DR. STRANGELOVE - Blu-ray review

High Definition is a wonderful thing when it all comes together--high-quality film stock and equipment, a pristine master, and a solid transfer to disc. But HD can also heighten the flaws in a film. Sometimes a movie is as good as it's going to get, no matter how many lines you scan the image at or what compression technology you use.

I'm a big fan of "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb," which ranks #3 on the American Film Institute's list of greatest comedies. So when the Blu-ray was announced, I eagerly awaited a screener, hoping that in High Definition this classic Stanley Kubrick film would look as sharp as the satire, because they don't make comedies any blacker or pans any deader than this straight-faced comedy. But this Blu-ray isn't going to rank near the top of anyone's demo list. Sony used the same all-1.66:1 version as the 40th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, and I complained in my review of that edition that when I compared the SE DVD to an earlier release, the new widescreen version omitted detail. That's the case here too, and these are the examples I gave:

Example #1: Consider the scene where George C. Scott's character is in the bathroom while his secretary stretches out under a sun lamp. Some of the bed is cut off at the bottom, but slightly more of her shoes are shown far right. In that particular case, it's not a bad trade-off. But Example #2? Consider the first war room scene, where Scott's character breaks the news to the President that a crazed general has locked himself inside Burpelson Air Force Base and has dispatched warplanes to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union. In the old version, in an up-angle shot of Scott, you saw most of the desk in front of him and a stack of books with one title, "World Targets in Megadeaths," on top. In the new version, only "Megadeaths" is visible. The other words (and books) are cut off. There are many such examples, and purists will find it annoying that Sony, apparently responding to the market shift to widescreen televisions, remastered the original theatrical release that used both a 1.37:1 aspect ratio in spots along with 1.66:1 to a straight 1.66:1 image. I groused that while the SE DVD was remastered in High Definition, I did not notice an appreciable difference in sharpness or contrast from the earlier release. If anything, some scenes actually appeared hazier, and that's the case here too in Blu-ray.

It's the same with the sound. The original Special Edition DVD was Dolby Digital Mono, and everything emanated from the center speaker. But the 40th Anniversary DVD sported DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 options--again, responding to the new bells and whistles that have become standard for home entertainment systems. Though you'd expect the sound to be channeled through all speakers, because so much of "Dr. Strangelove" is dialogue and the sounds are so center-specific--even in a scene where machine guns blast away--the battle sounds are still localized in the center speaker region, with no ambient sounds coming out of the rear speakers. Same, again, with the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack on this Blu-ray, which isn't as dynamic as I'd have wished for. I can only surmise that the original master for "Dr. Strangelove" isn't the best baseline to work from. That's too bad, considering what a great film this is.

"Dr. Strangelove," in case you've never been exposed to this Cold War classic, is Kubrick's black comedy about the nuclear holocaust. With direct phone "hot lines" between Washington and Moscow and nuclear weapons stockpiled everywhere, was it possible someone could push the button by accident? Could a mistake launch missiles that would result in retaliatory missiles being fired, with the result being total annihilation of the planet? The chilling answer to that was yes. I was among those schoolchildren who, during the Cold War, filed into school basements and put their hands over their heads during frequent H-Bomb drills, and I remember neighbors digging pool-sized holes to build concrete shelters. This was the mindset during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everyone was paranoid that the world would end one day in a shower of fiery atomic explosions, and yet there was a weird acceptance of it all, as if to say, what can you do? America's frighteningly casual doomsday mindset bothered director Stanley Kubrick so much that, after making a movie about love ("Lolita"), he read nearly 50 books about nuclear war and set out to make a drama based on "Red Alert," a novel by Peter George. After working long hours on the project, a punchy Kubrick began to see how absurd the whole situation was, and decided to turn it into what would become one of the cinema's greatest black comedies.

It's also one of the great single-actor showcases. Peter Sellers is superb in three roles as the timid Strategic Air Command British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, as President Merkin Muffley (an Adlai Stevenson look-alike), and especially as Dr. Strangelove, the title character (a demented, wheelchair-bound ex-Nazi nuclear expert that comes across as a cross between Henry Kissinger and Werner Von Braun). As Strangelove, with his mind-of-its-own "Heil Hitler" arm, Sellers is at his comic best. He was also slated to play a fourth role--Maj. "King" Kong, the drawling, gung-ho Texas pilot whose payoff is to ride into film history on the payload end of a falling atomic bomb--but he broke his leg spilling out of the bomb doors. Veteran character actor Slim Pickens was called in to handle the part, and now, of course, you can't imagine anyone else in the role.

Sterling Hayden plays Jack D. Ripper, the commander-gone-mad who seals off his base and orders an unauthorized nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, while George C. Scott tries comedy on for size as the ebullient warmonger Gen. Buck Turgidson, a role he now says is his best. And you know what? He's right! As the chief military officer on hand in the "war room" who has the President's ear, Scott is as flamboyant and energetic as you've ever seen him, and his performance, like Sellers' and Hayden's and Pickens', gets better with age. Look for a young James Earl Jones, who debuts as a member of the B-52 bomber crew en route to set Armageddon in motion, and veteran Keenan Wynn as Col. "Bat" Guano, the gung-ho soldier who shoots a Coca-Cola machine to try to save the world.

