Two unstable people with access to nuclear bombs is a serious recipe for disaster! One mad man got elected President. The other is the supreme ruler of N. Korea.  

 

 

This is strikingly close to the storyline of Dr. Strangelove and in reality my daily nightmare!

“Dr. Strangelove” is the 1964 political satire black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The film was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, stars Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, and features Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens. Production took place in the United Kingdom. The film is loosely based on Peter George‘s thriller novel Red Alert (1958). (Wikipedia)

 

(“Red Alert” originally published in the UK as Two Hours to Doom, with George using the pseudonym “Peter Bryant”)

 

 

The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States, his advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It separately follows the crew of one B-52 bomber as they try to deliver their payload.

 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

 

“Dr. Strangelove” is Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece about the absurdity of war that nevertheless is a daily possibility!

 

Kubrick filmology

 

 

Peter Sellers is at his over the top best with his performance as nutcase Dr. Strangelove. (and a few other characters) A wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist with bizarre ideas about man’s future. The entire war room scene totally represents the lunacy of nuclear war.

 

 

Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed from the studio’s opinion that much of the success of Kubrick’s previous film Lolita (1962) was based on Sellers’s performance in which his single character assumes a number of identities.

 

 

Sellers is said to have improvised much of his dialogue, with Kubrick incorporating the ad-libs into the written screenplay so the improvised lines became part of the official screenplay.

 

 

Awards and honors

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and also seven BAFTA Awards, of which it won four.

 

Kubrick won two awards for best director, from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, and was nominated for one by the Directors Guild of America.

In 1989 the United States Library of Congress included it in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was listed as number three on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs list.

 

Let us pray this nightmare doesn’t come true!