Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Your mileage on this film is going to largely depend on the era in which you watch it. As a diligent movie freak in my younger (and now older) years, I made a point of watching it. In the early 2000s, the threats of the last century had already seemed quaint, and so, too, did the movie itself.

But now?

With a world swinging wildly between the abjectly horrific and the sublimely absurd (or is it the other way around?), the jokes hit quite a bit harder. That might be a bit unfair, and risks drifting into that same nostalgic way of thinking that insists that the world was a simpler place when we were younger. It isn’t so much that I wasn’t able to get into the film in the year 2000, it’s probably more that the world isn’t crazy enough for a fifteen year old to really enjoy the potshot.

But Kubrick isn’t a comic filmmaker at his core. Judging the film just by the standard of how much it makes one laugh is only part of the equation. Normally immaculate in each of his films, Kubrick lets the film surrounding this funhouse mirror reflection of the world in 1964. The expansive war room brought to life by Ken Adam—you’ll see his aesthetic all over the early Bond films—contrasts with the cramped spaces of the B-52 bomber. Visually, it keeps one interested, but all stays of a piece with each other. Aurally, too, the War Room echoes cavernously with every shout while the bomber clicks and whirrs with every mechanized horror they implement. Kubrick never cedes control over his films, even when what is being displayed is pointedly chaotic.

The Exorcist III (1990)

Director: William Peter Blatty

Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Jason Miller, Brad Dourif

Have I Seen it Before: Never. But I was oddly excited to get to this one, based on its reputation as fundamentally better than Exorcist II: The Heretic (1990) but, as it turned out, I’ve had recent dental work I’ve enjoyed more than that film, so that’s hardly conclusion. It also deals with the fate (for lack of a better term) of my favorite character from both the original film and novel, Damien Karras (Miller).

Did I Like It: I certainly wished I liked it more, with everything mentioned above. The problems pile up pretty quickly beyond the pitch, though. Scott lurches through the film alternately whispering and shouting at people with no apparent sense to which mode he is in at any given time, nearly to the point that I became concerned he did that for his entire career. There are a number of editing choices that feel like they may have been made with the editor under the impression that there was a bomb attached to the moviola. Also, for a film marginally about Damien Karras, I feel like the character as depicted here is somewhat divorced from the one we know from the film, and far more egregiously, depressingly underused.

But the real problem is that the film always reeks of studio interference. While “The Exorcist III” looks better on a poster, this movie isn’t about an Exorcist of any kind. The studio saw that and knew they could fix a problem they themselves created. John Carpenter was circling the director’s chair at one point, but realized his own ideas of interjecting an exorcism into this story was against the whole point, and certainly not what William Peter Blatty wanted. Cut to Blatty himself directing, and Warner Bros. becomes hell-bent on interjecting Nicol Williamson into the film. It deflates the whole third act, and leaves the entire film feeling inert at best.

And yet, I still want to read Legion… So at least there’s that.

*Maybe if that film had come with nitrous…