MovieChat Forums > Fail Safe (1964) Discussion > FAIL SAFE: CULT CLASSIC

FAIL SAFE: CULT CLASSIC

posted 10 years ago by jmasseysr7
4 replies | jump to latest

Simply one of the Greatest most chilling Cold War protest movies ever made...This is the flick that revealed the insanity of the arms-race's infamous M.A.D. Theory (Mutually Assured Destruction). This picture gave Henry Fonda incredible performance as US President legendary status; the public universally agreed that Fonda Should actually Be the president! A Lumet Masterpiece & watch out for Walter Matthau's masterful performance-5 Star epic it is!!!
http://t.co/xBVOP2WlIV

"the primary objects of desire & of thought are the same-Jeff Massey [Poor Richard's Son]

[–] Pbaumannjr-775-71695 10 years ago

Given that it has been going on for over sixty years and none of the fears expressed in this movie or Dr Strangelove or On The Beach or several Twilight Zone episodes, etc have materialized don't you think they were a bit overstated?

[–] jmasseysr7 10 years ago

No, for this reason; from. Speculative fiction POV, since the film' debut there has been multiple DEFCON 3's called based on "machine error. As with all nuclear apocalypse tales, it serves as a 'cautionary tale' warning of the overall insanity for mankind's in a dystopian world where self-annihilation by ever-growing computer controlled nuclear arsenals remains a threat. For the foreseeable future, we still are ruled under the black shadow of "Mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine (MADD)" where accidental Doomsday or in the case of Cameron's "Sky-Net" from The Terminator Trilogy, intentional genocide is and will become reality...in actuality, the film's title "Fail-Safe" comes from the USAF description of its nuclear "Human-Reliability Program" to describe a series of redundancies built into the early Strategic Air Commands retaliatory strike capability. It stands for a system "beyond the hypothetical danger of human-error Caused Nuclear War or any failure to retaliate.

"the primary objects of desire & of thought are the same-Jeff Massey [Poor Richard's Son]

[–] jmasseysr7 10 years ago

[–] srklondie 10 years ago

Amen ta dat!, Jeffery. It's one of my ten favorite films. The last couple of minutes never fails to send chills down my spine. Unfortunately, Stephen Frears felt the need to get involved with a remake. He should've consulted me. I would've told him that you never mess with perfection.