Puts the 'Mad' into 'Mutually Assured Destruction'

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 2014)

The film opens with the most beautiful credits in cinema history - refuelling B52s as mating dragon flies. The satire starts with the descending chord sequence of the (hauntingly melancholic) orchestration of "Try a little Tenderness".
Biting cynicism informed by the rueful post-war scepticism and distrust of authority in British society gave rise in Britain to the zany humour of The Goons. Peter Sellers was a founder member of this group and is at the centre of this film in the 3 characters he plays. Sterling Hayden is unforgettable, as is George C. Scott and Slim Pickens. All of them deliver superb lines in one of the best and most humorous scripts of all time.
Dr. Strangelove himself makes one brief appearance just before the end, but it's the most devastatingly funny sequence of all in another matchless performance by Sellers, with maybe the funniest line in cinema history.
As a kid, I was haunted by the closing sequence. Apparently from a suggestion by Seller's fellow goon Spike Milligan, this takes a popular wartime song and gives it an altogether more poignant and sinister feel.
It's difficult to convey to anyone whose formative years came after the fall of the Berlin Wall just how paranoid the Cold War was. Everyone got on with their daily lives knowing that one false move and the world could be engulfed by nuclear Armageddon. "Dr Strangelove" attempts to reveal the insanity at the of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction with mordant, biting satire. I like to feel that this film was part of a process which steered the world away from the apparent inevitability of Nuclear Conflict in the Cold War years, not least by pointing out just how banal and stupid it could be. Who knows? We made it this far, didn't we?