Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) IMDB Rating: 8.6
Storyline: Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a backdoor mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley.
Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers, and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper’s executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world.
Meanwhile, at the Pentagon War Room, key persons, including Muffley, Turgidson, and a nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all-out nuclear war. As tensions rise, they explore options such as shooting down the rogue planes or attempting to convince the Soviet Union that the attack was a mistake.
However, time is running out, and the situation becomes even more precarious when it is revealed that the Soviets have developed a Doomsday Device, an automated retaliatory system that will trigger a devastating nuclear response if any nuclear bomb is detonated on their soil.
