This week’s film (OK, technically 2007’s film, but since I wasn’t reviewing them then I’m doing it now…and since we “unofficially” showed it last week for reasons that will become clear momentarily) is a 1964 cold war thriller in which an American plane experiencing radio difficulty is mistakenly dispatched to drop a nuclear bomb on the Soviet Union as the forces on the ground desperately try to stop the prospect of an imminent and unintentional nuclear war.
You would be forgiven for assuming that I’m talking about Fail Safe, but you would also be wrong. In fact, the film was Stanley Kubrick‘s eerily similar offering Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. So eerily similar, in fact, that the whole thing went to court. While Lumet’s version was based on on the 1962 novel of the same name, Kubrick’s classic was based on the 1958 novel Red Alert. The similarities must have become apparent well prior to the release of either film, and having the element of precedence on their side, Kubrick and the author of Red Alert brought copyright infringement charges. Ultimately the case was settled, and as far as the films were concerned the upshot was that Columbia (which owned Strangelove) also ended up purchasing Fail Safe, and delaying its release until nine months after Kubrick’s release. (At least partially) as a result, Strangelove became the box office hit that everybody knows today.
Not only are the plots similar between the two films. Both are shot in a stark and striking black-and-white and use a small number of similar sets, both feature a megalomaniacal civilian professor who becomes inserted into the affairs, both mention a Doomsday Machine (though only Strangelove uses it as a plot device). The biggest difference between the films is tone. Strangelove is a black comedy, while Fail Safe is merely black. And with that, let’s talk about the film!
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
Lionel Mandrake (not pictured above) is an R.A.F. exchange officer serving at Burpleson Air Force Base (don’t worry, the names will only get sillier), out of which is based a U.S. nuclear bomber wing. Mandrake receives orders from his superior officer, General Jack D. Ripper to lock down the base, confiscate all civilian radios, and issue the bomber wing Attack Plan R. Clearly something quite significant has happened.
Plan R F9om Oute9 Space
Major Kong, who pilots one of the bombers, understands the gravity of the situation, as Attack Plan R is an all-out nuclear assault on the Soviet Union. The planes immediately switch their radios into a safe mode, where only messages with the correct three-letter prefix can be received to avoid the enemy contacting them and issuing conflicting orders, and the wing is off on its two-hour flight to their targets – the primary for Major Kong’s plane being the ICBM missile complex at La Puta.
I love a man who comes with his own coupons
Meanwhile hawkish General Buck Turgidson is called away from a steamy affair with his secretary to discuss the situation at the Pentagon with various eminent personages, including the eccentric emigré scientist Dr. Strangelove (he changed it from Merkwürdigliebe) and the President of the United States, Merkin Muffley (both played, as is Group Captain Mandrake, by Peter Sellers).
King Arthur must have had horrific feng shui
It turns out that although Attack Plan R is a retaliatory attack plan designed for the eventuality of a response in the case of a Russian sneak attack, there has been no Russian attack! It appears that General Ripper has exceeded his authority, and the gentlemen in the War Room desperately attempt to contact him to figure out what the heck is going on.
I love women, Mandrake, but I deny them my essence
While following orders and collecting the civilian radios on the base, Mandrake out of curiosity turns one on – and finds that the civilian broadcasts appear to be continuing apace. He concludes that rather than the radio stations being blissfully unaware of a sneak Russian nuclear attack that instead there is likely no attack at all, and he goes to General Ripper’s office to inform him that there must be some mistake. This is when we realize that Ripper has gone a bit funny in the head, and has preemptively launched a nuclear attack, paranoid about fluoridation and his precious bodily fluids. But, as Ripper has locked Mandrake in his office and has a service pistol at his side, it appears that Mandrake isn’t going to be able to inform anybody of the situation.
