Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (to give it its magnificent full title) is the blackest of black comedies. A hysterical – in both senses of the word – examination of Cold War paranoia, the film satirises the idea that Mutually Assured Destruction (which is not called ‘MAD’ for nothing) would deter the prospect of nuclear war.

Peter Sellers stars in a trio of roles as RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President of the United States Merkin Muffley and the eponymous Dr Strangelove – three men who can possibly save the world. The planet is under threat from total thermonuclear annihilation, unleashed when Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper launches a covert nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Dr. Strangelove is a political satire with a serious message – when a situation is this terrifying and ridiculous, all you can do is laugh in the face of apocalypse.