Anyone who thinks whacko conspiracy theories are a new thing should watch "Dr. Strangelove". It was streaming free on Amazon Prime Videos recently--an opportunity of Kubrickian proportions.
Peter Sellers played three different roles (RAF Group Captain Mandrake, Merkin Muffley, a weirdly Stevensonian President of the United States, and Dr. Strangelove, himself, the 'former' Nazi nuclear scientist.)
I had forgotten how brilliant George C.Scott was as General Turgidson, head of the Air Force, and how 'Slim Pickens' the determined B-52 pilot, went through checklist after checklist, ticking off boxes like an accountant, while avoiding Soviet air defenses and ignoring desperate American efforts to cancel his mission. Supposedly, Kubrick didn't tell him the movie was a satire, in order to guarantee a 'straight' performance.
What particularly sticks in the mind in this age of QAnon was the performance of Sterling Hayden, as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, a military bureaucrat committed to a satirical version of the John Birch Society theories wherein the Commies (and women) have ganged up to steal men's 'precious bodily fluids'.
His self initiated attack on the Soviet Union, with all its fatal consequences, was a scary, demonstration of how close we are to having an impaired person one button away from Armegeddon, no matter what precautions are taken to avoid it.
Yes, it was funny--
And haunting--
And the closing voice-over, Vera Lynn singing 'We'll Meet Again", brilliant--
