Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb : Doctor Strangelove 

Spoiler warning: Plot discussed

Unbeknownst to General Ripper, the Soviets have constructed a doomsday machine which automatically detects any nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on earth by fallout. General Ripper's plan is foiled by Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), the British exchange officer who discovers the recall code. Unfortunately, one B-52 ("The Leper Colony") can't be called back and continues its mission to drop the one nuclear bomb that will set off the doomsday machine. The pilot of the B-52 rides the bomb down to global destruction.

Although it is a comedy, Dr. Strangelove is also suspenseful and engrossing and not the least "madcap". Two major scenes of action are the immense War Room dominated by the Big Board showing the location of every bomber in the world, and the meticulously recreated B-52 interior. The remainder is set in General Ripper's headquarters at Burpleson Air Force Base. The Pentagon did not cooperate in making the film as it did in making Strategic Air Command (1955).

Dr. Strangelove takes passing shots at all sorts of Cold War attitudes, but focuses its satire on the theory of mutual assured destruction, in which each side is supposed to take comfort in the fact that a nuclear war would be a cataclysmic disaster. (The link below makes the argument that the doomsday machine was really a metaphor for this situation, that, in effect, both sides already had a doomsday machine.)

It satirizes the conventions of Hollywood war movies, in which the ignorance and horniness of soldiers are not discussed. It satirizes the curious "red telephone" relationship between heads of state, in which a first-name intimacy competes with a culturally conditioned dislike for the other and for the entire political system which he heads:

"I'm sorry, too, Dmitri. ... I'm very sorry. ... All right, you're sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well. ... I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are. ... So we're both sorry, all right?! ... All right."

The film stars Peter Sellers, who improvised the dialog above during filming. Sellers plays multiple parts:

• Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a sane, well-meaning British liaison officer;
• Adlai Stevenson-esque U.S. President Merkin Muffley, decent, flustered and weak, the doomsday machine is a shock to him.
• Dr. Strangelove, from Merkwürdigliebe, his German name, based on aspects of Herman Kahn and Wernher von Braun. Dr. Strangelove's voice is supposedly based on that of Weegee.

Sellers was also to have played the B-52 bomber captain, but an injury during filming prevented him from doing so. The part of Major T. J. "King" Kong was played by Slim Pickens, who gives it the performance of a lifetime. Also appearing in the film are George C. Scott in his breakout part as General "Buck" Turgidson, a strategic bombing enthusiast and the debut of James Earl Jones as the bombardier, Lt. Lothar Zogg.

Dr. Strangelove is consistently in the top 20 on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, and was also listed as #26 on the American Film Institute's on its 100 Years, 100 Movies and #3 on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Despite its undeniable classic status, the film isn't without its detractors. It has been claimed that the dialogue is often not as funny as it thinks it is, that the use of silly character names is an infantile touch, and that the satire often looks as if it has been crudely pasted onto the original thriller plot.