Cult-Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964)

"Gentleman! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

-President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) attempts to defuse an international brawl inside the Pentagon in Dr. Strangelove (1964).

This caustic satire from the auteur of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) remains a bit of a paradox, even today. It's a comedy concerning deeply unfunny matters, particularly nuclear war and the end of the human race.

However, this beloved 1960s film didn't actually start out as an absurd comedy. In fact, the movie's screenplay is based on a serious, carefully-researched Cold War literary thriller from author Peter George.

But as history records, when Kubrick began investigating how easy it would be to trigger an accidental global nuclear war, the director registered -- and collated -- the "absurdities" involved in the doomsday scenario. Those multiple absurdities became the bedrock of a new script, and a blistering satire was born.  

Kubrick once noted that he was "struck by the paradoxes of every variation of the problem [of nuclear war] "from one extreme to the other, from the paradox of unilateral disarmament to the first strike...it was very important to deal with this problem dramatically because it's the only social problem where there's absolutely no chance for people to learn anything from experience." (Hollywood as Historian: American Film in Cultural Context, University Press of Kentucky, 1983, page 195.)

In other words, when it comes to nuclear war, there are no do-overs, and no second chances.

So Kubrick thus settled on satire as format with "the conscious aim of sounding an alarm that would startle people into a response, and even resistance to" the idea of nuclear war, according to author Alexander Walker (Stanley Kubrick, Director, Conundrum Ltd., 1999, page 114).

In its newly devised format then Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy of human errors, serving specifically as a scathing critique of something completely and utterly irrational: an entire (profitable...) industry and hierarchy devoted to the destruction of our very species. 

Kubrick's targets in Dr. Strangelove are politicians, soldiers, the press, intellectuals...even the scientific community itself. All of these folks dutifully play their assigned roles in the film's Global Annihilation, just cogs in a vast machine devoted to the End of Life on Earth as We Know It.  

In one sense, Kubrick's message about the "death" industry is expressed by his unusual and central casting choice. Specifically, Peter Sellers plays three major roles in the film.  

According to The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick (University Press of Kentucky, 2007, page 27), Seller splays the roles of three men of different ranks and stations in the military-industrial complex, but all are "absorbed into the massive collective mind of the American military. They represent their institutions, not themselves.  They have become their institution.."

In many ways, the military-industrial complex as seen in the film suffers from a terminal sense of schizophrenia. It must make a profit on preparations for war, but it will destroy itself -- and the world -- if war is ever initiated.  

"Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines!" 

As you may recall, Dr. Strangelove involves a secret plot by the psychotic U.S. General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), stationed at Burpleson Air Force Base. 

Ripper transmits false orders -- "Wing Attack Plan R" -- to a fleet of B-52s comprising America's "Airborne Alert Force."  This code instructs them to deliver their nuclear payloads across the Soviet Union, a flagrant act of war.

Unfortunately, Ripper is also the only man with the correct recall code, an inconvenient fact which necessitates some high-level one-on-one telephone diplomacy between American President Muffley (Peter Sellers) and the drunken Soviet Premier Kisov (pronounced Kiss Off).

Meanwhile, aboard one B-52 in flight, Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) breaks through the Russian defense net and prepares to drop two nuclear bombs on Russian targets, blissfully unaware the world is not really at war. 

When the bomb bay doors jam, however, the patriotic Kong activates them manually...and exuberantly rides a warhead down to its terrestrial target. Yee Haw!

But there's another level to this global crisis. Even one nuclear detonation on CCCP soil will trigger the Soviet Union's new "doomsday machine," a defensive device that will eradicate all human and animal life on Earth.

Still, all is not lost. President Muffley's scientific adviser, the wheel-chair bound German, Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers again) offers a contingency plan if tomorrow is indeed doomsday. It involves retrofitted mine-shafts, an American eugenics program, and a ratio of ten women to every man...

While generals, politicians and scientists debate that particular future and their assignments in it, this world -- our world -- comes to an end in a series of fiery but oddly beautiful nuclear mushrooms. 

Bombs explode in a gorgeous montage, to the tune "We'll Meet Again"...

