
Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down co... (Full plot summary below)
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Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all out nuclear war with the Soviets. Against Turgidson's wishes, Muffley brings Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky into the War Room, and get his boss, Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov, on the hot line to inform him of what's going on. The Americans in the War Room are dismayed to learn that the Soviets have an as yet unannounced Doomsday Device to detonate if any of their key targets are hit. As Ripper, Mandrake and those in the War Room try and work the situation to their end goal, Major T.J. "King" Kong, one of the B-52 bomber pilots, is working on his own agenda of deploying his bomb where ever he can on enemy soil if he can't make it to his intended target.
Leave your thoughts about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
| Empire MagazineDorian LynskeyThe collapse of the Cold War may have left Kubrick's satire on mutually assured destruction less relevant than it was, but it still features Peter Sellers' finest three performances as well as proving that the supposedly humourless Kubrick was up for a laugh. |
| DVDJournal.comMark Bourne'Purity of essence'.... Superbly crafted satire that's neocon fresh to this day. |
| Common Sense MediaNell MinowBlack comedy Kubrick classic for smart teens+. |
| Cinema AutopsyThomas CaldwellDr Strangelove is one of Stanley Kubrick's many masterpieces, one of the greatest films about the Cold War and one of the greatest comedies ever made. |
| QuickflixSimon MiraudoBecause of its uncanny insight and frighteningly prescient satirical edge, Dr. Strangelove is a document of its time and also timeless. It held onto its relevancy by being bitter, cynical, and thinking absolutely the worst of people. |
| Antagony & EcstasyTim BraytonThe blackest black comedy ever made by a major Hollywood studio, and one of the funniest handful of films made in English. |
| Time OutJoshua RothkopfBy a whopping margin, this is Kubrick’s most radical film and greatest dramatic gamble. |
| Creative LoafingMatt BrunsonEven the ending of the Cold War couldn't dilute this uncompromising satire's immediacy, not so long as men continue to think with their missiles instead of their minds. |
| Q Network Film DeskJames KendrickDr. Strangelove does what so few comedies do today: it challenges us, provokes us, unsettles us while also making us laugh. |
| The NationRobert HatchMr. Kubrick is a bold man: he has taken a whole complex of America's basic assumptions by the shoulders and given them a rough shaking. |
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb