Fail Safe offers an alternate take on Kubrick’s satire, presenting a chillier and more straightforwardly frightening version of the consequences of simple error in the deployment of nuclear weapons. Although an unidentified aircraft entering US airspace is correctly recognised as merely a civilian airliner, a computer glitch results in a bomber group receiving valid orders for an attack on Moscow. As the American President (Henry Fonda, whose despair at the escalating situation is almost palpable) tries frantically to have the bomber recalled, and to avert a full-scale exchange of weapons with Moscow, a terrible trade is agreed. Although the film suffered at the box office, coming in the wake of Strangelove, the much bleaker Fail Safe, remade as a live television play in 2000 at the instigation of ardent fan George Clooney, is a superb, claustrophobic thriller.

Screening as part of the Fallout season.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.