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In the powder-keg political environment of the late sixties, Lindsay Anderson launched a pop-culture Molotov cocktail into British cinemas with his stunningly subversive If…., an anarchic vision of rebellion at a British boarding school starring Malcolm McDowell as the everyman turned guerrilla revolutionary Mick Travis. In two subsequent films—the freewheeling anti-establishment epic O Lucky Man! and the divisive gonzo comedy Britannia Hospital—Anderson and McDowell continued to trace the story of the Travis character and his outlandish adventures in a through-the-looking-glass England.
In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.
An ambitious coffee salesman has a series of improbable and ironic adventures seemingly designed to challenge his naive idealism.
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments.