Classic Film Friday: Dr Strangelove

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

This is a movie that I think half will like and half won't. It's based on the Cold War, and what would happen if a rogue General kicked off the war. Peter Sellers plays 3 different characters in the movie, and if you are a Sellers fan then you'll like this movie. It is of course a parody. None of this stuff would happen but I wonder if today's problems with terrorists will turn into something as unbelievable as nuclear war in 30 or 40 years.

I think this movie is funny, if looked at in the right frame of mind and with the right perspective. That said, my wife said it sucked and was dated. You can't please everyone all the time. It is famous for Maj. T.J. 'King' Kong (Slim Pickens) riding a bomb all the way to extinction and it has George C. Scott of Patton fame and James Earl Jones plays the bombardier Lt Lothar Zogg.

Sterling Hayden is Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper. And he has a thing for starting WWIII and keeping his body fluids. He locks down the base he's commanding and sets off a series of events that bring about our doom. They hem and haw about it in the pentagon with one side saying they should just go with it and give the commies what they have coming to them, the other saying they will work with Mother Russia to think this thing through. Which is all for naught. Because the Russians have built a Dooms Day Machine. We all will die, the world is over... sorta.

I liked it, my wife hated it. Oh well, you only get one go around in this world. If you've got the time, watch it and keep in mind when this was made we were enemies with Russia. If only we could go back to that cut-n-dry kind of way of life. Of course nothing is really ever that cut-n-dry.