What’s New Pussycat? (1965)

Deeply unfunny farce directed by Clive Donner. 

Peter O’Toole is a playboy who can’t stop chasing after women in Paris. Peter Sellers is a lecherous therapist with his own problems. Woody Allen is in love with O’Toole’s fiance. It’s all over the place, both in terms of storytelling (a potentially interesting love triangle idea is quickly forgotten) and morals, which seem informed by a curious mixture of Carry On-style English repression and clichés about “European” looseness. In the world of this film, men are portrayed as womanising beasts and women exist only to please them. 

The only laughs come from Woody Allen, who is naturally funny in his scenes – although he does have to take the blame for writing such a poor script overall. Peter Sellers is once again wearing a silly wig and doing a silly accent, but neither of those generate any hilarity. The final section – Ursula Andress literally parachutes into the film and everyone runs around after each other in a country hotel – seems muddled and desperate, as any notion of “plot” is completely abandoned for cheap visual gags that fall flat.

I don’t like the theme song sung by Tom Jones, either.

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

Cold War black comedy.

Apparently losing his mind, a US Air Force general (Sterling Hayden) orders a nuclear attack on the Soviets. This, we learn, will trigger a “doomsday machine” response so vast that will render Earth uninhabitable. With the clock ticking to call off the strike, we follow the story in three related threads – the struggle to retract the order from within the air base where the general is stationed, the progress of the B-52 plane that’s on the way to drop its bombs, and the discussions in the war room where the US president considers the options. 

Stanley Kubrick directs, and there’s a beauty to some of the black and white shots. Unfortunately, the film is constructed around Peter Sellers, who – for no apparent reason – plays three different roles. If you don’t find him hilarious (I don’t), you’re in trouble. Some of the satire hits the spot (a British RAF exchange officer not being able to call the president and avoid Armageddon because he doesn’t have sufficient spare change in his pocket), but a lot of it falls flat. It taps into a potentially rich seam of material regarding the futility of war and mutually assured destruction, but it’s too uneven and simply not funny enough to make those points in a satisfactory manner.