I would love to be able to say that with the end of the Cold War, modern audiences would find a film like Dr. Strangelove to be archaic and of a different time. Indeed, for a while, it did. Unfortunately, in the current political climate, with tension once again at an all-time high with Russia, not to mention China, North Korea, and the never-ending tensions in the Middle East, the very scenario playing out on screen is once again relevant. It seems like the world just loves being on the brink of extinction.
Stanley Kubrick envisioned a serious war drama when he initially bought the rights to the thriller novel Red Alert. While researching the subject, though, it became apparent to him that there were the makings of a good military satire here, something that would be darkly humorous while at the same time preying on the fears of a world that was living in fear of nuclear annihilation. The Cuban Missile Crisis had just happened, and children were getting regular training in how to prep themselves should the air raid sirens go off ahead of a nuclear attack. I grew up in the 1980s, years removed from this, but they were still teaching us to duck under our desks in the event of an attack as if that could really save our lives. The whole idea was ludicrous then and it still is. Kubrick saw that and was tapped into the American consciousness enough to realize that we needed some relief from the tension while at the same time pointing out the stupidity that our countries had gotten themselves into and the fragility of the quasi-peace that existed during this era.
The premise of Dr. Strangelove is that an off-kilter General, Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), has sent out a command to the patrolling B-52 Bombers that nuclear war has broken out and that they are to execute Wing Attack Plan R, a top-secret plan that involves scrambling their radio signals and dropping nuclear warheads on Russia. With the radios scrambled and no one except Ripper knowing the decoding letters, no one can communicate with the bombers to call off the attack.
The leaders of the free world gather in the war room and scramble to find a way to prevent this unprovoked attack as well as the inevitable retaliation. This includes contacting the president of Russia and explaining what is going on and why, as well as bringing in the Russian ambassador, against everybody’s better judgment, and allowing him to help keep communications open with his home country. He brings with him even more dire information, though. Russia has a secret nuclear deterrent, something they were planning on revealing next week as a surprise to the world. They have just activated a doomsday device that cannot be deactivated and will automatically go off should Russia be attacked, irradiating the whole world and killing everyone.
Peter George, the author of Red Alert, was brought in to co-write the screenplay alongside Kubrick and Terry Southern, and what they came up with more or less follows the novel but adds in a satirical edge and an undertone of sexuality that audiences of the 1960s missed until a member of the Department of History and Art wrote a fan letter in with his interpretation of it. Kubrick wrote back praising the man for picking up on it before anyone else. From the opening scene of the planes being refueled mid-air to the detonation at the climax, this film can be seen as one big metaphor for intercourse leading up to that final explosion, complete with Slim Pickens astride the rocket howling out in ecstasy.
This theme is further held up in other areas of the film as well. When we are first introduced to General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), he is off with his secretary on a romantic tryst. We don’t know if he is married and having an affair or not, just that his relationship with her is more than just professional. She is introduced in a bikini and is also the girl within the pages of a Playboy magazine seen onboard one of the bombers. Turgidson himself is introduced in his boxers and uses terminology when addressing her that evokes bombs and destruction as a form of dirty talk. Late into the film, the character of Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers) will propose that the only way to survive the upcoming nuclear fallout will be to go into deep bunkers and bring ten women for every man as a means of preserving the species; women who meet a certain degree of attractiveness and virility. The members of the war room, including the visiting Russian ambassador, are immediately swayed, and excited, by this idea.
Sterling Hayden was an amazing actor who never really wanted to act in the first place. He is tasked with being the straight man who also happens to be completely off his rocker. He orders the military base he commands into full lockdown, confiscating all the radios and cutting off all the phone lines. He has descended into paranoia over the continued standoff between Russia and the USA, believing that there is a conspiracy to rob us of our precious bodily fluids through the use of fluoride in the water supplies. He came by this assumption because of a situation where he was trying to be intimate with a woman and found his body unable to perform. As he cannot believe his own body would fail him at such an important moment, he has determined it must be foreign sabotage. He delivers some of the most absurd proclamations in such a deadpan way that it actually amplifies the comedy. Peter Sellers, acting opposite him in a faux British accent, is also playing things more subtly than what would come naturally to the improvisational actor.
