Review of Fail Safe (1964) by Simon M — 06 Oct 2010

For all of you who love Dr. Stangelove, you may want to check out this movie. Some describe Fail-Safe as Dr. Stranglove without the laughs. The stories are very similar, but Fail-Safe is not a comedy, black or otherwise. This is a tense movie about a computer malfunction that leads to the possibility of catastrophic war. The President(Henry Fonda) and a translator(Larry Hagman) try to convince the Soviet Premier that US bombers headed toward Moscow are not an act of war, but the result of a mistake.

There was a great deal of discussion about whether such an accident could actually happen. Even President Lyndon Johnson spoke out against this movie. With all the differing opinions and the fact that this movie was released soon after Dr. Strangelove, this movie bombed at the box office.

This is still a fine film and should be watched without making too many comparisons to Dr. Strangelove. This one plays it straight and it is every inch as chilling as the Kubrick classic.