Mein Führer! I can walk!

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb¸is critically acclaimed black comedy pertaining to a nuclear fallout caused by a deranged Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper. Feeling that the Soviet Union is behind the fluoridation of water in the United States, the cause as he sees it of his impotence, he takes it upon himself to protect “the precious bodily fluids” of America. He orders a fleet of B-52 bombers carrying nuclear payloads past their failsafe point deep into the heart of the Motherland. The viewer is clueless to the mental sanity of the General at first, and is lead to believe that this is an actual military order. Inspecting further into the movie, the viewers finds out the true cause of the attack, and is led by Stanley Kubrick’s interesting directorial choices into possible fixes to the end of the world.

When he first started writing the screenplay, it was Kubrick’s intention to purely adapt Peter George’s novel Red Alert into a film. But midway through, he realized that many of the most truthful elements of the film were ridiculously absurd, and thus he did what any person in his shoes would do, it changed the film into a nightmare comedy.

Filmed during one of Peter Sellers’ divorces Kubrick was forced to film entirely in England where Sellers’ battles took place, which gave need for Kubrick to make some interesting choices in set design. Made by Ken Adam, the four main sets were each masterfully crafted in Shepperton Studios. Interestingly enough while attempted to recreate an authentic cockpit of a B-52, Adam was unable to actually visit a B-52 due to the secrecy that surrounded the state of the art plane. Unrelented, Adam built the set off of just a picture of the plane. Upon inspection by the U.S Air force, it was deemed a perfect substitute of the real thing.

The ending of the film, which depicts ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove shouting “Mein Fuhrer, I can Walk!” is actually an alternative ending used by Kubrick because the first one was a “farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film” (Kubrick). The original ending depicted all of the men in the war room engaging in a cream pie-fight of epic proportions. However there were so many pies flying around it became difficult to see who was speaking during this fight, so it had to be removed. Also removed was an opening and ending narration voiced by a supposedly Alien onlooker reviewing the history of Earth.

As an “immature” individual, I found some of the funniest moments in the film arose from often funny names of the characters, such as Major King Kong, Colonel Bat Guano and Jack D. Ripper. The movie seemed almost like a toned down Austin Powers flick than any of Kubrick’s classics, like A Clock Work Orange and Full Metal Jacket. I would strongly suggest to view this movie to anyone, though having some understanding of the Cold War Era and history in general is often necessary to really understand the hilarity of this film.