Video:
As I said, "Dr. Strangelove" is presented in 1.66:1 aspect ratio throughout and it's transferred to a BD-50 disc via an AVC/MPEG-4 transfer. And I've seen better black-and-white films in High Definition. The black levels are a little light for my taste, and the entire transfer appears a little soft. Hi Def also calls attention to the substantial amount of grain in the background, and there's plenty of noise in those grainy background shots and also against light objects. At times, the whole film has a hazy look to it, even when cigarette smoke and lights aren't causing the problem. Whether that's the result of Kubrick's vision, a less-than-stellar master, or the transfer, I can't say. All I can say is that I'd hoped for a sharper picture.

Audio:
The featured audio is English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, though, as with the 40th Anniversary SE DVD, the remastered original Mono is also included, along with French Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Subtitles are in English, English SDH, French, Arabic, and Dutch. I think this was the picture that Kubrick made, but as with the video, if it's deliberately a little unpolished to make it seem as if it came right out of the newsreels and headlines, it's still not a showpiece for what HD can do in terms of sound and picture. The bass doesn't have much rumble, and the timbre isn't all that full or robust. Then again, when you play the original Mono you realize that the TrueHD is indeed an improvement.

Extras:
The featured Blu-ray exclusive is a PIP pop-up trivia track that incorporates commentaries and behind-the-scenes shots. Among the talking heads featured are Thomas Schelling, whose article on the novel Red Alert sparked Kubrick's interest; Richard A. Clark, author of Against All Enemies and a counter-terrorism and command/control systems expert; Daniel Ellsberg, famed consultant to the JFK administration and a Department of Defense veteran; Prof. George Quester from the University of Maryland, an expert on nuclear proliferation, deterrence, and diplomacy; and Prof. David Alan Rosenberg from Temple University, a historian whose area of expertise is nuclear strategy. It's an above-average track, but you can see by the talking heads that it's also pretty theoretical in nature, though there are a few historical anecdotes. Also, older machines will experience pauses as the PIP clips load. This can get a bit tedious.

The good news is that documentaries from the previous Special Editions are included here. Included is a 15-minute documentary on "The Art of Stanley Kubrick: from Short Films to Strangelove" and a 45-minute feature on "Inside Dr. Strangelove." Though Jones is the only "star" interviewed and there's some overlapping, the longer feature is really well done and includes fascinating behind-the-scenes information and footage. There are clips from cast members' home movies showing the photographer's plane that was "pulled over" by U.S. fighters when it inadvertently flew over a secret air base in the arctic, and the "Dr. Strangelove" written on the side of the plane made them seem like spies. There are stills from the most over-the-top scene in the movie--a pie-throwing melée in the war room that had to be cut because the actors looked like they were having too much fun. And there are shots of Kubrick and Scott by a chess board, with the revelation that Kubrick felt he had to beat the temperamental actor at a game he loved in order to earn his respect. If the featurette is disappointing, it's only because of its brevity and because it deals with just the early films: "Paths of Glory," "Lolita," and "Spartacus." Another repeat from the first edition are split-screen interviews with Sellers and Scott. These seven-minute snippets have no real content value, but are interesting as behind-the-scenes moviemaking relics. Split screen interviews were made so that television "interviewers" could appear to have exclusive, spontaneous conversations with the stars.

Included from the 40th Anniversary SE DVD is a long interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. McNamara is shown on camera answering questions from an off-camera interviewer. Predictably, it's dry, and there's some overlapping with the other new feature. But McNamara goes into great detail about the strategies behind moves the U.S. made during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, including the revelation that in 1992 they found out that the Russians actually DID have 160 nuclear warheads in Cuba, when at the time the U.S. didn't believe they had any. I can picture political science and history classes watching this extra with relish, and also "No Fighting in the War Room Or: Dr. Strangelove and the Nuclear Threat," another feature made especially for the 40th Anniversary reissue. Though the territory is plenty familiar, there will be a number of viewers for whom footage of schoolkids in bomb drills and an explanation of the historical context behind the film will make "Dr. Strangelove" seem as surreal as it is absurd. Then there's a tribute to Peter Sellers, featuring interviews with talking heads and, best of all, clips from Sellers' other films--including "Super Secret Service" (1953), his first film, where he established a pattern of playing multiple characters that would continue throughout his career. Among the interviewees, incidentally, is Roger Ebert.

This is a DigitalBook release, and the case is actually a 32-page book with the Blu-ray held in a plastic "grabber" on the inside back cover. Richard Tanne contributes an introduction to the film, while there are pages that pay tribute to Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Stanley Kubrick, followed by an essay by Travis Baker, three photo-reduced script pages, and a good amount of photos.

This Blu-ray is BD-Live enabled, which (and I quote from the Sony press release) allows "users to get connected and go beyond the disc via an Internet-connected Blu-ray player. Download exclusive content, register for rewards, give feedback through our survey and more!"

Bottom Line:
"Dr. Strangelove" helped audiences release megatons of nervous tension during the Cold War, and it's still a taut and humorous drama that's driven by sharp satire, career performances, and black-and-white images that perfectly complement the good guy/bad guy mentality of the era. Now, with a nut-case in North Korea threatening nuclear war, "Dr. Strangelove" has become alarmingly relevant again. Nothing is Fail-Safe, except nuclear disarmament.