Unless you live under a rock, you know there is a huge abuse of power by a country with one of the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Here at Old Academy Anew, we have a policy of avoidance regarding war films. Unless the movie in question is not a drama about the terrors of conflict but the terrors of the stupidity of such conflicts. Enters Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove (1964). The title has a “or something, something,” but it’s too freaking long and makes zero sense so we’re not mentioning it.
FURTHERMORE
Doctor Strangelove throws what amounts to a “do not try this at home/done by professionals” disclaimer before you have your butt properly seated. Something I thought was a recent trend do to nowadays humans prone to eat detergent pods and engage in dangerous shenanigans because they saw it in some advertisement campaign. It seems humanity has always been dumb; it’s just more noticeable now.
Then we see the Columbia lady appear, her expression sterner than usual. The first lines are something any newscaster could have said in mid-February and wouldn’t have surprised any person with WiFi. “For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a Doomsday Device.”
After that, Doctor Strangelove‘s opening credits begin to roll with an Air Force airplane getting fuel while in the air.
If you have never seen that before, there is something disturbingly naughty about it because it kind of looks like one airplane is mounting the other. It’s more like a reversed reverse-cowgirl, though. I’m sure it’s supposed to be some very psychological joke paired with the massive and childish font announcing the names of the stars and such. I mean Doctor Strangelove was very serious about the initial disclaimer but this is a dark comedy, and it needs to be clear from the get-go; even if they just mentioned a Doomsday Device a minute ago.
At Burpelson Airbase, Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) receives a call from General Ripper (Sterling Hayden) telling him to put the base on condition red. Interestingly, Red Alert is the name of the novel the film is based on. Mandrake agrees that it’s a good way to keep the men on their toes. The general informs him it is not an exercise but the real deal. Mandrake needs to enact Plan R for Robert with the “Wing”. We don’t know what that means, but Mandrake seems pretty concerned with R for Robert. He also orders him to impound all personal radios around the base because they could be used to issue instructions to saboteurs…
For some mysterious reason, the Air Police already has a list of those who own radios within the base. Almost as if they were expecting a thing like that to happen…
Done with his instructions Ripper hangs up and a heartbeat later the alarm to alert the base goes off. The general moves from his desk to close the blinds, shutting his office off from whatever happens outside.
We immediately learn via voiceover that the Wing is a large force of American B-52 bombers airborne 24/7 at the ready to act in case of a nuclear attack. Each plane can deliver a 50 megaton payload. All deployed in various geographical locations, but each with one thing in common: only two hours away from their targets within the Soviet Union.
We are about to follow how one of these B-52s fairs after they receive instructions to put Plan R in motion. The movie has to movie, ya know. And because Doctor Strangelove is supposed to be a comedy, the men inside the airplane are introduced as so bored with the unending preventive flying that they’re barely paying attention to what’s happening. Basically human autopilots.
The code comes in. After checking the meaning (in their TOP SECRET handbook), the decoder officer radios Major Kong (Slim Pickens) to let him know of the situation. Kong cusses very Southern-ly and, not believing the officer, goes to that part of the plane to check the handbook with his own eyes. He still asks the officer to get a confirmation from base regardless of the handbook’s assertion. Kong proceeds to a safe, opens it, removes his pilot helmet, and changes it for a cowboy hat from the safe. A country boy with Kong as a surname? Kubrick you sneaky boy.
With a very flute-infused marching band background music, Kong gives his men an impassionate speech, promising great futures regardless of race, color, or creed.
I wonder if Doctor Strangelove came out today “sexual orientation” would have been added to that little list of persuasions…
We leave the boys in the air and move to a woman using a giant lamp to sunbathe, lying on a bed in a hotel room and wearing bikini and high heels. The phone rings, and she turns to ask General Turgidson (George C. Scott) if she should answer. Then Doctor Strangelove does it’s thing trying to be funny. The woman, who happens to be the secretary of the general, starts the exchange with the other general making the call, calling him by his name in a very flirty intimate manner. She then shouts “general such and such says” when she relays the message to her general currently in the “powder room.” Basically, another base caught the transmission of Plan R to the Wing and they are calling Turgidson to find out why.
Turgidson asks if there’s something on the threat board, but the other general tells him everything seems fine, so there’s no real reason for Plan R to be enacted. This worries Turgidson who finishes the call and looks for his pants to mosey up to the War Room. The secretary mentions that it’s 3:00 am. The general tells her to not worry about it and gets cute with her. She can start by herself, and he’ll be back before she can say “blastoff.” Guess I don’t need to decode that one for you.
We go back to Burpelson Base in full alert and General Ripper giving a speech. He explains to his men how the Commies have no regard for life whether others or their own and will come in many forms. Even disguised with the colors of the American uniform. To trust no one and to prevent anyone from entering the base at all cost.
