I too had never seen this film before. but now that I watched it, I certainly would put it somewhere in the top 10 of dystopian scifi, the kind that shows what would happen if we take an idea to an extreme. In this case it egalitarianism and a society wide engineering project to make everyone "average". We basically get a horror view of society, where everyone is forced to wear special headbands that keep their IQ's low, the population is docile and spends their days watching the most inane garbage on TV, this in combination with capital crimes for the smallest infractions has kept the black population low, so there is almost no crime anymore. :() Naturally an average society can not be run by average people, so behind the scene there is a secret cabal of above average running the entire dystopia and this is where the question gets raised, because what is better, a docile, stupid society where everyone is happy and there is no crime, or one where art and music are free to express themselves, but our tortured human nature is free to express its darker side? For those thinking that haha, this film which was no doubt was meant as a jab at conservatives, is now dated and its about the left are mistaken, the goals of this society are to make everyone average, not to drag them down to hell, in that sense, its not that relevant to our present society, we do not face the horror of becoming average, but of becoming less then average. Still, I highly recommend this film to everyone, even if it just raises the question of what we want, entertainment or something deeper and more meaningful.