Poisoned by his paranoid fear that the Soviets are fluoridating American water to pollute citizens’ “precious bodily fluids,” U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) orders his unit’s B-52 bombers to execute Wing Attack Plan R, effectively bypassing the usual chain of command to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. The aircrafts commence their two-hour journeys to various targets and all hell breaks loose. Or at least, with the rapidly approaching threat of nuclear annihilation, it should.

Instead, there is a baffling nonchalance among the officers and government officials in the face of this looming threat. The key to understanding the film is through its vision of war — as man’s outlet for his repressed sexual urges. Men, at least those in the United States’ war room, are driven by a primal, libidinal infatuation with violence, and the power to drop a nuclear bomb is the epitome of this blinding virility. 

This central critique of war is primarily conveyed by caricaturistic military officers and politicians. At times almost overly on the nose, the film is ultimately doused in the perfect amount of biting satirical humor. This humor is complemented by the agonizing suspense built up as the bombers near their targets, blissfully ignorant of the metaphorical dick-measuring contest taking place in the name of U.S. military and foreign policy.

Wing Attack Plan R is first issued by Ripper as a means of exacting revenge on the Soviets, whom he blames for draining his formerly powerful sexual essence or his “bodily fluids,” as he refers to it. In the war room, General Turgidson (George Scott) urges the wholehearted embrace of this mission, seduced to obliviousness by the prospect of asserting his own macho masculinity. The eponymous Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), on the other hand, understands the devastating effects dropping the bombs would have — and it only makes his fetishistic obsession with nuclear power even stronger. Unable to control his right arm, which jerks around incessantly and occasionally defaults to a Nazi salute, Strangelove’s character blurs the lines between violence and sexuality.

While the war room becomes an echo chamber for proponents of Ripper’s orders, President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) seems a shocking breath of fresh, pacific air. But, as with any president, he only disappoints. Deciding it is necessary to call the Soviet Union’s fictional Premier Dimitri, Muffley ultimately propositions him, coyly flirting as they edge around the ever-increasing likelihood of mass nuclear destruction. Of course, the Soviet Union has an automatic Doomsday Machine that is not only impossible to disable, but has somehow been kept completely secret from the rest of the world and will lead to radioactive fallout with the power to create a fatal 93-year “doomsday shroud” around the planet. At this point, it couldn’t possibly get more absurd — and yet somehow, the film does just that.

With each increasingly ridiculous turn of events, Kubrick’s critique of the performance of war becomes all the more scathing, yet remains deviously comical. The film’s simultaneous humorous and anxiety-inducing capacities are anchored by the all-around stellar performances, especially from Sellers in his triplicate roles as Muffley, Dr. Strangelove and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. As the siloed off B-52 crews forge on, preparing to die heroically for their country, unaware they are going to kill all of mankind and its future, dread manages to creep in alongside the wicked glee the satire inspires.

Capable of sparking boisterous laughter and bleak, cynical reflection with the same ridiculous line or event, “Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is a masterclass in the genre of political satire.