Here we realize something is amiss. We still don’t know exactly why Plan R has been enacted but the whole situation is clearly fishy. What is Ripper up to?
IT’S ALL ABOUT FLUIDS
Group Captain Mandrake is closing the computer room (remember when computers were big ass boxes that needed tons of space?) and discovers a stray portable radio. He turns it on and it plays snappy instrumental music. Mandrake changes stations and all are playing normal music. He leaves in a hurry.
In our B-52, Major Kong opens the TOP SECRET envelope with the instructions for Plan R. This goes for several minutes with setting frequencies, blocking transmissions, and the pre-check of innumerable gadgets. They set a course for the primary target: the ICBM complex at Laputa. Now I get that all the seemingly weird names in the film are just Kubrick effing messing with us. There’s no way something in the Soviet Union is called Laputa which literally translates “The Whore” in Spanish.
Mandrake goes to Ripper’s office to show him the radio. The movie has to movie, and he still has it on— going about in the empty corridors of the base with the snappy music, evoking those 1960s shows with the gogo girls in miniskirts and knee-high boots. “I think the Pentagon has given us an exercise to test our readiness. I think it’s taking things too far. Our fellows will be inside Russian radar cover in about 20 minutes,” Mandrake offers with a grimace.
Ripper’s answer is, “I thought I issued instructions for all radios on this base to be impounded.” Undeterred, Mandrake insists that if something was happening it would be all over the radio waves. “Group Captain, the officer-exchange program does not give you any special prerogatives to question my orders.”
Did I forget to mention Mandrake is British? Well, I thought the accent rather odd, but since nowadays is so common to have British actors playing Americans, I chalked it up to them not caring about his accent at the time.
Now in my version of the events, they forget to tell him to speak “American,” and then reshoot that scene to add the part about the exchange program because it doesn’t make any fukken sense whatsoever.
The thing is, Ripper unilaterally decided to start a freaking war because of fluids, bodily fluids. He reckons politicians are not prepared to make the right decisions when it comes to war. Only military-trained men know about war. Ripper cannot stand by and watch the Communists take over, especially cannot let the Communists “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
Cut to the Pentagon where the War Room is in full session. President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) asks Turgidson what’s going on. It’s important to note here that when Turgidson explains the situation he mentions 34 B-52s out of Burpelson Air Base as “Part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation Dropkick.” Now, this sounds like two things: the President doesn’t know there’s a 24/7 group of airplanes ready to attack Russia or X amount of planes forming the Wings can do separate exercises while on duty.
I don’t know, there was something about the phrasing of the statement that was odd and was really distracting. Also coming from Turgidson’s mouth it might just all be BS. Who knows?
For all purposes the President is the only person who can order a nuclear attack but, and it’s a big but because here is when we learn what Plan R is: a contingency plan in case there’s a sneak attack and the chain of command is disrupted; thus giving any lower-echelon commander authority to order a retaliatory nuclear attack. A retaliatory safeguard if you please.
Movie has to movie, telling us that only Ripper knows the code to recall his planes. I have questions about this. If in the case of this mythical sneak attack any commander can issue the retaliatory order, why all these people do not have the same code to enact/recall the attack? Ripper is commander of a military base. How many military bases exist on American soil? What about those in foreign countries? WTF? Turgidson mentions 17,000 possible permutations of three-letter codes. They have to invade Burpelson Air Base to grab Ripper for the code. Shouldn’t another general of the same level/rank have the same effing codes?
Turgidson reads a partial transcription of the call Ripper gave to the central office after ordering the attack. “My boys will give you the best kind of start: 1,440 megatons worth. And you sure as hell won’t stop them now. So let’s get going. There’s no other choice. God willing we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.”
After that, we have about 10 to 15 minutes of debate in the War Room that feels like watching any debate in the United States Senate if anyone ever had the indecency of sitting through one of those.
It’s absolutely sad that a film from 1964 can depict our current state of affairs in such vivid detail. According to Turgidson, the planes already crossed the point of no return so it would be a good idea to just go with it and start the gosh-darn nuclear war. The Ruskies are going to go ape anyway— might as well make the best of it and catch them with their pants down. His words, not mine.
President Muffley brings the Russian Ambassador, Premier Kissoff, to the War Room to see if he could find the Russian President because the Americans cannot locate him. Because the movie gotta movie, the man is in some kind of party. The phone conversation between the presidents is like trying to have a transcendental conversation with a drunk (and why not, also high) college roommate with a very bad case of shenanigans. We only hear one side of the conversation, but it is enough to check all the items on the cliché list imagined by the God-fearing common American citizen about the heathen Communists.
Cut to our B-52, where we get to check the contents of the survival kits as our boys open them.
One .45 caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four-day’s concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrasebook and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; and three pairs of nylon stockings.
“Shoot. A fella could have a really good weekend in Vegas with that stuff,” exclaims Major Kong.
