The Movie: This movie about trying to stop an accidental nuclear attack didn't do too well in the theaters as it was released shortly after Dr. Strangelove, which dealt with a similar subject matter, but Strangelove treated it in a satirical manner, while Fail-Safe was a serious drama.

That being said, however, Fail-Safe was actually a pretty good movie. The premise is that in the height of the cold war, a computer glitch has sent American on an irreversible mission to drop nuclear bombs on Moscow. What follows is a scramble by the military and the government to try and stop the attack, or otherwise, prevent an all-out retaliation by the Soviets.

The first part of the movie was full of the same cold war clichés that we saw clear through the 1980's, but as the film progressed, the stakes were raised, and the tension mounted. The more it went on, the more I wanted to know what happens in the end.

Henry Fonda put in a great performance as the President, and Walter Matthau was quite believable in his rather dark role. In researching some stuff about this film, I found out that it was remade for TV by CBS in 2000... but it was performed live on air. I'd like to see that, but as far as I was able to find out, it is only available on DVD in Germany. Boo.

The DVD: I'll start off by noting that this film is in black and white, and of course, so is the DVD. The anamorphic widescreen transfer exhibits the grain you'd expect to see on a film from this era, but other than some hints of dust and scratches, it was remarkably clean, with good shadow detail. The mono soundtrack was functional, but unremarkable.

There are a few special features, including trailers for this, and a couple other war movies, director's commentary track, a new retrospective featurette, as well as your standard complement of text-based features.