DVD Review: Dr. Strangelove (A)

Dr. StrangeLove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens
MPAA: PG
Grade: A

Review by Scott Standish

Its pretty amazing to think that this film was originally intended to be a dramatic thriller. Based on the tense nuclear war novel "Red Alert", Stanley Kubrick and co-screenwriter Terry Southern began this script true to the book but slowly transformed the tone into a satire as the evenings grew later and the authors got goofier. What resulted was truly one of the greatest comedies of all time, the classic that we now know as Dr. StrangeLove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.

Set in the cold war 60's, Dr. Strangelove gets started when a Brigadeer General Jack Ripper (played amazingly by the legendary Sterling Hayden) snaps one day in a move to preserve "the purity of our nation's precious bodily fluids," decides to phone in a nuclear against the Soviet Union. He is the only one that knows the recall code. Peter Sellars plays three roles in this film, among them the role of British Captain Lionel Mandrake, the first soldier to realize that the General has lost his mind. Wacky General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott in what is rumored have been his own personal favorite role) has to notify the stuffy President Merkin Muffley (also played by Sellars). And of course, Sellars also plays the title character as well, the bizarre Dr. Strangelove.

Aboard the lead plane headed for Russia, you have Slim Pickens running the show as Maj. T.J. 'King' Kong. Pickens has some great dialogue in this film as he provides leadership to his crew (among them a young James Earl Jones). In a time where the US government advises its citizens to rush out and buy duct tape and plastic sheeting, you have to admire this dialogue, where Major Kong reads off the contents of the crews survival kit:

Major T.J. King Kong: "Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."

A comedy about war (never an easy thing) that never seems to go out of style, Dr. Strangelove is, in my humble opinion one of the best comedies of all time. With all of the turbulence around the world right now one would be hard pressed to find a comedy that works so well to put things in proper perspective.

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