Riding the bomb.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb  - (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

What will happen if an Air Force general suddenly went berserk and order his B-52 bombers to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles, and the special code to abort the mission is lost forever because he decided to kill himself after a long lecture that the whole process of fluoridation on water is a part of a Communist plot to annihilate the right-wing idealists? A recipe for doomsday.

Much to the horror of the British attaché sent to dissuade the deranged general, he has to call Col. Turgidson in the Pentagon, the air-force top level official who seems to be having a grand time breaking bad news after bad news to the flared-up US president Muffley. While the president and all his men are practically pissing in their pants, one of his advisers Dr. Strangelove reveals that the Russians have a ‘doomsday device’ which would be happy to go off once the Soviet is bombed. The president negotiates with President Dimitri who sounds the least fazed by the ‘urgency’ of the matter. He is annoyed that the US President has disturbed him in his sleep.

When Col. Turgidson and the Russian ambassador, who was secretly taking photographs of the War Room, lost their control with each other, the President reprimands, “You can’t fight in the War Room!” Some of the funniest scenes are those of the British attaché who can’t seem to make the call because he’s held at gunpoint, he has to use his loose change on a public telephone and the operator keeps bitching that she can’t allow a collect call to the Pentagon; and Dr. Strangelove himself who can’t control his bionic hand from doing a Hitler salute. Strangelove is played by Peter Sellers who also interestingly happens to play the President and the British officer.

The whole point is clearly to make a satire out of the military adventurism and the futility of diplomacy at the behest of power. But even though scene after scene seems to be full of this satirical tone, it can actually be terrifying and dangerous, whichever way you look at it. The concluding scenes are funny and terrifying at the same time. Believe me, you have to actually see it.