 Okay, say you're the President of the United States of America and you've just been informed that one of your most trusted and slightly unhinged base commanders has ordered a fleet of B-52s to bomb your Cold War enemy with a nuclear payload. What do you do with such information? Allow the planes to continue on target and cause World War 3? Try to bring them back before any damage is done? Or maybe you reach out to one of your key advisors, a bizarrely named doctor with a German accent, a shady past, and a killer gloved hand. Sounds like the perfect absurd setup for an era-defining comedy about the end of the world, also known as Doctor Strange Love, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick and starring British actor Peter Sellers in not one, not two, but three roles, the story revolves around United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who believes that Soviet agents have been secretly fluoridating America's water supplies in order to pollute the precious bodily fluids of her citizens, and so orders a full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR, an attack which immediately draws the attention of President Muffley, who summons his cabinet to discuss how to prevent the bombers from reaching their targets in the war room underneath the Pentagon. Desperate for a solution that will prevent the end of the world, Muffley turned to the eccentric scientific advisor Doctor Strange Love, who proposes a radical, if preposterous plan to survive any radioactive holocaust. It's impossible to calculate and digest the cultural and cinematic legacy Doctor Strange Love has as a film since its release in January 1964, from the endless lines of quotable dialogue to the beautiful set design of the iconic war room by Ken Adams, to the captivating performance from Sellers as the deranged former Nazi-turned-American Doctor. The script, which was originally based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George, and written as a thriller, became a comedy once Kubrick realized the many scenes of nuclear drama could be turned into satire, a satire that relishes any opportunity to expose the innate insanity and ridiculousness of two superpowers constantly flirting with the idea of mutually assured destruction or mad for short. Stellas' performances as the President, Strange Love and the British Captain Mandrake are easily some of his most recognizable roles, with his often improvised dialogue and physical comedy leading to many ruined takes throughout the production. The impact of the film on audiences at the time was such that the US government implemented internal policy changes to ensure no one base commander could replicate the events portrayed on-screen, which is probably a good thing because as much as Kubrick's satirical masterpiece may make us laugh over the idiotic actions of harebrained schemers and war mongers, the real fed-a-compley of the comedy here is just how close we came to real nuclear annihilation time and time again.