Dr. Strangelove

Movie Details:

Cast & Characters:

• Peter Sellers as:
  • Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a British RAF exchange officer
  • Merkin Muffley, the President of the United States
• Dr. Strangelove (né Merkwürdigliebe), the wheelchair-bound nuclear war expert and former Nazi, who has alien hand syndrome
• George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Sterling Hayden as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, paranoid commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, which is part of the Strategic Air Command.
• Keenan Wynn as Colonel “Bat” Guano, the Army officer who finds Mandrake and Ripper
• Jack Creley as Mr. Staines, National Security Adviser
• Slim Pickens as Major T. J. “King” Kong, the B-52 bomber’s commander and pilot
• Peter Bull as Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadeski
• James Earl Jones as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52’s bombardier (film debut)
• Tracy Reed as Miss Scott, General Turgidson’s secretary and mistress, the film’s only female character. She also appears as “Miss Foreign Affairs”, the Playboy Playmate in Playboy’s June 1962 issue, which Major Kong is shown perusing at one point.
• Shane Rimmer as Capt. Ace Owens, the co-pilot of the B-52

Storyline:

Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper’s executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all out nuclear war with the Soviets. Against Turgidson’s wishes, Muffley brings Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky into the War Room, and get his boss, Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov, on the hot line to inform him of what’s going on. The Americans in the War Room are dismayed to learn that the Soviets have an as yet unannounced Doomsday Device to detonate if any of their key targets are hit. As Ripper, Mandrake and those in the War Room try and work the situation to their end goal, Major T.J. “King” Kong, one of the B-52 bomber pilots, is working on his own agenda of deploying his bomb where ever he can on enemy soil if he can’t make it to his intended target.

About Movie:

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (commonly known as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire and black comedy directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick. The film stars Peter Sellers in three iconic roles, including the title character. Released by Columbia Pictures, it was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The film satirizes Cold War tensions and the looming fear of nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Alongside Sellers, the cast includes George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The screenplay, loosely based on the 1958 thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George, was co-written by Kubrick, George, and Terry Southern.

Dr. Strangelove is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedies and films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 26th on its list of the greatest American movies (dropping to 39th in the 2007 edition), and in 2000, it was named the third funniest American film. The film was one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 1989, recognized for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.

The film earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. It won three BAFTA Film Awards, including Best Film from Any Source and Best British Film, and also took home the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Budget & Box Office Collection: