Episode 30 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Bomb, more commonly known simply as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964
black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear
conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The film
was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick and
stars Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Slim
Pickens. The film was made in the United Kingdom. The film is
loosely based on Peter George's thriller novel Red Alert (1958).


The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general
who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It
separately follows the President of the United States, his
advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force (RAF)
exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52
plane (who were following orders from the general) from bombing
the Soviets and starting a nuclear war.


The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made,
as well as one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the
American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the
best American movies (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked
thirty-ninth), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its
list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States
Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first
twenty-five films selected for preservation in the National Film
Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically
significant".