In this tale of a repressive boys' school rocked by student revolutionaries who listen to African music, a group of three students (led by Malcolm McDowell) rebel and set about shooting teachers and fellow students from the roof of a school building.
Having spent the summer absorbing and enjoying to the full London's burgeoning and bourgeois counterculture, a quietly simmering Mick Travis returns to his middle English public school, where he resides in College House - a nightmarishly oppressive institution in which privileges are based on rank, intellectual achievement is despised and cynical upper-class whips routinely extort sexual favours from the younger boys.
The school's systematic and 'traditional' brutality is, not surprisingly, condoned by an ineffectual headmaster, whose 'modern' views clash ludicrously with this medieval environment.
With two close friends, Wallace and Knightly, Mick indulges in petty rebellions against this outdated system - a forbidden excursion into town, a smuggled vodka bottle for a late-night drinking session, etc - until he runs afoul of the sadistic head whip once too often, who administers a vicious ritual beating in the way of an 'example' to the others, and of course, in the name of College House.
After this totally undeserved and brutal 'example' made of them, Mick and his comrades (now joined by Bobby Phillips, a junior, and a mysterious 'Girl') declare war, and an increasingly surreal chain of events leads to a violent finale in which the guerrilla band disrupts Founder's Day ceremonies with automatic weapons and grenade launchers.
The film marked the beginning of an extended partnership with actor Malcolm McDowell and writer David Sherwin (they made two more films together, further tracing McDowell's character).
Though clearly about Mother England and her colonies, the film found its popular success, in that distant summer of 1969.
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