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

Just as "Seven Days in May" was hitting our screens, Stanley Kubrick used a superbly over-the-top effort from Sterling Hayden to depict a rogue general who has decided to use all the checks and balances in place to defend the United States to his own mischievous advantage and launch a pre-emptive bombing campaign on those pesky "Ruskies". It's only his perfectly moustachioed British executive officer "Mandrake" (Peter Sellers) who smells a rat, but he is on lockdown in their air force base that is, indeed, being besieged - but not by the "Reds". Meantime, the American President (also Sellers) is only just finding out that he's about to start a nuclear war and nobody knows quite how to top it - not even his chief of staff "Turgidson" (George C. Scott). A call to his opposite number in the Kremlin reveals that the Soviets haven't been letting the grass grow, and that they have their own shield - and one that's use would make the effects of the Hiroshima bomb look like a damp squib. With all this mistrust and mayhem abounding, is it going to be possible to avert the destruction of humanity? Sellers has multiple parts and carries them out effectively, but it's the support from Hayden, Scott and the gung-ho, yee-ha, merchant "Maj. Kong" (Slim Pickens) - in charge of the heavily laden bomber that is likely to stat the conflagration, that demonstrate really entertainingly not just the faults in the whole principle of a paranoia-driven command and control structure, but also of the flaws of human nature when it comes to increasing reliance on technology and automation. The calculating eponymous character, who could have come straight out of a "Bond" movie, also quite cleverly points to the provenance of so many of the scientists who supported the West's military programming whilst their historical loyalties were dubious at best. It's only ninety-odd minutes, but packs plenty to think and laugh about as the ridiculousness and seriousness of the scenario are presented satirically and potently, at a time when the cold war was warmer.