Red Alert, the novel on which this movie was based, is a standard technothriller of its time: Cracked soldier launches H-bomb attack on Russia, with everyone pulling back from the brink in the nick of time. In Kubrick’s version, one last bomber plows through to Armageddon, a food fight takes place in the U.S. War Room and a crippled scientist is moved by the thrill of it all to lurch to his feet, raise his arm in the Nazi salute and cry out, “Mein Fuhrer, I can walk.” Kubrick’s remains perhaps the blackest comedy ever put on screen, and with Peter Sellers brilliantly playing multiple roles, the blackest, funniest movie of the post-war era.
