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One of the most caustic of all film satires, Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove is a masterfully hilarious portrayal of human incompetence in the most extreme circumstances.

When US Air Force General Jack D Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes rogue and orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union through his unsuspecting British executive officer Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again) hunkers down with his team of military advisors in the Pentagon's War Room to stop the attack. Complicating matters are the flag-waving General Buck Turgidson (George C Scott), the wildcard Major Kong (Slim Pickens) on one of the planes carrying the bombs, and the President's mad scientific advisor Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers once more).

Kubrick applied his (in)famous fastidiousness to the production, crafting one of the sharpest comedies ever put to celluloid. Sellers' iconic triple-performances are complemented wonderfully by the supporting cast of character actors elevating the heart-stopping absurdity.

Both hysterically funny and unnervingly plausible, Dr Strangelove mixes farce with real-world politics. The film was originally conceived as a drama (and famously features narrative overlaps with Sidney Lumet's political thriller Fail-Safe from the same year) and its depiction of egoism, ineptitude, and paranoia remain scathing.