Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire black comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern. It stars Peter Sellers in three roles. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom. Dr. Strangelove parodies Cold War fears of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union and stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The story concerns an insane brigadier general of the United States Air Force who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States (Sellers), his scientific advisor Dr. Strangelove (Sellers), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer (Sellers) as they attempt to stop the crew of a B-52 from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war. The film is considered one of the best comedy films and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 26th in its list of the best American films (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked 39th), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.