Playhouse Kubrick

A Playhouse Original! Screened here in 1961.

“The great-granddaddy of Ridley Scott's Gladiator hasn't lost any muscle tone after nearly half a century, and Kirk Douglas's direct, unpretentious performance as the great slave-rebel Spartacus is more engaging than ever.

“How did they make a movie out of Lolita? teased the print ads of this Stanley Kubrick production. The answer: by adding three years to the title character's age. The original Vladimir Nabokov novel caused no end of scandal by detailing the romance between a middle-aged intellectual and a 12-year-old nymphet.

“Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket establishes its grip on the viewer's attention instantaneously, with an opening scene in which young recruits are shorn by an off-screen Marine Corps barber, while a corny, lulling song is heard in the background. The scene would be ordinary, even a cliche, were it not for the look on the young men's faces.

“If any other director had optioned Peter Bryant's 1958 novel about inadvertent nuclear conflict, it would doubtless have become an earnest Cold War thriller, wagging a sober finger at the folly of war.

The one and only. Banned in Britain (by the director himself) for 27 years, A Clockwork Orange is now regarded as an undisputed classic. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' novel is an operatic riot of language, style, and biting satire, with a legendary Wendy Carlos/Beethoven soundtrack.

“At the dawn of man, a mysterious monolith triggers an evolutionary leap in primates. Millennia later, a monolith uncovered on the moon emits a radio signal to Jupiter and a manned mission is sent to investigate. The only drawback is a self-aware computer called HAL...

"A masterpiece." In accordance with the Kubrick legend, the process of making the movie took meticulousness to staggering levels.The result is gloriously precision-made. Every frame of the film brims with Kubrick's genius for implying psychological purpose in setting. This was horror of the mind transposed to place (or, indeed, vice versa).