Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is in my own experience the only comedy that actually gets funnier the more you watch it. Dr. Strangelove has gone down in history as one the greatest
movies ever; it certainly must be considered the greatest comedy of all time. One of overlooked gems in a
movie chock full of them is that of the character who sets the doomsday
events in motion: General Jack D. Ripper. It is often
easy to forget General Ripper in the face of the triumvirate of memorable performances from Peter Sellers, George C. Scott's finest performance, and the fantastic smaller-scale acting
jobs turned in by Keenan Wynn and Slim Pickens. For one thing, there really isn't anything intrinsically
funny about General Ripper the way there is about, for instance, Bat Guano, Lionel Mandrake or Buck Turgidson's slapstick falls in the War Room. Part of the reason that Ripper is often overlooked is that General Ripper is very much a genuinely frightening character. Even more horrifying is that he was based on a real life General who may actually have been even more insane.
