“Laughing at death was a novel experience for American audiences. When Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove... was released in January 1964, many were captivated by a movie that wiped out the world's population--while ridiculing anti-Communists and the Soviet hierarchy and the inadequacies of our presidency and the lunacies of our military establishment. We laughed not only at the gleefully phallic imagery, but because the fanatics continued to function as though they were not about to die: faced with extinction, few of them had the wit to worry. The characters are part of our iconography now: Sterling Hayden as the crazed General Jack D. Ripper, Peter Sellers as the amiable, ineffective President and the rational RAF officer, George C. Scott as the bellicose General Turgidson, Keenan Wynn as the sexually paranoid sergeant, and Slim Pickens as the euphoric bomber. Today, most are nearly as familiar as the comic book villains or the trolls and witches of childhood....” --Nora Sayre, “Running Time: Films of the Cold War”