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

Adam Gifford 11-2

Dennis Fillebrown 11-2

Eric Augenbraun 11-1

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

“Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is comedy that portrays the situation during the Cold War in comical fashion. The movie is about the United State’s attempt to recall the planes ordered by the paranoid General Ripper to attack the Soviet Union and essentially save the planet from destruction. Producer and director Stanley Kubrick, basing the movie on the novel Red Alert intended the movie to be a straightforward drama but was unable to without using crucial scenes of the story that seemed to give the movie a more comical view of the plot.

The first scene of the movie is the mid-air refueling of a fighter plan, where the refueling is depicted as a sort of sexual intercourse. The movie then shifts over to Burpleson Air Force base where General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, gives his planes flying over the USSR the order to attack.

When President Merkin J. Muffley, one of three characters played by Peter Sellers, finds out about this, he calls a meeting with his advisors in the War Room of the Pentagon to discuss possible solutions to the problem. General “Buck” Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, is called to attend this meeting and arrives late. Also attending the meeting is Dr. Strangelove, played by Peter Sellers, a German scientist with a robotic arm that insists on rising in Nazi salute.

At the meeting, the viewers find out that General Ripper has put Burpleson Air Force base under lockdown and will fire on anything approaching the base. He also disconnects all the phone lines so there can be no contact with the outside world. Therefore, there is no way to reach the general and retrieve the correct sequence needed to recall the planes. These facts, along with the fact that finding the correct sequence with a computer could take days, forces the president to send Colonel “Bat” Guano and his troops to take over Burpleson and call on Ambassador de Sadesky to contact Premier Kissoff, the leader of the Soviet Union, to alert him of the situation and allow him to destroy the planes if the sequence cannot be determined.

Meanwhile, in Burpleson Air Force base,