A while back a friend described the plot of a movie that sounded really great, but now i can’t remember the name. I think the film is pretty old - 50s or 60s - and has a nuclear annihilation theme, and i believe the plot goes something like this:
The US believes that Russia is about to attack and sends a whole bunch of bombers off to reign nuclear terror on the Soviets. At the last minute, the US finds out that it was a false alarm, and calls back its planes. But one plane doesn’t get the message, and destroys a Russian city. The Russians are understandably pissed, and contact the US President with an ultimatum: drop a nuclear bomb on one of your own cities to even the score, or face massive Soviet retaliation and the total nuclear war that would follow.
It sounds like Fail Safe. Only the US was doing a training mission and could not recall one bomber. It’s a really good move and Henry Fonda plays the president.
It was recently remade for TV with George Clooney.
You should watch this in a double-feature with Doctor Strangelove… to see the exact same suject matter done as dark satire. It can be fascinating to compare and contrast the two.
Hey, i watched the movie last night and thought it was fantastic. It certainly is an interesting contrast to Doctor Strangelove, which i have seen a few times.
I thought the supense was really well done, and the performances were very good. This film must have had quite an impact when it was released in 1964.
Like Ethilrist, my girlfriend had read the book, and thought that it was excellent.
The President sent an American bomber, flown by a General that he trusted, to fly to New York with a payload of two 20-megaton nuclear bombs. He promised the Soviet Chairman that if any of the American squadron of six bombers made it through the Soviet defences and dropped its payload on Moscow, then he would drop the equivalent amount of nuclear power on New York.
One US plane got through, and the shriek over the telephone line from the US Ambassador’s office in Moscow indicated that the bombs were dropped. The President then gave the order to drop the bombs on New York, and this was the last scene of the film, with the American General Black killing himself as soon as he dropped the bombs.
But you really should see the movie yourself. Some of the Cold War hawk and dove dialog is excellent, and Walter Matthau and Henry Fonda give great performances, as does the rest of the cast.
Indeed it was. And i quite like Dom DeLuise’s little cameo as a sargent struggling with his sense of duty when asked to relay secrets that would help the Russians shoot down the American bombers.
It’s one of my favorite films. There are more amusing, ironic and horrifying moments in that film…it’s now avaiable I believe in a very cleaned up DVD transfer.
Try and find the “Fail Safe” DVD that has commentary by the director. It’s fascinating.
Also, there was a live performance of this back in 2001, George Clooney’s idea, that had an interesting cast. Noah Whylie was quite good as the translator, and Richard Dreyfuss was fantastic (in a diffeerent way than Fonda) as the President. Not as good as the movie, but worth seeing.
And just to twist the knife a little more, in the original movie the First Lady was visiting New York. IIRC this was revealed to the audience by having one character refer to a newspaper article about the visit and ask another character if he (the President) is aware of this; the response is a simple “Yes, he knows.”