"How many times have I told you guys I don't want no horsing around on the airplane?"

In case you can't discern it from the synopsis above, Dr. Strangelove is a cold, bleak movie with a black, merciless, and unforgiving heart.

As a literary form, satire is often cold and dispassionate, so this approach is to be expected here, at least to some degree. But intriguingly, Kubrick's film canon almost ubiquitously features an icy, cerebral disposition, a fact which therefore makes Dr. Strangelove doubly chilling.  

I guess what I'm saying is that even for Kubrick...this movie is cold. Brutally cold.

With an unflinching eye and total lack of compassion, Kubrick walks the audience through nuclear apocalypse and is so blunt, so matter-of-fact, so unforgiving in his depiction of the fools causing this disaster that we have no choice but to laugh. 

The bigger the disaster...the more we (nervously) laugh. This laughter occurs, in part, because we register the utter absurdity of the situation; and it dawns on us that we have no one to blame but ourselves. This is the world we made. These are the leaders we elected.

So Nuclear Armageddon is nigh, and stiff-upper lipped British exchange officer Mandrake (Sellers once more) doesn't have enough loose change to call the President on a pay phone and provide the recall code that could avert disaster.

So General Turgidson (George S. Scott) chews gum incessantly during a Pentagon Briefing and suggests that if nuclear war can't be averted then Hell, we should try to win it! This point-of-view, in particular is frighteningly real.  As late as the 1980s many in the U.S. Government were still discussing "winnable" nuclear war.

So a B-52 pilot is seen studying something (off-screen) with extreme scrutiny in the cockpit of his war plane...but a reverse angle reveals not the complex workings of technology, but a Playboy Centerfold.  This man is to be the angel of death, essentially, and he's thinking about a hot girl.

So an idiot foot soldier, "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) distrusts the heroic Mandrake because he is British (and possibly a "prevert"). Also, Gauno worries -- at a time of profound international crisis -- about shooting a vending machine because he's afraid to answer to "The Coca-Cola Company."  That fear helps the audience to understand who really calls the shots in this republic.

So the President himself is an Egghead Intellectual. He can't even bring himself to inform the Russian Premier what's occurred ("He went and did something silly, Dmitri...").

So his generals are warmongers and lunatics, the Russians get all their inside information from The New York Times, and Dr. Strangelove is an unrepentant Nazi who twice mistakenly calls President Muffley "Mein Fuhrer."

Everyone involved in this debacle, it seems, is a dolt. 

These men aren't exactly profiles in courage, and, perhaps by design, there's only one woman who appears in the film, landing blame squarely on the less-fair sex.  This is a world that men have made.

What one can detect so clearly in Dr. Strangelove is a deranged patriarchy of destruction and blood lust marching blithely along, literally on "auto pilot," ready to spur worldwide destruction...even if no nation (and no official government...) consciously seeks such destruction. 

With sharp eye, and sharper dialogue, Kubrick exposes a seemingly-basic quality of men: his compulsive flirtation with self-destruction. That flirtation is even more dangerous in the Cold War Age of computers, ICBMs, and other modern "conveniences." The machines don't cause the end of the world; they just make the end of the world that much easier for men to accidentally start.

Kubrick gets terrific performances out of his cast here, particularly the multi-talented Peter Sellers, but equally memorable is his ironic use of music. 

"We'll Meet Again" is a paean to man's cycle of war and death, which never seems to end. 

"Try a Little Tenderness" transforms a mid-air warplane refueling procedure into something akin to robot sexual intercourse.

and "Johnny Comes Marching Home" is continuously played to mock the blind patriotism of "our boys" on their fool's errand.

If the sound design of Dr. Strangelove is undeniably brilliant, Kubrick's mastery of images must also be discussed. The composition that features Slim Pickens riding a nuclear warhead like a bucking bronco at a rodeo is fully part of the American pop culture lexicon at this point. 

However, that unforgettable visual actually says something important about our country too. It reveals how the American "cowboy" mentality has become dangerously coupled with frightening, destructive technology. Swaggering machismo and technological terror are a bad combination, as we've seen in the years since Dr. Strangelove, and Kubrick understood that fact at a relatively early date.  

