Rewatching "If ..." (Criterion Collection), I realized that I don't shock as easily as I did before I was a film critic — and before I lived through years that have made Lindsay Anderson's 1968 classic seem far more plausible. Still, "If ..." retains its impact, even as it remains a quintessential 1960s film — a time when revolution seemed romantic for being a dead-end.

"If ..." stars Malcolm McDowell — who would carry this film's themes further in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" — as Mick Travis. He's a student at the character-building English school College House, who rebels against Whips, the older students who sadistically run the show in the absence of authority or interest by the headmasters and teachers. Aided first by two pals, then two recruits, Travis orchestrates what amounts to guerrilla warfare on their occupiers. It's great fun, until the film grows darker and more surreal, and culminates in what would have been the unthinkable, pre-Columbine.

Given a high-def transfer supervised by the movie's cinematographer and remixed in 2.0 Dolby Digital, the two-disc set contains commentary by McDowell; a 2003 episode of the fine Scottish series "Cast and Crew" that's devoted to the film; and Anderson's Academy Award documentary from 1954, "Thursday's Children," which was about a school for deaf children that helped influence the look of "If ..."

Criterion remains in the shocking spirit of the '60s for the reissue of pair of films by Dusan Makavejev. "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" grew from the Yugoslavian filmmaker's interest in the theories of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst whose interest in human sexuality led him to claim he had harnessed an energy he named "orgone" that could cure neurosis and restore psychological health.

Into this examination of Reich's theories, Makavejev weaves a fictional story that is not altogether coherent, but celebrates what was then called "free sex" and contained the first graphic sexual imagery most art-house patrons had seen on screen, as well as some obvious allusions to the Soviet Union's unwelcome influence on Yugoslavia.

Three years later came the envelope- (and taste-) pushing "Sweet Movie," which equates personal freedom with sexual and political freedom in a satirical story built on the fleeting pleasures of candy.

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Before she was Lucy, Lucille Ball was a comic film actress who played a variety of characters who were not always wacky — and not always redheads. "The Lucille Ball Film Collection" (Warner) brings together three pre-"I Love Lucy" features and two films from her later years. The best role here for Ball is 1942's "The Big Street," based on the Damon Runyon story "Little Pinks," with Henry Fonda as a hotel busboy who's in love with Ball, a vain nightclub singer who treats him with disdain until she suffers a career-ending accident.

In 1940's "Dance Girl Dance," Ball is terrific as the hard-headed Bubbles, who convinces naive ballerina Maureen O'Hara they can make more money in burlesque. 1943's "Du Barry Was a Lady" is the loonier version of "The Big Street." Nightclub hat-checker Red Skelton, pining over singer Ball, gets slipped a Mickey and dreams he's Louis XIV and Ball is Madame Du Barry. It was based on a Broadway play, as was 1963's deeply dated "Critic's Choice," with Bob Hope as a theater critic who may have to review the first play by his wife, Ball.

"Collection" concludes with 1974's disastrous adaptation of the Broadway hit "Mame."