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

Rating: 9/10 (8 November 2019)

'Gentlemen. You can't fight here this is the war room.'
Stanley Kubrick is not someone who immediately comes to mind as a director of an absurdist black comedy. Yet he co-wrote and directed Dr Strangelove at a time the cold war was raging in the real world.
General Jack D Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who sees a communist plot everywhere has flipped his lid. He has executed a plan that allows him to override the American president and launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
In the war room, the hawkish General Turgidson (George C Scott) sees a tactical advantage on a nuclear first strike against the Soviets. President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to placate the Russian president in a phone call and prevent an all out nuclear war. Although the conversation is always one sided, we never see the Russian president.
Colonel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) a British executive officer attached to Ripper tries to stop him but Ripper has gone bat crazy.
Finally former Nazi German Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers) now a scientific advisor to President Muffley has an idea to survive in underground mines and eventually repopulate the planet.
It is spooky to think that there are several people like Ripper and Turgidson about serving in various governments around the world. Even Dr Strangelove comes across as real, even with his arm trying to do a Nazi salute. Many ex Nazi scientists were employed by foreign governments after the second world war.
It is a grim black comedy about paranoia and it works because everyone is playing it straight. Slim Pickens as Major King Kong was not even aware that this was a comedy.
George C Scott plays it broad but still makes Turgidson scary and silly at the same time. He gives a great performance, Sellars gives a better one in three different roles.
The film has some great lines, wonderful set design such as the iconic war room and well known scenes such as Pickens sitting on a bomb as it is dropped from a plane.