Stanley Kubrick wasn’t exactly known for being a laugh riot — although he did originally intend Eyes Wide Shut to be a Steve Martin farce. Nevertheless, the legendary filmmaking genius did happen to make one of the greatest comedies of all time: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb starring Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Peter Sellers.

Famously, Dr. Strangelove was originally going to be a very serious drama about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George. That is, until Kubrick and his co-writer began cracking jokes during the writing process, at which point it morphed into a “nightmare comedy.”

But despite the fact that it was reworked into a satire starring Inspector Clouseau, it was still viewed as a potentially incendiary film by the American government.

Dr. Strangelove was released in...