Like the rest of us, Malcolm McDowell is extremely excited about the new Quentin Tarantino movie.

“I think he’s unbelievable, isn’t he?” McDowell says, apparently shedding  50 years or so when the subject comes up during a call to his home in Southern California. “I mean, the guy is unbelievable! I loved the last one, I just thought it was brilliant.” When I tell him that I think Django Unchained is a much better movie than Inglourious Basterds, he gasps, “Really? Oh my God! Oh fantastic.”

Ladies and gentlemen—Malcolm McDowell. A man who evidently remains as excited about the movies as he was four decades ago, when his insolent cherub act went some way to defining a truly heroic cinematic era in films like If…. and A Clockwork Orange. For the record, I learn during our winding chat that McDowell isn’t at all troubled when nerds like me want to focus on those films (and let’s throw O Lucky Man! and Royal Flash in there while we’re at it).

“I’ve had many periods in my career and I’m still here. I really can’t complain,” he says. “I’ve had golden moments. But a career is for the long haul, it’s not just the moment of your early successes and all that. One is a working actor, you know, so the idea is to work, like any other job.”

Indeed, and McDowell has never been short of work since his film debut in 1968, with greater and lesser results. Which brings us to Silent Night, which features McDowell chewing the scenery in a “remake” of 1984’s mistletoe-festooned Catholic slasher flick Silent Night, Deadly Night. Not just chewing—he makes a blue rondo jalapeno burger with cheese out of his role as the incompetent sheriff tracking a deranged Santa through snowy Winnipeg.

“I always thought Santa was creepy anyway,” McDowell snickers. “My parents took me to some department store and I sat on some old guy’s knee, and I always thought, ‘This is weird.’ I never believed in all that, but that’s just me.” A little more seriously: Silent Night includes one of the most outrageous topless chase-and-woodchipper scenes you’re ever likely to see (assuming you’re keeping a list). It’s a brutal film, meaning that we inevitably have to discuss the very idea of violence in cinema. McDowell, of course, has some expertise in this area.

“We were all rather taken aback by the whole thing,” he recalls of the madness and panic that ensued when the world first viddied A Clockwork Orange in 1971. “I suppose that people just didn’t get the fact that to do a rape through ‘Singing in the Rain’ was ironic and rather satirical and very funny. Now they get it. I think why it’s so brilliant is that it’s gone through all these changes, and now people go and really get into the whole political thing of it. Big Brother controlling our lives, big government—that whole side of it has now come to the fore, which is really what the book is saying.”

And what about Stanley? Is that something that the director ever brought up with the actor on set? “No, Stanley would never discuss anything like that,” McDowell says. “You read the book, so you knew. He presumed you had intelligence enough to know what it was about.” Silent Night, of course, isn’t front-loaded with anything like a classic literary source or a genius IQ behind the camera (what is?) But McDowell captures the energetically nasty flick perfectly when he says, “It’s a genre movie. People go at midnight and have a good scream and a good laugh.”

“Everybody has to take responsibility over violence, but what are we as filmmakers supposed to do?” he asks, “Ignore it? It’s prevalent in our society, and we have to mirror what’s going on. What happens is you get so immune to it that you have to keep going further and further and further to make it even register. That’s the problem, but on a movie like this? I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Silent Night gets a special late night Xmas screening at the Rio Theatre on Friday night (December 21), followed by a Skype Q&A with director Steven C. Miller.

In the meantime, here’s McDowell on a few other vital matters:

On working with Oliver Reed in Royal Flash
Oliver was a piece of work, you know? Of course, he was an alcoholic, and it’s rather sad because actually he was a really fine actor. I think he could have been a really great actor had he not been so alcoholically dependent, as it were. But we didn’t know anything about alcoholism in those days. It was just: some people could handle it and some people couldn’t. A lot of actors couldn’t. There was a whole generation of actors that were the piss-artists, and they’re all well known. Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, that sort of era of British actors who were brilliant, irreverent, and great piss-artists. Peter had half his pancreas removed so he had to stop drinking, which sort of saved him, thank God. But they did hit the bottle pretty hard. Even people like Laurence Harvey.  

You mention Peter O’Toole: what would you say if Tinto Brass approached you with Caligula 2? Notwithstanding that you die at the end of the first one.
I would probably say, “I’m not available.” But it was a lot of fun. In a way. Fun? (Pause) It wasn’t really fun.

On director Lindsay Anderson (If...., O Lucky Man!, and Brittania Hospital), and a little more Clockwork Orange
Lindsay was our Fellini, at the time, or whatever: our Bergman, or our Truffaut. Our version was Lindsay Anderson, even though he only made a very few films. Still, he was very influential, and people still remember O Lucky Man! I can’t tell you how many directors were influenced by that film. I was very lucky to work with Lindsay Anderson because that led directly to Kubrick, and of course, that movie—they’re still talking about that damn movie. It’s one of those movies that never fade away. It’s there for every generation in college, and they find it as their own, the kids, thank God, thank you very much, so to be part of that? Look, one’s career will always be measured by that. Everything else is a failure, you know? Of course that’s nonsense, but that’s how people will perceive it. You will only do one of those, if you’re extremely lucky, in a lifetime. And most actors never ever come close to it. And I’m talking great actors. Even Laurence Olivier never had a movie like that. There are very few actors that do. I’m privileged. Of course it’s a two-edged sword, but there you are. I’d rather have done it than not.

 On Les Misérables (why not?)
It’s no good acting a song if you can’t bloody sing…

On the great Albert Finney
Our trailblazer was Albert Finney. If Albert could do it, then anyone could do it, simply because he was from the provinces. He had a northern accent. Being from Salford, and to be this very charismatic movie star and also this wonderful actor—that gave us hope that we could do the same thing.

On the equally great Arthur Lowe, who appeared with McDowell in O Lucky Man!
Arthur Lowe was the best character actor in England, and I’m including Ralph Richardson. Arthur Lowe was a genius. I couldn’t keep a straight face working with him. Lindsay always said, ‘Oh, Arthur, he’ll save anything. He’ll save any scene.’ When he says, in O Lucky Man!" (and here, McDowell does a note perfect impersonation):"‘Gentlemen, you’ll never be a success in catering unless you know what to do with your leftovers’—now that line was actually said to me by a catering manager, in all seriousness, and having it come out of Arthur Lowe’s mouth was one of the great thrills for me on that movie.

Speaking of great thrills, may I add that hearing Arthur Lowe coming out of Malcolm McDowell's mouth is one of mine?