Classic Movie Review Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove (1964) 

Directed by Stanley Kubrick 

Written by Terry Southern, Peter George, Stanley Kubrick 

Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens 

Release Date January 29th, 1964 

Published July 24th, 2023 

Dr. Strangelove is very much a movie of its time. When it was released in 1964 it was a boiling mad, raging cauldron of immediate satire of world events currently in motion. Imagine something like Oliver Stone's W, w a film made and released while George W. Bush was still President, and you can get the sense of how timely Dr. Strangelove was in 1964. It's also far better than W which was a desperately bland attempted polemic. There was nothing bland about Dr. Strangelove in 1964. The film was bitter and biting, savaging the powerful in a fashion that genuinely set the leaders of the day on edge. 

Powerful leaders in military and government would have preferred that audiences in 1964 not know just how desperately unsafe our approach to nuclear weapons was at the time. They wanted us to be reassured that their leaders were well prepared, thoughtful, and of sound judgment. The reality, of course, was that the people in charge of our nuclear program were human beings just as potentially flawed and failing as anyone else. Dr. Strangelove takes the idea of egotistical, deeply flawed individuals in charge of world destroying technology to its most ugly and terrifying yet logical conclusion. 

The thought experiment was thus: What if one of our military leaders happened to come unglued and decided to end the world? What would it take to stop this military leader from causing the end of the world? Was it possible for one crazed lunatic in our leadership to end the world? The answer was a very uneasy, yes. The fact of the matter, though we were never blown up by nuclear weapons during the Cold War, it was always a possibility. All it took was a couple of bad breaks and one determined nut to bring about a global catastrophe. 

Dr. Strangelove exposes the absurdity of this idea, putting the idea in your head and forcing you to understand the stakes of a Cold War. Cold War has become synonymous with a period of time from Post World War 2 through the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s. But the real definition of a Cold War was simply a war that didn't involve fighting battles with troops and guns. It was a war of behind the scenes maneuvering and global chess. It was a balancing of big egos, bitter words and unrelenting suspicion. The only thing keeping us all alive was the desire among our leaders not to die. Had they come up with a solution that they could have comfortably survived, they might not have been so good at holding back the nukes. 

We look back on it now with a sort of wistful sigh of relief, as if we aren't still under threat of Nuclear annihilation. But, the fact is, Dr. Strangelove is actually still entirely relevant. Nuclear détente is still a thing. We still have a standing agreement with other countries capable of having nuclear weapons that we don't destroy each other but we all still could destroy each other. We just don't talk about nuclear weapons anymore aside from vague observations during Presidential election years when someone will allude to not wanting so and so to have the nuclear launch codes. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Horror in the 90s: The Exorcist 3

The Exorcist 3 (1990) 

Directed by William Peter Blatty 

Written by William Peter Blatty 

Starring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson

Release Date August 17th, 1990 

Box Office $44 million 

People forget just how big a hit The Exorcist 3 was when it was released in August of 1990. William Peter Blatty's first and only directorial effort managed to top the box office on opening weekend and accumulated overall, a gross that would be over $100 million dollars today. Despite much negative reaction to the film at the time, The Exorcist 3 has persisted in the minds of horror fans as a rare third sequel in a famous franchise that doesn't stink out loud. 

The Exorcist 3 centers on a Police Detective, Lt. William F. Kinderman, played by legendary actor George C. Scott. Kinderman recalls having been at the scene of the crime when in 1975 Father Damian Karras plunged to his death from the apartment window of young Regan MacNeil after having participated in Regan's exorcism. It's a horrific memory that Kinderman shares with Father Karras' close friend, Father Joseph Dyer (Ed Flanders). And it's a memory that creeps back into both men's minds when a series of murders occur that recall a demonically possessed killer. 

In 2020, The Exorcist 3 turned 30 years old and on my podcast, the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, we watched it and reviewed it on the show. Our review was incredibly positive. We loved George C. Scott's performance and the wild horror imagery of William Peter Blatty's shabby but endearing first time direction. Watching the film again, a mere 3 years later however, the charm is less pronounced. What steps forward are the flaws, the strange choices, the reasons the normies of 1990 hated this movie. 

