Abstract

The objective of this article is to investigate Ranald MacDougall’s The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) in their imaginations of disaster and apocalyptic futures. I aim to bring technical and narrative aspects of film in order to identify themes and speculative explorations of nuclear war and post-nuclear survival, emphasising political and social discussions that can be found in both films. Finding their singularities and similarities is part of my focus here, as these productions were made during the height of the nuclear scare of the Cold War in the United States and contain critical – and satirical – approaches to common themes found in apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction of the time, each with their particular shifts.