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Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold-war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so- called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the U.S. president (Peter Sellers) engages in hilarious hot-line negotiations with his Soviet counterpart. Sellers also plays a British military attaché and the mad bomb-maker Dr. Strangelove; George C. Scott is outrageously frantic as General Buck Turgidson, whose presidential advice consists mainly of panic and statistics about "acceptable losses." With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the war room!") and images (Slim Pickens's character riding the bomb to oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best. --Jeff Shannon
Additional features
This second DVD edition of Stanley Kubrick's film is anchored by two new documentaries. The 15-minute look at the early Kubrick is rushed and covers no new ground for fans. The 45-minute "Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove" is more insightful despite having only a few players still alive in 2000 to talk about the production (including Kubrick's partner James B. Harris and actor James Earl Jones). The featurette does a good job of chronicling how a thriller about the end of the world became a comedy. Some publicity material has been added, including posters, the trippy trailer, and some oddly comical "fake" interviews with the two leads. --Doug Thomas
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