Rent Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Peter Sellers does everything but the kitchen sink - Dr. Strangelove review by MH

Peter Sellers carries more roles in this film than some slackers could count.

This along with Barry Lyndon are my favourite Kubrick pair of films. Making good use of classical music it has a nice opening sequence and is relaxing and is darkly funny from start to finish.

Yes the effects may be a little dated but we get to see "Voice of Vader" James Earl Jones in his first main supporting role even if Slim Pickens steals the show as daddy war bucks. Really this is a half a dozen set film and has a relatively cheap feel now, but like Blackadder II and beyond it punches above its weight.

The main blink and you'll miss it plot development is about Flouridation, male menopause and the disenfranchise of old generals. But there is food for thought too as the Nazi's willingness to please no one but themselves triumphs over monogamy at the end.

Shame they never included food fight scene in the war room. I'm sure that would have been great!

PS Dr Strangelove is based upon John von Neumann and Werhner von Braun; a pair of Mephistophelean side kicks if ever there were any!

Great Satirical Comedy - A Must watch - Dr. Strangelove review by GI

Director Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece satirical comedy about the horrors of nuclear war. Painfully funny mostly because of the hilarious three performances by Peter Sellers who plays an ubër polite RAF officer, the frustrated yet hapless US President and the titular Dr Strangelove, the President's scientific advisor with a dark nazi past. If you watch carefully you'll notice other cast members suppressing their laughter in some of Seller's scenes. The film makes fun of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race positing that mistakes could happen and yet everyone will jump around trying to deny such mistakes. Here an insane US Airforce General (Sterling Hayden), obsessed with protecting his vital bodily fluids from communist influence, has his bombers sent to bomb the USSR. The President finds that he can't stop it and is advised to take advantage of the situation to proceed with the attack, a position pushed by the manic General Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the sinister Dr Strangelove. With a cracking support cast including Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens (who gets a final iconic cinematic scene), James Earl Jones in his film debut and British actor Peter Bull as the Soviet Ambassador this is a film that never fails to give more and more. The laughs come thick and fast and often found in the smallest of details. It's endlessly quotable too with famous lines like "You can't fight in here, this is the war room". The magic here is that the film could just as well have been a serious one but the caricatures become believable and the conflict between the military and the politicians reminiscent of events that even resonate today. Overall this is one of the great film comedies. A wonderful film, clever, intelligent and uproariously funny. It's a must see.

Counterculture Classic. - Dr. Strangelove review by Steve

Landmark black comedy which is one of the key films of the sixties. Stanley Kubrick audaciously satirises the nuclear arms race between the cold war powers just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And in particular, the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, which theorises that the outcome of a nuclear exchange would be so destructive it could never happen...

But there were near misses... Sterling Hayden plays a crazy, anti-communist US General who unilaterally launches H-bombs at Russia. This will trigger the Soviet Doomsday Machine which responds via a computer without human intervention. Yes it's a comedy... and it is genuinely funny mostly because of Peter Sellers' performances.

He plays three characters, including the ineffectual American President and a rather self-effacing RAF officer. But most sensationally, he is Dr. Strangelove, a sinister former Nazi now working in the Pentagon. Presumably the character's barely suppressed insanity is intended to suggest that US politics is slipping into fascism.

This is still a fine picture, though it doesn't feel as subversive as it once did. What is now most unsettling is that Hayden's certifiable extremism is no longer a joke. In the Age of Internet, fake conspiracies are central to American politics. How dystopian can the film seem once Donald Trump has been in the White House for real.