Kubrick's War Room (created by frequent James Bond production designer Ken Adam) is another memorable image: the ultimate smoke-filled room; the ultimate boy's club. There are technological toys and blinking lights aplenty (like General Turgidson's beloved "Big Board") but nothing really gets accomplished here. The War Room is nothing but an elaborate sandbox where the boy with the loudest voice holds sway and toys get positioned for deadly games.

I also admire the language of Dr. Strangelove. The U.S. Army has a motto in the film: "Peace is Our Profession." Yes, it's absolutely Orwellian, and again, we've had some experience with that kind of double-speak in recent years. Yet if the events of the movie are any indication of that slogan's veracity, then the Army is utterly incompetent, right?

I also love how the B-52's "auto destruct" well, auto-destructs, and how the nuclear warheads are obsessively labeled with such legends as "handle with care" and "this side down." 

Again, there's a method to the madness: Kubrick is revealing to film audiences how we have turned the most horrifying weapons of mass destruction into things that we (mistakenly) believe are safe. Just as space travel tools felt routine in 2001: A Space Odyssey, here the weapons of the apocalypse are accepted as a backdrop to everyday life. We seem to forget how powerful and dangerous they are.

Oh yes, handle that nuclear warhead with care!

But a nuclear bomb is not a carton of cigarettes. It can do significantly more damage than the label on the side indicates. 

Dr. Strangelove also points out, and rightly so, that the military is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, only as good as the orders it executes. Importantly, Dr. Strangelove depicts both an obstructionist ignoramus, his "boots on the ground," Bat Guano and a bat-shit crazy General, Jack D. Ripper, who launches a nuclear war because he tends to feel inferior about...something personal; something in the bedroom. 

The personal deficits of these men have consequences for the world.

Again, the point is made concisely (and in amusing fashion): a soldier must not just blindly follow orders; but follow the right orders. The old excuse "I was just following orders" doesn't quite cut the mustard when the scenario involves global nuclear apocalypse.

Kubrick's targets are many here, but I believe he reserves his most egregious contempt for the macho military officer. Dr. Strangelove's opening shot is of a phallus-shaped warplane nose as it refuels in mid-air. That love song ("Try a Little Tenderness") plays over the refueling process and you realize that perhaps this is indeed what "love" is in the Cold War Epoch. Men who can't love, who only love killing, have created machines that love because they can't. They have recreated the "act" of love, subconsciously, in the design and activities of their glorified war machines.

You can see how this conceit plays out again in relation to Jack D. Ripper, the man who precipitates the global nuclear war. More than anything, he fears "loss of essence," and that the Russians are out to steal "precious" American "bodily fluids." He informs Mandrake that he does not avoid women, but that he "denies" them his "essence" (meaning semen). Again, the idea seems to be that certain macho men compensate for certain sexual failings with killing, with bloodshed, with war.

Gaze just below the surface and you can see how sex and sexual dysfunction are very much the subtext of Dr. Strangelove, not merely in the graphic "refueling" shot, but in the very names of the dramatis personae. 

President "Muffley" is a pussy, literally and metaphorically. 

"Kisov" is Kiss Off. 

Major Kong rides a bomb to impact...another substitution, perhaps, for the sexual act. 

General Turgidson speaks of sex in terms of military terminology, telling his mistress to start a "countdown" until Old Bucky Turgidson "blasts off."

Given this surfeit of sexual imagery and allusion, the final images of Dr. Strangelove perhaps represent a collective orgasm of sorts; the explosive release of all the anger, hostility and hatred these swaggering cowboys have held inside for so long; a nuclear ejaculation that takes down the whole world. 

If these men can't love -- if they can't create -- they will destroy. All of us. 

Brutal yes, but also funny, and sharp. Kubrick doesn't play games here, or parse partisan politics.  He simply notes that if you are willing to risk nuclear war for any reason, you are an idiot.

And finally, "We'll Meet Again" represents the greatest and most explicit warning the director can deliver.

Once we replenish our "essence," we'll likely be ready to go again.

Countdown to blast off, honey...