• Wednesday, January 29, 1964

• Country:

  USA

• Language:

  English

• Runtime:

  93 min

(1964)

Goofs

• Miscellaneous: The opening sequence contains the grammatically incorrect credit "Base on the book Red Alert by Peter George".
• Miscellaneous: Towards the end of the film, when Strangelove is fighting with his renegade right hand over control of his wheelchair and punches it several times out of frustration, the Russian Ambassador clearly corpses (laughs) at Peter Sellers' performance and then quickly regains his composure.
• Continuity: When Gen. Ripper and Capt. Mandrake are using the belt-fed machine gun, in one shot Mandrake is holding a chair over his head for protection, but when it cuts and the camera is behind them and Ripper crawls away from the window, Mandrake isn't holding the chair, and the closest chair is 10 feet away from him.
• Revealing mistakes: The background footage for the model B-52's is filmed from a Boeing B-17G, whose shadow can be seen on the ground. See also Trivia.
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: After Major Kong lists the contents of the emergency ration kits, he says "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time in Dallas with all that stuff." After filming, the line was dubbed to "pretty good time in Vegas". The mismatch can clearly be seen. This was done because President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas shortly after filming was completed, and the producers did not want to offend anyone.
• Factual errors: In the opening credits, the standard disclaimer about events and characters being fictitious has the word misspelled as "ficticious".
• Miscellaneous: In the opening crawl, the word "occurrence" is misspelled "occurence."
• Anachronisms: (Possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers) The big map on the Pentagon wall is badly out of date - Finland lost Karjala to the USSR during WWII.

Taglines

• The hot-line suspense comedy.

Trivia

• Peter Sellers was cast in four roles, but experienced problems when trying to develop a Texas accent for Maj. T.J. "King" Kong. After Sellers broke his ankle, Stanley Kubrick was forced to find another actor. Convinced that nobody could have acted the part as well as Sellers, Kubrick decided to cast someone who naturally fit the role. The producers first approached John Wayne, who did not even bother to respond, and "Bonanza" (1959) star Dan Blocker, who declined the role because of the script's progressive political content. Remembering his work on the western One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Kubrick cast Slim Pickens as Kong, the gung-ho hick pilot determined to drop his bombs at any cost. Pickens was never shown the script nor told it was a black comedy; ordered by Kubrick to play it straight, he played the role as if it were a serious drama - with amusing results.
• George C. Scott was reputedly annoyed by the fact that Stanley Kubrick was pushing him into an overacting performance, even though his work on the film is now regarded as some of his best work on-screen. Although he vowed never to work with Kubrick again, Scott himself came to regard this as one of his favorite performances.
• Peter Sellers was paid $1,000,000 for his work on the film (five-ninths of the film's budget). Stanley Kubrick famously quipped "I got three for the price of six".
• Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing only on the provision that Peter Sellers play at least four major roles. This came from the fact that they deemed Sellers' playing of multiple roles was one of the big selling points in making Lolita (1962) a success. Kubrick agreed to these conditions.
• Peter Sellers improvised much of his dialog during filming. Stanley Kubrick incorporated his ad-libbed lines into the written screenplay as shooting progressed.
• Once they read the script, The Pentagon withheld any co-operation with the film so the set designers were forced to reconstruct the cockpit of the B52 bomber from one single photograph in their possession that had been carelessly printed in a British flying magazine and comparing it to the cockpit of the B29 Superfortress, and relating it to the geometry of the B52's fuselage. (In the early 60s, the B52 represented cutting edge technology and access to it was a matter of national security.) When some American Air Force personnel were invited to view the film's reconstruction of the B52 cockpit (which had cost $100,000 to construct), they were astounded to see that it was almost note perfect, so much so that Stanley Kubrick feared that Ken Adam's production design team had resorted to illegal moves and could be under investigation from the FBI.
• The film's first test screening was due to take place on November 22, 1963, the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The film was just weeks away from its scheduled premiere, but, after the assassination, this was pushed back to late January 1964, as it was felt that the public would not be in a mood for a black comedy so soon after such a traumatic event.
• The only known public showing of the famous custard pie footage was at the 1999 screening of the film at London's National Film Theatre following Stanley Kubrick's death.
• While shooting aerial footage of wastelands over Greenland, the second unit camera crew accidentally filmed a secret US military base. Their plane was forced down under suspicion of being Russian spies.
• In researching for the film, Stanley Kubrick read nearly 50 books about nuclear war.

Quotes

No quotes found.

Awards

1. Bodil
   Event: Bodil Awards
   Result: Won
   Category: Best European Film (Bedste europæiske film)
   Recipient(s): Stanley Kubrick (director)
2. Oscar
   Event: Academy Awards, USA
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
   Recipient(s): Stanley Kubrick
3. Oscar
   Event: Academy Awards, USA
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Picture
   Recipient(s): Stanley Kubrick
4. Oscar
   Event: Academy Awards, USA
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Director
   Recipient(s): Stanley Kubrick
5. Oscar
   Event: Academy Awards, USA
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Actor in a Leading Role
   Recipient(s): Peter Sellers
6. BAFTA Film Award
   Event: BAFTA Awards
   Result: Won
   Category: Best British Art Direction (B/W)
   Recipient(s): Ken Adam