THE CRITERION COLLECTION PRESENTS: DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. (1964) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY STANLEY
KUBRICK. SCREENPLAY BY STANLEY KUBRICK. BASED ON THE NOVEL 'RED
ALERT' BY PETER GEORGE.
STARRING PETER SELLERS, GEORGE C.
SCOTT, STERLING HAYDEN, KEENAN WYNN, SLIM PICKENS, JAMES EARL JONES,
PETER BULL, TRACY REED AND SHANE RIMMER.
'You can't fight in here, this is
the War Room...!'
That's my favourite line from this wacky
political satire that's still considered today to be one of iconic
director Stanley Kubrick's best films. It's a Cold War film, usually
not my favourite kind of war movie. I've always preferred films about
the two World Wars to Cold War flicks, but this one is hilariously
funny and sharply-scripted so all is forgiven, if you know what I
mean.
This is the film in which the wonderful
Peter Sellers famously plays three roles. In fact, he was meant to
play a fourth, but I'm actually really glad that Slim Pickens ended
up playing Major T.J. 'King' Kong
instead, the pilot of the aircraft that's bringing the bomb to the
Russians, who presumably don't want it. Well, would you?
I'm sure I wouldn't,
heh-heh-heh. I'd have nowhere to put it, for one thing. I'm
stuck for space as it is.
The
first role in which we see Peter Sellers, who's also known for
playing the oafish French policeman Inspector Clouseau in the PINK
PANTHER series of films, is that
of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the UK Royal Air Force.
His
English accent is spectacularly cut-glass. It speaks of tea with the
Queen at a posh garden party at which wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches
are served on bone-china plates. You know the type of thing. Very
posh, certainly too posh for us
common peasants...!
Anyway,
Mandrake is horrified to discover that the United States Air Force
Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper has ordered several of his aircraft
to attack Russia without the necessary nod from the Pentagon. Such an
attack could, of course, trigger a nuclear retaliation from Russia
which could conceivably bring about a world apocalypse. Naturally, this must be
prevented at all costs.
Sellers
also plays the President of the United States, the bald, bespectacled
Merkin Muffley. Muffley spends the whole film in the Pentagon's extremely imposing War Room
with his aides, discussing the implications of the impending nuclear
disaster. We get the impression that he's not the most dynamic
of world leaders...!
His
telephone conversations with 'Dimitri,' the
Soviet Prime Minister, in which he tries to convey the seriousness of
the situation to his Russian counterpart, is side-splittingly funny.
It's hard to know which of the two Premiers is 'sorriest'
for what's happened...!
Peter
Sellers's third role is, of course, that of the titular Dr.
Strangelove, the President's scientific advisor. Probably the most
bizarre and eccentric of all the roles Sellers plays here, Strangelove is a
curious, German-accented, wheelchair-bound fellow whose right arm has
to be restrained from constantly breaking into the Nazi salute. I think we can
work out what that means,
haha.
Dr.
Strangelove's vision for an underground mineshaft Utopia, in which it
will be up to the President and his surviving aides to repopulate the
Earth with only the most sexually desirable of women, certainly goes
down well with President Muffley and General Buck Turgidson,
brilliantly played by George C. Scott complete with an Army buzzcut you could
set your watch by.
Turgidson
is involved in one of the funniest scenes of the film when his
secretary/girlfriend phones him in the War Room right in the middle
of the nuclear crisis, seeking reassurance that he doesn't just want
her for the sex. Let's face it, folks, women do do
that. I once phoned an ex of mine about a leaky tap when, as it
turned out, he was driving his wife to the labour ward to give birth. Well,
how was I to know? Needless to say, that tap's
still bloody leaking...
Slim
Pickens, a brilliant character actor and veteran of numerous
Westerns, is probably the star of the show after Peter Sellers
himself. As the cowboy-hatted pilot of the aircraft that's actually
carrying the bomb, he sounds exactly the way he does in comedy
Western BLAZING SADDLES, in
which he plays a crooked cowboy who's in league with the dastardly
Hedley Lamarr to drive the good folk of the town of Rockridge out of
their homes. By which I mean, he sounds just like himself.
'Dang near lost a hundred-dollar
hand-cart...!'
I love his
description of the airforce-issued emergency pack for the men which includes a
combination Bible-and-Russian-phrasebook, one issue of prophylactics
and three issues of nylon stockings, presumably for any women they might come across in their travels. It's all in his pristine comic delivery.
The
image of Slim Pickens 'riding the bomb' and
'yee-hawing' his way
down to Earth on it has been much parodied, for example in THE
SIMPSONS, when Homer fantasises
that he's riding the bomb himself. Herman, the one-armed owner of HERMAN'S
ANTIQUES, has had to put up a
sign on his own example of nuclear weaponry that reads:
'PLEASE DO NOT RIDE THE BOMB...!'
THE CRITERION COLLECTION
are releasing this magnificent
old comedy classic on Blu-Ray this July (2016), complete as always with
lashings of simply spiffing extra features including interviews with
Peter Sellers and George C. Scott and new interviews with Stanley
Kubrick scholars Mick Broderick and Rodney Hill.
There's
a whole load of other great stuff on there as well, and the film
itself also contains a brilliant militarised version of the song 'When
Johnny Comes Marching Home', so if I were you I'd go out and buy it right away. In fact, I
insist upon it. And if you don't do what I say, well, you won't have to answer to
me. That's right:
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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