Cinema Sunday: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

After last week's post on Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, this week's Cinema Sunday looks at another Kubrick classic, the tale of how the human race accidentally nukes itself into Armageddon.

And it's a comedy.  

Released in 1964, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is the story of a bizarre sequence of events that pushes to the world to the edge of a nuclear holocaust. 

Then over that edge.  

The 843rd Bomb Wing out of Burpelson Air Force Base is composed of flying B-52 bombers armed with hydrogen bombs. The planes are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the USSR.

United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, the base commander, sends out an alert to the bombers that the USSR has attacked the United States and their orders are to drop their bombs on Moscow.   

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the Royal Air Force (RAF), a exchange officer, knows this is bullshit but is helpless to recall the bombers without the code that only Ripper knows and he can't get a call out from the base to alert Washington.  

Eventually word does get out and the bombers are recalled.

Except one.

In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley about the plan that enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all superiors have been killed in a first strike on the United States.

President Muffley invites Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov on the "hotline" to explain the situation, giving the Soviets a heads up to perhaps stop the bomber before it reaches it's target.

But there's a new problem.

The ambassador tells President Muffley about the Soviet Union's doomsday machine which automatically detonate if  any nuclear weapons strikes strike the Soviet Union, making the Earth's surface a radioactive hell for 93 years.  

The doomsday machine was allegedly designed as a deterrent but it's ability to deter is hindered by the fact the Americans did not know it existed.  

So the Earth is doomed if the bomber succeeds in it's mission.

And flight commander Major T. J. "King" Kong is doggedly determined to succeed, even in the face of various technical glitches and gaps in communication.  

Back in the War Room, talk turns to strategies for survival.  Dr. Strangelove, a decrepit and infirm German scientist in a wheelchair, recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. He suggests a 10:1 female-to-male ratio for a breeding program to repopulate the Earth once the radiation has subsided.

The all make command staff just loves this part of the plan.

The film ends on the following notes:

• After the bomb gets stuck in the launch bay, Major Kong kicks the damn thing loose and rides the bomb on it's way to Moscow, yelling "Yee-Haw!" while happily waving his cowboy hat.
• Dr. Strangelove suddenly rises from his wheelchair and exclaims, "Mein Führer, I can walk!" 
• And we witness a montage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again".

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Dept.  

Peter Sellers who would go on to be most famous for his role as the bumbling French detective Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies in Dr. Strangelove THREE times:  Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove.  He was supposed to be in the role of Major T. J. "King" Kong but a last minute injury led the role to be recast.

Slim Pickens was brought in at the last proverbial moment to play Major Kong. Pickens most made his rep as a supporting actor in a bunch of Westerns and would go on to star in the ultimate western parody, Blazing Saddles. 

Sterling Hayden is General Ripper. We ran into him in a previous Cinema Sunday post where Hayden played the chairman of the board in 9 To 5.   

And yep, that is future Darth Vader and King Mufasa his own damn self, James Earl Jones as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52's bombardier. 

By the way, the nuclear explosions at the end of the film?

Real actual nuclear explosions from nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, the Trinity test, a test from Operation Sandstone and the hydrogen bomb tests from Operation Redwing and Operation Ivy. 

There's a sequence in the War Room where the discussion gets heated to the point of violence and President Muffley as to admonish is staff, "This is the War Room, gentlemen! There can be no fighting in the War Room!"

And President Muffley's phone call to the Soviet premier reads like a classic Bob Newhart phone call routine.  Dmitri seems upset that Muffley never calls just to say "Hello".   

Dr. Strangelove is a wonderfully multi-layed movie with a lot of moving parts that unfortunately are moving the story to a fatal conclusion of planet wide consequences. Surely the film won't go there and then it does.  

Well, the Earth had a good run. Would've been longer if idiots were not in charge.   

Thanks for reading. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and...

And...

"Mein Führer, I can walk!" 

_________________

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Doctor Who Is NEW!: The Legend of the Sea Devils  will post on Wednesday, April 20th.