If Kubrick’s dark humour was somewhat overshadowed by the controversy surrounding Lolita, it hit home with a vengeance in his next film. Dr. Strangelove is the ultimate black comedy and the cinema’s definitive diagnosis of nuclear paranoia in the 1960s. Because an American general believes that the Soviets have polluted his ‘precious bodily fluids’ (rendering him impotent), the world is set on an unavoidable course of destruction, with President Merkin Muffley and Premier Dimitri Kissoff arguing over the hotline as to who is the sorrier. Clearly, neither is sorry at all and, given this grotesque set of paranoid defenders of the faith, neither is Kubrick. The wheelchair-bound ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove himself is nothing less than we deserve, relishing the fact that every move is a loser and proposing an elitist survival programme to win the heart and mind of every ‘preverted’ politician.

Director: Stanley Kubrick

1964 | UK | 94 mins | PG (IFCO)

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