Speaking of Peter Sellers, it is surprising to know that Sellers was forced upon Kubrick by Columbia Pictures, who were more than a little nervous about this subversive picture. Kubrick didn’t want the actor/comedian but ultimately had to accept him in order to secure the financing needed to make the film. The deal was that Sellers was to play four different roles, something he was known for doing in his comedy routines. In the end, he would only play three roles. The fourth was to be the pilot of the bomber, but stories differ as to why things were changed and Slim Pickens took over at the last minute. Sellers played British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an exchange officer who answers to General Ripper and spends most of their time together trying to convince him to call off the attack. He also plays the President of the United States, Merkin Muffley, and the title character, Dr. Strangelove, a former Nazi nuclear war expert who is wheelchair-bound and suffers from alien hand syndrome. As the president, Sellers is very low-key and ineffectual. In fact, it is nearly impossible to recognize it is Sellers in the role thanks to the makeup, bald cap, and low energy this character has. Sellers saves all his usual madcap energy for the character of Strangelove, who is over-the-top and speaks with an intentionally bad German accent. He also cannot control his right arm, which occasionally tries to fly in the air in the Nazi salute. It borders on being too much at times but also stings with the reality that our government actually recruited such Nazis into our military programs to develop and launch rockets.
While Dr. Strangelove was in production, word got to Stanley Kubrick that an independent film company was working on their own version of the story, ripping off the novel Red Alert. This film, Fail Safe, was essentially telling the same story but taking the subject seriously. Kubrick pulled some strings and delayed that production so that his film would come out first. Kubrick and author Peter George also filed suit against the production, a lawsuit that ended up seeing the independently produced film fall into the hands of Columbia Pictures. Both films were critically lauded, but Dr. Strangelove, releasing ten months earlier, got the Oscar buzz.
This is a well-thought-out production, but that doesn’t mean every joke hits the bullseye. The worst offender is the choice to go with cheesy names for so many of the characters, names that describe the characteristics of them. President Merkin Muffley is portrayed as, for lack of a better term, a pussy, a weak and ineffective leader who cow-tows to other leaders. General Jack D. Ripper is, of course, the maniac that causes all of the death and destruction. He is a man who keeps a machine gun and hundreds of rounds of ammo in his golf bag, displaying exactly what he considers to be good sport. Late into the film, we get a brief scene with Colonel “Bat” Guano (Keenan Wynn), an army officer whose choices almost prevent Captain Mandrake from communicating the radio codes to the war room. There is a hilarious exchange between Guano and Mandrake where, in need of change to make a payphone call to the war room, Mandrake instructs Guano to shoot off the lock to a nearby Coke machine to get at the quarters. Guano initially refuses on the basis that the machine belongs to the Coca-Cola company and it would be vandalism to damage it. The exchange is brilliant, but Kubrick ends it on a bad note when, having shot off the lock, Guano gets a face full of spraying soda. It’s a case of taking the joke one step too far.
The ending of the film almost suffered from the same problem as the Coca-Cola scene. Initially, it was supposed to end with a big pie fight breaking out in the war room, the adults de-evolved into children. The scene was cut for a number of reasons, including a reference to the President being taken down that suddenly didn’t play right after President Kennedy was tragically shot in Dallas. Kubrick, himself, stated that the pie fight just didn’t feel right alongside the rest of the film and so he excised it for that reason. Either way, the film is better without it. Too many other comedies, both before and since, have ended with big pie fights, including many of Columbia Pictures’s The Three Stooges shorts, and it would have made this film less unique. Instead, we get a film ending that is much more harrowing.
The ending is broken up into two juxtaposed scenes. The first is the less-than-stellar final scene with Strangelove where he is struggling with his rebelling right hand all the while convincing everyone in the war room of his plan to save humanity through breeding in tunnels beneath the Earth’s surface. The second is what is going on onboard the main B-52 bomber piloted by Slim Pickens’s character, Major T. J. “King” Kong. An attack by the Russians has knocked out their radio completely, so when the cancellation code is finally transmitted to all the planes, this one plane does not receive it. The bomb hatch was damaged in that attack, too, and Slim Pickens climbs on board the bomb to try and rewire the doors to get them open. He succeeds but ends up dropping alongside the bomb, riding it down while waving his cowboy hat and ye-hawing. This moment would become synonymous with this picture and is one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history.
There is no denying the cultural impact of Dr. Strangelove. It is considered one of the greatest films of all time and was one of the first 25 films admitted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. It is an unfortunate reality that here we are, sixty years later, and this is something we can all relate to as the threats of nuclear war are still very much a thing. Stanley Kubrick had his pulse on the fears of the world and especially America in the 1960s. His movie is both funny and scary at the same time and does both so effectively that it overcomes the weaknesses in the other parts of the script. This is a film that can still be enjoyed because it speaks to our fears and allows us to face them and laugh about it a little at the same time.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Stanley Kubrick
Best Director: Stanley Kubrick
Best Actor: Peter Sellers
Best Adapted Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern
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Release Date: January 29, 1964
Running Time: 94 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick
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