Criterion set to drop Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War masterpiece DR. STRANGELOVE in June

Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece is finally coming to BluRay from Criterion on June 28th. This film brilliantly satirized the fears and anxiety surrounding the mounting tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War era. Sterling Hayden stars as Jack D. Ripper, an Air Force general who goes insane and decides to order a nuclear strike on Russia. What ensues is one of the greatest works of black comedy cinema ever made. Comic genius Peter Sellers plays multiple roles as the loopy US President Merkin Muffley/stuffy British RAF officer Lionel Mandrake and Dr. Strangelove, a handicapped, eccentric former Nazi. Also featured are Slim Pickens as hayseed T.J. “King” Kong a bomber commander, George C. Scott as loudmouthed buffoon General Buck Turgidson, and Keenan Wynn as Army Colonel Bat Guano. Yes, just by reading some of these names you can immediately tell what kind of screwball antics are in store.

SYNOPSIS: Stanley Kubrick’s painfully funny take on Cold War anxiety is without a doubt one of the fiercest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays three wildly different roles: Air Force Captain Lionel Mandrake, timidly trying to stop a nuclear attack on the USSR ordered by an unbalanced general (Sterling Hayden); the ineffectual and perpetually dumbfounded President Merkin Muffley, who must deliver the very bad news to the Soviet premier; and the titular Strangelove himself, a wheelchair-bound presidential adviser with a Nazi past. Finding improbable hilarity in nearly every unimaginable scenario, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a genuinely subversive masterpiece that officially announced Kubrick as an unparalleled stylist and pitch-black ironist. – BUY FROM AMAZON

Special Features
• Restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack
• New interviews with Stanley Kubrick scholars Mick Broderick and Rodney Hill; archivist Richard Daniels; cinematographer and camera innovator Joe Dunton; camera operator Kelvin Pike; and David George, son of Peter George, on whose novel Red Alert the film is based
• Excerpts from a 1965 audio interview with Kubrick, conducted by Jeremy Bernstein
• Four short documentaries from 2000, about the making of the film, the sociopolitical climate of the period, the work of actor Peter Sellers, and the artistry of Kubrick
• Interviews from 1963 with Sellers and actor George C. Scott
• Excerpt from a 1980 interview with Sellers from NBC’s Today show
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by scholar David Bromwich and a 1962 article by screenwriter Terry Southern on the making of the film

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