Best movie character names

any five from Dr. Strangelove:

General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden)
Major Bat Guano (Kennan Wynn)
Major King Kong (Slim Pickens)
Flight Commander Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers)
General Bucky Turgidson (George C. Scott)
Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissoff
President Murphree Murfison (Peter Sellers)
Dr. Strangelove (Sellers again)
 
it is a very allusive joke. In the film Mandrake is the straightest man you ever meet and he is having to deal with an american general who has gone completely insane and ordered a nuclear attack on Russia because he thinks the reds have put flouride in our water and that has made him impotent.

Sellers' character is a totally controlled, stiff upper lip type.

Mandrake refers to a root that has a long pharmaceutical history and literary history going back to the bible.

It is a "deliriant hallucenogenic tropane alkaloid" which is credited with all kinds of interesting effects on humans and has been a staple of stories about goblins, witchcraft, sorcery, etc.

So the idea of giving the name to Caspar Milquetoast of her majesty's air corps is an allusive joke.

It would be like naming Paris Hilton Virgin Lockedthighs or something like that.
 
Buck Turgidson is loosely based on Curtis Lemay.

Turgid means something that is gross or over the top in our modern usage. It originally meant something that is swollen up beyond recognition.

The General is out of his mind because he is so mired in strategic thinking.

It is a pun of a sort

There is a debate about who is most responsible for writing this stuff, Stanley Kubrick or Terry Southern. My guess is Southern because he was from Alvarado Texas and puts in an allusion to it in the script-----"Burpelson Air Force Base" is said to be near Alavarado by one of the Army generals.
 
Great thread. There is a lot in a name.

Thanks, huiisache, I just learned a lot about a movie I've seen probably 20 times. A detail of the big screen version that is almost always lost on the small screen is the title of one of the books on the table in front of Turgidson. He never refers to it, but it's title is "World Targets in Megadeaths."

I would add Hal to the list.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
 
In response to Plenty O'Toole:

Plenty O'Toole: Hi, I'm Plenty.
James Bond: But of course you are.
Plenty O'Toole: Plenty O'Toole.
James Bond: Named after your father perhaps?

--maybe the best exchange in any of the Bond flicks
 
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