Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George, based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, Tracy Reed
Running Time: 94 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Paranoid United States Air Force General Jack D. Ripper (Hayden) launches a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. As British RAF Group Captain Mandrake (Sellers) desperately tries to bring Ripper to his senses, President Merkin Muffley (Sellers, again) meets his generals in the War Room of the Pentagon, as they try to stop the attack before it's too late. However, it becomes apparent that the Soviet Union have their own last gamble in the form of a Doomsday machine, which will be triggered automatically in the event of an attack resulting in the death of all life on the surface of the world, and the dawn of the age of the insane Dr. Strangelove (Sellers).
This pitch black comedy is a hilarious and terrifying satire on Cold War politics and the principles of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The film was based on the novel Red Alert (also called Two Hours to Doom) by Welsh author Peter George. The book, which I haven't read, was a straight Cold War thriller, and Kubrick originally planned a straightforward adaptation, but as he was planning the film he found the whole idea of nuclear war too ludicrous to be dealt with other than as black comedy, and so brought in cult satirical writer Terry Southern to work on the film as a satire. This would have been a brave film to be released in January 1964, only a couple of years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and only a couple of months after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, when the Cold War was looking like it might become pretty hot. Politicians are represented by Peter Sellers in one of three roles he plays here as the ineffectual President Muffley; with the exception of Sellers' posh group Captain Mandrake who doesn't allow the threat of nuclear annihilation to dent his stiff upper lip, the military are represented as largely insane or incompetent; and the scientific community is represented by the insane wheelchair-bound Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove, Sellers' third role, who has to keep constantly wrestling with his right arm to stop it from snapping into a Nazi salute, and for whom the thought of nuclear armageddon sends him into ecstasy. Celebrated British comedian Peter Sellers, who previously worked with Kubrick on Lolita (1962), is brilliant in his three roles. George C. Scott plays the deranged hawkish General Buck Turgidson all flailing limbs and bulging eyes. Sterling Hayden in genuinely disturbing as the paranoid Jack D. Ripper, who starts the whole thing because he is convinced there is an international Communist plot to "impurify our precious bodily fluids". Slim Pickens plays the dedicated bomber commender who will let nothing stop him from carrying out his orders and, in arguably the film's most famous scene, rides a nuclear bomb, whooping all the way. Keenan Wynn plays Colonel Bat Guano who arrests Mandrake for being a suspected (as he puts it) "prevert". When Mandrake needs to go into a telephone booth to make a crucial telephone call Guano orders "don't try any 'preversions' in there or I'll blow your head off," and when Mandrake is short 20 cents for this vital phone call to the President, Guano reluctantly shoots up a vending machine to get some change telling Mandrake "you better get a hold of the President, or you'll answer to the Coca Cola Company." One aspect of the film that has not aged well, is that there is only one female character in the film, Tracy Reed as "Miss Foreign Affairs", Turgidson's bikini-clad, centrefold mistress, and the only person of colour is James Earl Jones, as one of the bomber crew. Moving from the besieged Air Force base, to the cavernous, shadowy War Room, lit by a circle of lights and vast, illuminated maps, and the cramped interior of the bomber, the film intercuts between three plot lines, each of which has a very different tone and feel
However, while the film is very much a product of the early 1960s, the pendulum does seem to be swinging more towards a Strangelove world. It works as a thriller, a savage satire and it is also one of the funniest films ever made, with endlessly quotable lines "Gentlemen, please! You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!", and hilarious set pieces, one of the funniest being the President's call with the Soviet Premier ("One of our base commanders, uh, he had a little funny turn... He went a little funny in the head... And he went and did a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes to attack your county... Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it?"). This is one of the best films of the Cold War era, and one of Stanley Kubrick's best films.
Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove
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