The Movie: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
What Is It?: The
idea that a nation would annihilate another, guaranteeing itself annihilation,
is so monumentally moronic that it is hard to believe anyone would conceive of
such a thing in the first place. The total absurdity of all this hit Stanley
Kubrick with a massive wallop while he was trying to decide how to adapt Peter
George’s novel Red Alert for the
screen. Not only did Kubrick decide to adapt it as a comedy, but he decided to
make it one as over-the-top as a Three Stooges short. However, the themes and agenda
are so immensely dark (and the finale so exhilaratingly nihilistic) that Dr. Strangelove is almost as much of a
horror movie as it is a comedy.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1945, the first atomic
bomb test takes place.
