Review of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) by Leeb — 06 Apr 2009

Without a doubt *the* greatest satiric screenplay of the 20th Century, only less dark than the far more disturbing and blacker comedy of Silence of the Lambs. To understand Dr. Strangelove you have to understand a Cold War era when the likelihood of nuclear holocaust seemed imminent and anti-Communist paranoia was still running very high.

You think Sarah Palin is bad? The script savagely lampoons the real post-McCarthy wing-nuttery of the age, from anti-fluoridation reactionary groups like the John Birch Society to real nuclear war advocates speaking flippantly of maximum body counts during a full-scale nuclear war.

The script roasts them all and takes a good wide swing at a few other soft spots in American society -- the use of Nazi scientists (we got to the moon on the shoulders of non other than Verner von Braun's leadership), the anti-commie paranoia that bordered on psychosis (the McCarthy era was pretty bad), the euphemistic "Peace is Our Profession" whitewash of the DOD (which led us to millions of deaths in S.

E. Asia) and so on. Strangelove takes it to the logical extreme in a sarcastic - even jugular - vein, demonstrating the inanity of anti-fluoridation paranoia via a psychotic general admitting his withholding ejaculation in defense of his precious bodily fluids.

This is examined in relation to fluoridation and the various epigrammatic phrases peace on earth, preserve our essences and purity of essence also revealing to us the acronymic three-letter cipher prefix necessary to cancel the attack.