I will not buy this record, it is scratched
As the bomber crew goes through their preparations for their attack and possible crash landing in enemy territory (a fellow could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with the contents of their survival kits!) the forces at the Pentagon, completely unable to communicate with the secreted Ripper, decide to launch an all-out attack on their own Burpleson AFB in an attempt to learn the three-letter code and recall the planes.
After being fired for advising President Muffley to wear four pocket squares, King Camp Gillette went on to found a razor empire
Since it is now possible that American bombers might reach their targets without being recalled, President Muffley gets onto the hotline with the Soviet Premier Kissoff to try to sort the whole thing out. At this point, Kissoff reveals that the Soviets have built – but have not yet revealed, the unveiling being set for the upcoming week – a Doomsday device: A giant deterrent dirty bomb, which in the case of a nuclear attack (or tampering!) will automatically shower the entire world with 100 years of deadly radiation, because the cost of the nuclear arms race had become too high for the Soviets to keep up. Dr. Strangelove notes ironically that the entire point of having a Doomsday device is to inform the world that it exists. At any rate, this only adds urgency to the already urgent mission of recalling the planes.
It was in a box of Hamdingers
Back at Burpleson, the ground assault has finally taken control of the base, and it is only a matter of time before they reach General Ripper’s office. Mandrake tries to fool the crazed General into giving him the recall code letters, but to his surprise, Ripper commits suicide. However, going through Ripper’s effects Mandrake finds a scribbled note suggesting that the code may just be some combination of the letters E, O, and P. Now, he just has to get this information to the Pentagon.
Jabari Parker, NOOOOOO!!!!
Mandrake faces several obstacles to this. First, all of the phone lines in Ripper’s office have been cut – by Ripper, of course. Second, the responding officer who finally gets the door to Ripper’s office open, Colonel Bat Guano (if that is his real name) surveys the scene of a strangely dressed “officer” in the room with a dead General and comes to the conclusion that Mandrake is the dirty Commie responsible for all this. And even when Mandrake manages to convince Guano that he needs to call the Pentagon, he’s forced to use a pay telephone…and the War Room won’t accept a collect call, and Mandrake doesn’t have enough change. Ultimately he finds a source of quarters, but he is going to have to answer to the Coca Cola Company.
In the bureaucratic mop-up of the Ripper Incident, Major Kong was posthumously denied a Purple Heart as it was determined he was not wearing a safety harness at the time of his death
With the recall code in hand, the Pentagon is able to call back all of the (surviving) bombers…with the exception of one – Major Kong’s plane, which was damaged by a missile attack and has a fried radio. The Pentagon relays the mission target of that particular plane to the Russians so that they can intercept it, but due to a tank leak and rapid loss of fuel, Major Kong selects an alternate target. Still, the electronics on the plane are fried enough that the bomb bay doors will not open, so Kong goes down into the bomb bay himself to complete the mission. The whole thing ends with Kong getting the doors open just in time – and then unintentionally riding the bomb down, whooping and waving his cowboy hat all the way into Mushroomland.
sgaew
Of course, this leaves open the problem of how to deal with the impending radiation disaster that is about to destroy life as we know it on the planet. Led by Strangelove, the folks in the War Room quickly conclude that the elites of society are going to have to be secured down in some of the country’s deepest mine shafts, with, of course, a 10-to-1 ratio of females to males, with the former being specially chosen for their sexual characteristics, and with a promise that animals vill be bred und slaughtered from Strangelove and amidst Turgidson’s fears of a U.S.-Soviet Mine Shaft Gap, the film closes with multiple scenes of mushroom clouds as Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” plays cheerfully in the background. The End.
There’s little to add. Strangelove is easily one of the greatest black comedies of all time. Sardonic, wry, with a mix of verbal and physical comedy shoved in the face of one of the grimmest stories that can be told, there’s really nothing that compares to this film. Fail Safe took the end of the world and played it for realism. Strangelove took the end of the world and played it for the absurdity and gallows humor. And as we know, absurdity and gallows humor win every time.
Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site 