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

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2012)

Dr. Strangelove bounces from one brilliant comic duo to the next. RAF Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) plays sidekick to General Jack T. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), who starts it all off by launching a nuclear attack on the Russians, who he thinks are trying to sap and impurify all of his precious bodily fluids. The supremely British Captain Mandrake tries desperately to retrieve the recall code from the crazy cowboy General Ripper, and Ripper tries to get Mandrake to help him fight the troops sent to disarm him with insanely funny ruses like telling him that the "Redcoats are coming." When the crew of one of the bombers that Ripper has sent against Russia informs the pilot, Major Kong (Slim Pickens), of their attack orders, Kong tells them to stop "horsing around on the airplane." General Turgidson's recurring repartee with his "secretary" Miss Scott (Tracy Reed) comes to a humorous head when she calls him in the war room, and he advises her to say her prayers. President Muffley (Sellers again), who is dependent on Turgidson (George C. Scott) for information on the nuclear deterrence program that Muffley himself approved, grows more and more annoyed by Turgidson's less-than-humanitarian recommendations. When Muffley allows the Russian ambassador, Sadesky (Peter Bull), into the war room, Turgidson's distrust and disdain for his communist comrade breaks loose: "He'll see everything! He'll see the big board!" President Muffley's phone conversation with Premier Kissoff is all kid gloves, failed pleasantries, and ego stroking; despite all the Cold War strategizing, we realize that the fate of the world rests on the ability of two men from opposite sides of the globe to earn mutual trust through personal communication. Meanwhile, Colonel "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) makes his way through Ripper's defenses to find Mandrake on the verge of cracking the recall code. When Mandrake tries to contact President Muffley on a pay phone, but doesn't have enough pocket change, he asks Guano to shoot open a vending machine, to which Guano warns: "you're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company." Finally, Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers, yet again), the imported scientist, has an outrageous slapstick routine with his alter ego, Dr. Strangelove, the Nazi, whose right arm takes on a life of its own. It becomes apparent, while watching the film, why the topic of all-out nuclear war offers itself, more than any other type of human conflict, to satire. It's the absurdity inherent in mankind's ability to destroy itself with the push of a button. And while the "proper" handling of such material includes fear and terror of the prospect, and/or cold rationalizing about attack plans and post-apocalyptic survival tactics, the only sane reaction may just be to laugh hysterically at the horrific possibility.