Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, he believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr...
Written by Huggo
Based on the novel "Red Alert" by Peter George, and originally conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Stanley Kubrick was working on the script when he realized that many scenes he had written were actually quite funny. He then brought in Terry Southern to turn the story into a satire. Among the changes were the addition of the title character and the renaming of other characters using satirical names such as Turgidson, Kissoff, Guano, DeSadesky, and Merkin Muffley.
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Goofs
Factual errors:
During the ending of the opening credits it says "Base on the Novel Red Alert" instead of "Based on the Novel Red Alert".
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Quotes
[first lines]
Narrator:
For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Russian project to the perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the Arctic peaks of the Zhokhov Islands. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place no one could say. See more »
Crazy Credits
The screenplay title is incorrectly spelled. It reads: 'Base' on the book
"Red Alert" by Peter George. This is pointed out on the DVD supplement
about the making of the film.
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"When Johnny Comes Marching Home"
(1863) (uncredited) Music by the Union Army bandmaster, Louis Lambert In the score often during the flight of Major 'King' Kong's aircraft
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