Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 film by Stanley Kubrick loosely based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George. A black comedy starring Peter Sellers (in three different roles), the film is a satire of the Cold War. The plot begins with an insane American general's order to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and proceeds towards doomsday.
Plot Description
US Air Force General Jack D. Ripper plans to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union to stop what he believes to be a fearful Communist conspiracy to put fluoride in the water supply, by his reasoning, thereby threatening the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. He orders — without Presidential authorization — the planes under his command to attack the Soviet Union, under radio silence which cannot be broken save by a recall code that Ripper alone knows. He then seals himself inside his base and hopes that the President will order a full-scale attack to prevent an otherwise inevitable retaliation from the Soviet Union. Ripper is apparently psychotic; his conspiracy theory seems to result largely from a "petit mort" or an episode of impotence he experienced after sexual intercourse.
From the script:
Ripper: A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That''s the way your hard core commie works.
Mandrake: Jack... Jack, listen, tell me, ah... when did you first become, well, develop this theory.
Ripper: Well, I ah, I-I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
General Ripper is unaware that the Soviets have constructed a so-called "doomsday device" which automatically detects any nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on Earth via massive nuclear fallout. Dr. Strangelove explains to the staff assembled in the American war room how the device is a natural extension to the Cold War strategem of mutually assured destruction as a deterrent to an actual nuclear exchange. Moreover, the machine cannot be turned off as this would mitigate its value as a deterrent.
As a result, the American government cooperates with the Soviets to shoot the General''s planes down until they can be recalled, and Ripper''s plan is ultimately foiled by British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an officer participating in an "exchange program" with the USAF, who deduces the recall code from Ripper''s childish doodles.
Unfortunately, one B-52 ("The Leper Colony") was damaged, but not destroyed, by a Soviet anti-aircraft missile. With its radio disabled, it cannot be called back; and with a fuel leak, it also cannot reach its intended target, the Laputa Missile Complex, where the remaining Soviet defenses have been concentrated. So the plane continues its mission to drop its nuclear payload on a new Soviet target (now selecting the Kodlosk ICBM complex, not the plane''s secondary target but still within the plane''s range), which will in turn set off the doomsday machine. The particular bomb is jammed in its bay, and in trying to release it, the pilot of the B-52, Major "King" Kong (in one of Hollywood''s most memorable film moments) inadvertently ends up riding it down to global destruction — with Kong cheering all the way. Kong straddles the bomb, gripping it with one hand and waving his cowboy hat in the air with his other in a homage to rodeo bullriding technique.
The doomsday device is activated. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth''s surface will be extinct within ten months; Dr. Strangelove recommends to the President that a group of about 100,000 humans are relocated to deep in a mine shaft, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach, so the Earth can be repopulated. Because of obvious limits to space in the mines, Strangelove suggests that the ratio of females to males be 10:1. The chosen women would be selected based on their youth and beauty (to ensure the males would want to impregnate them), while the chosen males would be selected based on their intellectual and physical strength. Turgidson rants that they "cannot allow a mine shaft gap" (spoofing the missile gap fears) and begins planning a war for when they emerge in a hundred years. Strangelove eventually gets out of his wheelchair shouting "Mein Führer, I can walk!" a mere second before the doomsday bombs begin exploding.
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Awards
Dr. Strangelove is currently #18 on the Internet Movie Database''s list of top 250 films, and was also listed as #26 on the American Film Institute''s 100 Years, 100 Movies and #3 on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs. Sellers'' line "Gentlemen, you can''t fight in here! This is the war room!" made #64 on AFI''s 100 Years, 100 Quotes. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time.
Roger Ebert has Dr. Strangelove in his list of Great Movies[1], saying it''s "arguably the best political satire of the century." [top]
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