Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, commonly known as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 black comedy film which satirizes the fear of nuclear war in the 1960s. It was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick and starred Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. The film is loosely based on Peter George's Cold War thriller novel "Red Alert". The story concerns a crazy U.S. Air Force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States and his advisors as they try to recall thebombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It separately follows the crew of one of the B-52 bombers as they try to launch the bomb over Soviet territory.
The film is often ranked by critics and directors amongst the greatest comedies of all time, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2000, readers of "Total Film" magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time. As of July 2012, it ranked the 35th greatest film of all time at the Internet Movie Database. Movie critic Roger Ebert said the movie is "arguably the best political satire of the century." In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was listed as number three on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list.