Dr Strangelove deserves its place in the pantheon, but there were scores of brilliant but serious movies made about World War III. The Bedford Incident featured Sidney Poitier in the first film he made where his race was not an issue (and why should it, in the face of a bigger one?) Or Henry Fonda and Larry Hagman in Fail Safe. Possibly the under-rated US TV movie The Day After, or the tougher British version, Threads, perhaps. But the best is the BBC's 1966 banned drama-documentary, The War Game, which details the likely effects of a nuclear strike on south east England. The government objected to a film that took the unilateral nuclear disarmers' view that if the H-bomb failed as a deterrent, as they then thought it would - the survivors wouldn't care if the RAF retaliated. It was dutifully pulled by the BBC, and shelved for years. Not that this stopped BBC grandees from tripping off to the US to collect the best documentary Oscar that the film deservedly won that year. Director Peter Watkins was so p****d off his career never recovered. A terrible loss.