Film Club: "Dr. Strangelove"

Director: Stanley Kubrick Rated: PG Runtime: 103 minutes

Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is producer/director Kubrick’s brilliant, satirical, provocative black comedy/fantasy regarding doomsday and Cold War politics that features an accidental, inadvertent, pre-emptive nuclear attack.

A fanatical U.S. general launches a nuclear attack on Russia during the Cold War, but the President and his advisors are shocked to learn that the Russians have technology to destroy the world in the event of an attack on them.

The witty screenplay, co-authored by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert (the U.S. title). The novel’s primary concern was the threat of an accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself did not appear in the novel, however – he was added by Kubrick and co-screenwriter Southern.

The film’s release was delayed from December 1963 to late January 1964 due to Kennedy’s assassination in late November of 1963.