It's sad but it appears to be true that I willed myself to like The Exorcist 3 so much in 2020 that I neglected just how weird and random William Peter Blatty's choices are. First of all, one of the first images of The Exorcist 3 is a jarringly silly shot that is intended to be frightening. Church doors fly open, and an ill-wind blows through the church, creating a chaotic swirl of loose hymnals and biblical verses. The camera slides into the chaos before cutting to a close up of a cross where a ceramic Jesus of Nazareth comically opens his eyes. The image of Jesus here looks like comedian Tom Kenny and the horror spell that Blatty is trying to cast fails immediately. 

This is followed by an attempt to give The Exorcist 3 the feel of a waking nightmare. The camera leaves the church and takes on a first person perspective, as if we are the camera and we are in the midst of a dream. We are walking down a wet street late at night. In the distance, a man who appears to be wearing a Priest's garb runs quickly and strangely across the street. The camera moves up and down with each step, the camera, our eyes, fall upon the sidewalk before us. A young man appears to the left of the frame holding a rose. We walk past him and continue up the street. The young man emerges again somehow having teleported to a spot ahead of us. He holds out the flower and we walk past. 

We then leap to a new location, the steps from Georgetown below the former home of Regan MacNeil. It's the place where Father Karras died after leaping from a fourth story window. We, the camera, roll down those stairs just as Father Karras did, rolling and bouncing horrifically until we reach the bottom, and there the nightmare ends. We awaken to helicopters intercut with scenes from the church. Our protagonists, Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer going about their business. Kinderman is investigating a grisly murder scene. Father Dyer is practicing a sermon and scolding a student priest, played in a cameo by a very young, almost unrecognizable Kevin Corrigan, a favorite character of mine. 

The visual marriage of Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer is accompanied by dialogue that establishes the long-time friendship of these two men. It's a friendship bound in the blood of their dead friend Father Karras. it's established that each man is haunted by this date, the date of Father Karras's death. They are haunted so much that they each feel the need to comfort the other. Each man talks of having to cheer up their old friend and thus they meet at a local movie theater for an umpteenth showing of It's a Wonderful Life. 

One can infer that Blatty is intending to evoke the life-affirming emotional power of It's a Wonderful Life to underline how these two men appreciate being alive. Other than that, it's a particularly random inclusion. The movie date is followed by a bizarre non-sequitur conversation in which the detective relates a story about why he doesn't want to go him to his wife and mother-in-law. It's a story about a fish currently occupying Kinderman's bathtub and how he hasn't had a bath in 3 days because the fish is there. This is the pretense Blatty feels is necessary to get Kinderman and Dyer to have dinner together and rehash stories about Father Karras and Kinderman's strange new murder case. 

Not to be Mr. IMDB trivia, but, as we cut to the restaurant in the following scene, there is an entirely random and uncommented upon cameo from a famous non-actor. Glimpsed ever so briefly in this scene is the former United States Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop. Most won't recognize the man but if you are of a certain age, his oddly styled beard, a style referred to as a chinstrap, as it circles the face without including a mustache, is a strangely familiar sight. Koop became famous in the late 80s and early 90s when he defied the Reagan and Bush administrations to openly discuss AIDS. He spoke of safe sex and promoted condoms at a time when it was not something conservatives wanted him to do. 

That's a wordy way of saying that spotting C. Everett Koop in a brief cameo in The Exorcist 3 is weird and quite distracting for someone who knows who he is. Perhaps the former Surgeon General was invited because he shared a prominent Letter C with star George C. Scott. These are the kinds of bizarre intrusive thoughts that such random inclusions invite. And they are a warning to future filmmakers, try to minimize such distracting cameos in your movie as they might pull focus from what you are trying to accomplish in a scene. 

Find my full length piece at Horror.Media