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was talking about the Russian phrase slash Bible miniature or the three lipsticks.
At Burpelson Air Base, a convoy approaches to raid it and get General Jack D. Ripper. Yes, his name is Jack D. Ripper. The Americans shoot each other. While the confrontation roars outside, Mandrake and Ripper are seated in the general’s office. Ripper asks Mandrake, “Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?”
“Well, no. I can’t say I have, Jack,” answers Mandrake, fiddling with his wrapped stick of chewing gum.
“Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it. Never water,” adds Ripper. Mandrake agrees, and Ripper continues, “On no account will a Commie ever drink water and not without good reason.” Mandrake is confused and Ripper explains, “Water. That’s what I’m getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this Earth’s surface is water. Why, do you realize 70 % of you is water. And as human beings you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. You beginning’ to understand?”
Ripper has been holding Mandrake with one arm since the start of the conversation, a hand on the British’s knee. If the position was uncomfortable before, at this point, Mandrake is downright shaking and sweating as Ripper exposes about FLUORIDATION… “The most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face.”
Luckily for Mandrake (and me), the battle has entered the base and shots shatter the office windows, sending Ripper into a war frenzy.
He produces a machine gun and yells at Mandrake to help him feed the ammunition belt. Apparently, Mandrake was wounded in some previous war and whatever was holding his leg together got loose, so he can’t move to help Ripper.
DOCTOR STRANGE (LOVE)
Back in the War Room, Premier Kissoff is alarmingly describing the effects of the Russian Doomsday Device: a year after the nuclear explosions, the surface of the planet will be as desolated as the surface of the moon. An inevitable outcome since the artifact has been designed to activate itself after an attack and with no way to abort it.
When President Muffley asks why they would create such a thing, the answer is simple: that was cheaper than continuing with the arms race, the space race, and the peace race— one big thing and done. Also, the deciding factor was when they learned the Americans were doing the same. President Muffley tells him he hasn’t authorized such a thing. “Our source was the New York Times,” says Premier Kissoff darkly, his accent thick as his eyebrows.
Here, more than 40 minutes into the film, Doctor Strangelove (Peter Sellers) finally appears when President Muffley questions the existence of such a device on the American side.
The doctor swirls his wheelchair around and with the most obnoxious post-war evil mastermind now on the Allies side accent details how he was entrusted as director of weapons research and development. He concludes that such a device “was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.”
By now, we are in minute fifty-something and we still have like forty to go. I feel like I have been watching this movie for three hours, and I am bored as hell. The thing is, they sold me this movie as a dark comedy, but satire is not really that. When I watch a comedy, I expect to laugh. Nothing so far has made me even chuckle. As a satire, this is not engaging me either. It’s just making me more than sad, annoyed.
Annoyed that in more than forty years we haven’t learned anything about how stupid war is and let’s not even dissect its aftermath. Annoyed that the weapons we have are way worse than the Doomsday Device described in Doctor Strangelove because you do not need to be a conspiracy theories enthusiast to have an inkling of the power nuclear nations wield today and the consequences if any of their leaders gets a sudden case of the Rippers.
Every single thing that should have been funny in Doctor Strangelove, falls flat on its cream-pie-smashed face.
Its constant wink-wink elbow-elbow situations, outrageous names shtick, and deadpan deliveries supposed to mock the gravity of the words uttered do not amuse me in the least.
Perhaps is that actors like Eddie Murphy and Tyler Perry have jaded me to the allegedly funny situation of one actor playing multiple roles. But not even Peter Sellers’ epic portrayal of three very distinctive characters saved this. I have a feeling that if Doctor Strangelove had been made today the two aforementioned actors would have also played the bikini-clad secretary. But that is neither here nor there.
Remember how Major Kong included “race and color” in his speech? That’s because they had a black member on the plane: none other than frigging James Earl Jones! I’m so frustrated with this movie I didn’t even feel like finding out if this was his first role or something. Jones looks very young here, but he should have been at least 30 at the time.
And I haven’t arrived at the part where cowardly General Ripper kills himself to avoid torture for the code. Our B-52 damaged by the Russians ended with Major Kong falling with the bomb as they unleash their payload on the nearest Russian facility since they are losing fuel and cannot reach their primary target. Doctor Strangelove says “Mein Fuhrer” and tries to control his lame arm from producing a Nazi salute. Or the sudden (truly ex machina) option to send people to a deep mineshaft to preserve the American way of life with 10 females for each male and obviously overriding fidelity in the part of the males— all for the greater good. I mean, c’mon.
I’m giving Doctor Strangelove 5 out of 10 for effort. Hey, it did make me feel something, even if it was just annoyance. Perhaps I should have gone with Zorba the Greek or Mary Poppins for that year’s nominations. Nah, not reviewing Mary Poppins. Nope.
Doctor Strangelove is available on Amazon Prime.