- Film Review
- Reviewed By Tom Hutchinson
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5 out of 5
Is this the way the world ends - not with a bang but a simper? Stanley Kubrick's ferocious Cold War satire makes us smile through gritted teeth as unhinged general Sterling Hayden sends a squadron of nuclear bombers to attack Russia and trigger an apocalypse-laden doomsday machine. Peter Sellers's three performances - bemused airman, befuddled president and crazed US Nazi adviser, re-armed by the prospect of world annihilation - spiral from gentle humour to surreal horror. The scenes in which Hayden raves about "bodily fluids" and Pentagon general George C Scott rants about statistical deaths were obviously inspired by Sellers's genius. Kubrick's unsparing disgust with our warlike instincts was never so obvious - or so grimly comic.
Plot Summary
Satirical comedy starring Peter Sellers and George C Scott. In the firm belief that his impotence is the result of a Soviet plot to poison the water supply of the "free world", General Jack D Ripper dispatches a squadron of nuclear-armed war planes to bomb Moscow. It is the task of President Merkin Muffley, hidden deep in the Pentagon War Room, to sort out this little problem.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Group Captain Lionel Mandrake / President Merkin Muffley / Dr Strangelove
- Peter Sellers
- General "Buck" Turgidson
- George C Scott
- General Jack D Ripper
- Sterling Hayden
- Colonel "Bat" Guano
- Keenan Wynn
- Major TJ "King" Kong
- Slim Pickens
- Ambassador de Sadesky
- Peter Bull
- Miss Scott
- Tracy Reed
- Lieutenant Lothar Zogg
- James Earl Jones
- Mr Staines
- Jack Creley
- Lieutenant H R Dietrich
- Frank Berry
- Lieutenant W D Kivel
- Glenn Beck
- Captain G A "Ace" Owens
- Shane Rimmer
- Lieutenant B Goldberg
- Paul Tamarin
- General Faceman
- Gordon Tanner
- Admiral Randolph
- Robert O'Neil
- Frank
- Roy Stephens
Crew
- Director
- Stanley Kubrick
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