friday and Saturday at midnight. The Egyptian is located at 805 East Pine St.